Honoring the Land.

McCarter’s building, part of the Princeton University campus, stands on part of the ancient homeland and traditional territory of the Lenape people. We pay respect to Lenape peoples past, present, and future and their continuing presence in the homeland and throughout the Lenape diaspora. Many Lenape were forcibly removed west and north by European settler-colonists starting in the 1600s. 

McCarter honors the legacy of the original storytellers and art makers of this region, while actively engaging with Native storytellers, artists, students, audience members and leaders through the work we create and feature on our stages today. We also seek to welcome and work more closely with the known present-day tribal communities in our local area: the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation; the Ramapough Lenape Nation; the Powhatan Renape Nation, The Nanticoke of Millsboro Delaware and the Lenape of Cheswold Delaware. 

In The Grandfathers Speak: Native American Folk Tales of the Lenapé People, Lenape Nation chief and scholar Hìtakonanu’laxk explains that the Lenape “concept of land is that it is not a thing to be possessed, but rather something sacred and alive. We have a saying, ‘We do not own the land, we are of the land, we belong to it.’”