Harnwell College House sits on Lenape land.

Any discussion of Philadelphia and Penn history cannot begin without consideration of land. Land acknowledgements are tangible political admissions of the ongoing violence of the settler-colonial state, and our own implicit participation in it. We stand on the unceded lands of the Lenni-Lenape people and acknowledge their care of these lands over time. 

Read more about land acknowledgements  and why they matter.

We stand on the unceded lands of the Lenni-Lenape people.

The Lenni-Lenape people included three different groups inhabiting the area from what is now Staten Island, NY to the Delaware shores. The Lenni-Lenape are a matrilineal society who inhabited the area for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Lenni-Lenape peoples were forcibly displaced from the PA/NJ/NY region and migrated to Oklahoma reservations following the Indian Removal Act of 1860. By this point, however, disease and war between indigenous groups following the European invasion had diminished the once thriving population of over 20,000 Lenni-Lenape to a few thousand. 

Learn more about Native American initiatives at Penn.