ANA Project Narrative
The Munsee Tribe in Kansas is a tribal community of approximately 300 Tribal members, of which approximately fifty five percent (55%) live in and around the Ottawa region of Kansas. Tribal members descend from the Munsee, Mahican, and Delaware (Lenape) people and the Munsee people stayed on Delaware and Wyandotte lands from 1839 until, in 1854, the Delaware Tribe completed a treaty that included the sale of the Christian Munsee' s 2,531 acres near Leavenworth, Kansas. From there they moved to Franklin County, where an 1859 Treaty1 established a reservation for the Chippewa and Christian Munsee. A bill finalized in 1900 resulted in the loss of these lands and the dispersal of the Munsee community across Franklin, Douglas, Osage, Johnson, Shawnee, and Anderson counties. As a formerly federally recognized tribal nation we have little to no land base outside of our tribal cemetery, and we manage our tribal government as a non-profit entity. The Tribe has also conducted history lectures and language classes throughout the last few years, and tribal members have worked to beautify the Munsee Indian Cemetery that has held our ancestors since 1859. Our community aims to build on these past programs to further educate our people about the Tribe's collective history, revitalize our language and culture, and foster community connection through shared knowledge. It is the Tribe's hope that this grant will enable it to collect and preserve historical documents and develop a tribal archive to feed future historical, linguistic, and cultural programming. Such programming will bolster community engagement, connect contemporary community members to the history of their ancestors, and ensure that Munsee knowledge is passed to future generations
This project will explore the untold history of The Munsee Tribe in Kansas and will consist of the development of a Tribal Archive to house digitized copies of historical documents pertaining to the Munsee. The project will also include the development and implementation of educational programming focused on the Tribe's history and language, described in detail below, which will encourage increased connection to Munsee history and culture and empower the tribe to act as stewards of its own historic and cultural experience. We recognize that there are potential challenges associated with the project plan and also included strategies to address these below, as well as identifying the staff and resources necessary to implement the proposed programming. Finally, we address strategies to ensure the sustainability of the program beyond the initial project years to ensure that the Tribe will be able to continue to benefit from, and connect to, our shared history and ancestral stories, thereby safeguarding the culture and well- being of the community.
