Educational Media Reviews Online

The Lenape Tribe, also known as the “Delaware” were driven from their homeland along the Delaware River during the prime era of Euro-American occupation and theft of Indian land, more commonly called “removal.” They were assigned and driven to a new home in Oklahoma but it was never really home to them. In 1967 members of the tribe went back to their old home and started an annual Pow-Wow which continues today. This documentary utilizes interviews of various tribal members to tell the story of how the Lenape are attempting to restore and maintain their traditions.

The segments are steady and fast paced, moving from interviews to images of the Pow-Wow with voiceovers, and back to the faces of the interviewees. Some of the pacing may be too fast. Several shots of the dancers and drummers were too brief to give the viewer a feel for the power of the drum and the reverence of the dancers.

Four generations tell us their own impression of what it means to be a Lenape in the modern world giving this video an appeal to a very broad age range of viewers. An interesting dichotomy is how some tribal members were very proud of the traditions that had been maintained through the years while at least one member was sad that so much had been lost.

The message here is one of hope that the future generations of Lenape will remember who they are and where they are from. The video does a good job of capturing a small part of the long history of a people and is a good standard for other filmmakers who are doing similar work.