Farm Philly Land and Life Acknowledgment

For centuries, the land currently known as Philadelphia has been home to and cared for by the Lenni-Lenape people of Lenapehoking and the Poutaxat (Delaware Bay). We acknowledge that thousands of Lenni-Lenape people from the PA/NJ/NY region were forcibly displaced by European colonizers and the U.S Indian Removal Act of 1860. At Farm Philly, we recognize the Tribes’ strength and history of resistance to the ongoing violence of settler-colonization. We commit to honoring their history, presence and future, and supporting regional Tribal Nations, including but not limited to the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation; the Ramapough Lenape Nation; and the Powhatan Renape Nation, The Nanticoke of Millsboro Delaware, the Lenape of Cheswold Delaware, and more. 

We know that our modern systems of growing food and owning property are built on the stolen land of Indigenous people, the enslavement and barbaric exploitation of African people, and the genocide of both Native and Black communities and cultures. These violent acts continue to impact Black and Indigenous communities today. We must understand and name these realities and how they influence who has power over land and food in Philadelphia. 

Black and Indigenous communities have deep knowledge and innovation in agriculture, food sciences and land stewardship, but have been largely ignored or erased in the documentation of that collective knowledge. We commit to lifting up these practices in Philadelphia’s urban agriculture.