The 1778 Treaty with the Delaware: A Roundtable

BPL Presents welcomes the Lenape Center’s Joe Baker and Hadrien Coumans back to the stage, along with Pace University Law Professor Nicholas A. Robinson—to discuss the treaties of the Lenape with the United States. Co-presented with the Lenape Center. Building on a partnership begun with the 2022 Lenapehoking Exhibition and the resulting Lenapehoking Anthology , this unique conversation will explore how the treaties respected the sovereignty of the Delaware Tribe, also known as the Lenape, from the 17th century to 1863. Beginning with colonial treaties, the Lenape have the longest record of treaties and the largest number of treaties of any Tribe. Why have they been forgotten? The United States claims the 1778 Treaty with the Delaware, agreed during the Revolutionary War, to be the first US treaty with any Indian Nation. Following the Treaty with France earlier that year, this Treaty is only the second treaty the USA had ever negotiated with any other nation. Deemed essential to winning the American War of Independence 250 years ago, the Continental Congress sought an alliance with the Delaware, and as allies both made promises. The U.S. pledged to consider inviting the Delaware to gather tribes to become a 14th state, together with the confederation of the 13 states seeking their independence from Britain. What would the young United States be like if the agreed terms in this treaty had prevailed? What do subsequent treaties tell us about the relationship of the Lenape and the USA? PARTICIPANTS Hadrien Coumans is co-founder and Deputy Director of Lenape Center in New York and a traditionally adopted member of the Lenape WhiteTurkey–Fugate family. For 27 years, he has worked alongside Lenape elder Joe Baker, guided by a shared charge of cultural and institutional responsibility. For nearly twenty years, Lenape Center has restored Lenape presence, history, and knowledge in New York City through the arts, culture, education, and institutional partnerships. It also brings Lenape peacemaking principles to institutional culture, public narrative, and policy. Coumans holds United States Institute of Peace certifications in Conflict Analysis, Mediating Violent Conflict, and Land, Property & Conflict, and has trained in Trauma Awareness and Resilience. He has spoken at the United Nations, Brooklyn Law School, Pace School of Law, and Cardozo Law School’s Ferencz Human Rights & Atrocity Prevention Clinic. He has also addressed the governments of Australia, Finland, the Netherlands, and Canada. A writer and editor as well, he is co-editor of Lenapehoking: An Anthology, co-published by Lenape Center and Brooklyn Public Library. He has served as Associate Faculty at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. His writing includes “Wëlamàlsewakàn: Reimagining the Right to Health through Lenape Epistemologies” in Harvard’s Health and Human Rights Journal. Joe Baker (Lenape, Delaware Tribe of Indians) is an artist, educator, curator, and Vietnam Era U.S. Air Force veteran. He served with the 308th Strategic Missile Wing, which oversaw Titan II intercontinental ballistic missiles. He has worked in Native arts for forty years. He is a descendant of Lenape leaders who took part in treaty diplomacy, including Captain Anderson Sarcoxie, Captain White Eyes, Netawatwees, and Tamanend. Baker is co-founder and executive director of the Lenape Center in Manhattan. For nearly twenty years, the Center has restored Lenape presence, history, and knowledge in New York City through the arts, culture, education, and institutional partnerships. It also brings Lenape peacemaking principles to institutional culture, public narrative, and policy. Under Baker’s direction, the Center has partnered with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and taken part in Cooper Hewitt’s Making Home. It co-published Lenapehoking: An Anthology with Brooklyn Public Library. Baker curated Lenapehoking, the first Lenape-curated exhibition of Lenape cultural arts in New York City, at Brooklyn Public Library. Baker holds a BFA and an MFA from the University of Tulsa. He completed postgraduate study at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and is Visiting Professor of Museum Studies at Colorado College. Nicholas A. Robinson is the Gilbert & Sarah Kerlin Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law Emeritus in the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University based in White Plains, New York. He has taught environmental law since 1978 at Haub Law School and lectured widely abroad on comparative and international environmental law, including the customary law of Indigenous Peoples. He chaired the Commission on Environmental Law of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). At the invitation of the Lenape Center, he led a research seminar at Haub Law School studying the treaties of the Lenape Nation, beginning with the treaty of Shackamaxon, negotiated by Tamanend for the Delaware and William Penn for the English (1682), through to US Continental Congress’ Treaty of 1778 with the Delaware and the treaties of the 19 th century. His published scholarship includes the first history of the Forest Charter ( carta de foresta ) of 1217, and range of works on comparative and international law.