Riverfront North Partnership
New work by resident artist Lisa Kelley brings color to the K&T trail at Lardners Point Park is a series of banners on the trail. The work is informed by a series of workshops with local community members while encouraging viewers to consider the perspective of the Leni Lenape people.
Lenapehokink: K&T Trail
is the second artist residency collaboration between Riverfront North Partnership and Mural Arts Tacony LAB Community Art Center. The goal of this project was to continue to engage the communities of Northeast Philadelphia with the Delaware Riverfront while also introducing the perspective of the Lenape people.
Artist Lisa Kelley worked with the the Tacony LAB community and Adam DePaul of the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania to create a series of banners installed on the light poles in Lardner’s Point Park.
Each banner is a different animal of importance to the Lenape. The banners are labeled on one side with Lenapehokink, the Lenape name for this area and on the other, K & T Trail.
The background patterns of the banners were
developed in printmaking workshops with the Tacony LAB community.
Prophecy of the Four Crows
Each background also includes a depiction of the Delaware River with Four Crows flying.
The Prophecy of the Four Crows is important to the Lenape and relevant to their continued presence working with others as caretakers of the
Delaware river and surrounding lands.
Chief Red Hawk summarizes the
current interpretation of the
Prophecy in the following way:
“We now know that the First Crow was the Lenape before the coming of the Europeans.
The Second Crow symbolized the death and destruction of our culture.
The Third Crow was our people going underground and hiding.
The Fourth Crow was the Lenape becoming caretakers again and working with everybody to restore this land.” *
*https://www.penn.museum/sites/fap/prophecy.shtml