The trip brought four students in the Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) program to the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of the Mohican Nation, where they served as volunteers and assistants for a Munsee and Mohican Language and Culture Camp. Led by professors and , the experience gave students the opportunity to engage directly with a living language community. This experience deepened a three-year collaboration with Nikole Pecore, a language keeper whose ancestral languages are rooted in the homelands of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, and who has been a core collaborator with NAIS since its inception.

The trip was part of a broader effort to expand 麻豆传媒在线鈥檚 NAIS program and further the development of the New Jersey Center for Indigenous Justice through a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation.聽 It also reflects the program鈥檚 commitment to immersive, community-engaged learning that connects academic study with real-world experience.

鈥淥ur Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) program is not interested in hollow gestures or performative statements,鈥� says Clatterbuck.聽 鈥淩ather, we鈥檙e committed to the work of Indigenous justice that鈥檚 grounded in relationship building and reciprocity with tribal communities.鈥�

Throughout the trip, students were welcomed into intergenerational community spaces where learning unfolded through shared meals, conversations and participation in daily cultural practices.聽 The group camped on powwow grounds while supporting the language camp, helping to serve traditional meals and participating in activities ranging from block printmaking and dreamcatcher-making to Lenape football and lacrosse.聽 Evenings were spent around the campfire sharing stories, while mornings began with a sunrise water ceremony.

At the language camp, rather than encountering language as something abstract, students experienced it as part of a living system, connected to the medicinal plants growing on site, and woven into song, storytelling, and family connections.

鈥淟anguage isn鈥檛 something you study on its own,鈥� Taha explains.聽 鈥淚t鈥檚 connected to ceremony, to history, to social interaction鈥攊t lives within the community.鈥�

Learning in an intergenerational environment, surrounded by elders, families, and young people, highlighted how language is sustained through relationships and shared experience.聽 The Stockbridge-Munsee Community is a two-language community, preserving both Munsee and Mohican languages with deep historical and cultural ties, including connections to Indigenous communities in New Jersey.

Ellie Paschalis 鈥�25, who will build on her NAIS minor and community-engaged experiences during graduate studies at U Mass Boston in the fall, found the trip inspiring. “It’s really a beautiful thing to see people reclaim their heritage, and to see that the language persists, and people are actively learning it,” she says. “It’s a direct act of resistance, and a huge step towards rebuilding a piece of culture that was diminished due to colonial pressures.”

Beyond the camp, students expanded their understanding of Indigenous history and life through visits to neighboring nations, including museums and historic preservation spaces on the Menominee Nation and Oneida Nation reservations, and hiking along the Wolf River.

Taha emphasizes the importance of carrying these experiences back to campus.聽 鈥淭his work shows up in our teaching, in our programming, and in how we think about community,鈥� she says, noting the value of centering identity, heritage, and lived experience in the learning process.

Paschalis noted that the camp was different from any other language learning method that she had encountered before. “The strategy behind the method was one of kindness, with teachers and fellow students providing a space for students to learn without shame for making mistakes,” she says. “Teachers applauded each student for their efforts regardless of the answer, reassuring them that they would progress with time and consistency.”

The trip also builds on coursework developed at 麻豆传媒在线, like the course, which has been offered since 2022.聽 Experiences like this extend that learning beyond the classroom, reinforcing the program鈥檚 focus on language, culture, and community as interconnected systems.

Plans are already underway for the next iteration of the trip, with a return visit to Wisconsin anticipated in Summer 2026.聽 For students considering the experience, this program offers an opportunity to engage deeply with communities, challenge assumptions, and expand their understanding of Indigenous knowledge and justice.

鈥淭his is about learning through relationships,鈥� Clatterbuck adds, underscoring the program鈥檚 foundation in listening, respect, and reciprocity.

Registration for the summer 2026 trip will open soon, with opportunities for students across disciplines to participate. Additional details, including program dates and application information, will be shared in the coming weeks. In the meantime, interested students are encouraged to contact Maisa Taha (taham@montclair.edu) or Mark Clatterbuck (clatterbuckm@montclair.edu) for more information.

Photo Gallery

When Khara Lillian Brown walks across the stage at 麻豆传媒在线鈥檚 Spring Commencement, she鈥檒l be celebrating more than earning her bachelor鈥檚 degree in Anthropology 鈥� she鈥檒l be celebrating a victory against extraordinary odds.

While in college, Brown was given just a 3% chance to live. Defying that prognosis with courage and determination, she not only survived but thrived, finding her purpose and passion through research, community and storytelling.

Her resilience carried her through multiple surgeries and intensive rehabilitation. Today, she is presenting original research, receiving prestigious scholarships, and exploring the complex history of free and formerly enslaved African American communities.

Maybe I didn鈥檛 do as well as I wanted 鈥� I鈥檓 a perfectionist and hard on myself 鈥� but I鈥檝e met people, changed lives, touched people with my story. And that鈥檚 all a person can ask for 鈥� to be a catalyst for change.鈥� 鈥� Khara Brown

A Newark native, Brown majored in Anthropology with minors in Archaeology and Native American and Indigenous Studies. Throughout her time at 麻豆传媒在线, she combined scholarship with activism, volunteering in the campus Archaeology Lab, co-founding the club LadiesFIRST, and participating in organizations such as the Native American and Indigenous Studies Club and the Coalition for Collective Liberation.

She also helped launch the Women鈥檚 Leadership Conference, organized by the University鈥檚 Educational Opportunity Fund (EOF) Program. At this year鈥檚 conference, she was honored with a Triumph Over Trauma Award, recognized before more than 350 high school students, educators, community leaders and artists.

Balancing academics with health challenges wasn鈥檛 simple.

In 2015, Khara Brown faced a devastating diagnosis after being hospitalized with catastrophic intestinal failure, leaving her paralyzed and barely able to speak. Doctors told her mother there was a 97% chance of fatality. Brown, determined to survive, whispered: 鈥淚f God created the world from nothing, imagine what He could do with 3%.鈥�

Reflecting on her journey, she says, 鈥淭o be able to say that I鈥檓 in three honor societies, doing my best, graduating 鈥� He obviously did some magic with that 3%.鈥�

But overcoming the odds wasn鈥檛 easy.

鈥淢aintaining a steady momentum that allowed for proper mental and physical care was the hardest part,鈥� Brown shares. 鈥淔inding that balance between what I want to do and what my body can allow me to do was hard as well. You want to be at the same pace as everyone else, but it鈥檚 okay if your path is different.鈥�

Achievements and Future Plans

Brown鈥檚 academic work focused on free and formerly enslaved African American communities of the 18th and 19th centuries, research she presented at the Archaeological Society of New Jersey Conference.

With the help of her advisor, Christopher Matthews, Anthropology chairperson, Brown researched and compared three archaeological sites in Northern New Jersey and New York. She also participated in the prestigious working alongside descendants of enslaved people to map the Burial Ground for the Enslaved. This summer, she will continue that work through an internship with Montpelier鈥檚 Archaeology Department.

In addition to her archaeological work, Brown deepened her commitment to Indigenous studies through hands-on experiences at the Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm, which provides traditional foods for the Turtle Clan of the Ramapough Lunaape (Lenape) Nation. The tribe can no longer safely farm its ancestral land in Upper Ringwood, New Jersey, due to industrial contamination.

Brown credits her success to a wide network of supporters.

鈥淏ig shout out to my EOF family, Dr. Danny Jean and the whole gang, my professors Chris Matthews and Mark Clatterbuck, and the whole Anthropology Department,鈥� she says.

She also expresses deep gratitude to Chief Mann of the Turtle Clan and the Munsee Three Sisters Farm, her co-workers who kept her nourished during long study sessions, and her family and prayer communities.

鈥淜hara is such an amazing person who has not only overcome so much to complete her college degree, but continues to see serving the greater good and, especially, underserved and marginalized communities as her purpose. Her impact as a student, archaeologist, educator and person will be profound,鈥� Matthews says.

Words of Reflection

After graduation, Brown plans to move to Virginia for the summer and celebrate her 30th birthday 鈥� grateful for all she has overcome and excited for what lies ahead.

鈥淣ow that I鈥檓 at the finish line, I can sit back and say it was worth it. In some moments, it didn鈥檛 feel possible. But perseverance 鈥� that tenacity 鈥� is what keeps me going.鈥�

The University will celebrate its graduates at Commencement exercises on Wednesday, May 7 and Thursday, May 8, 2025, at Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.

Story by Marilyn Joyce Lehren, University Communications and Marketing

Ready to Start Your 麻豆传媒在线 Journey?

Prospective Students and Parents: Learn more about 麻豆传媒在线 admissions, our Anthropology major and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Journalists: Contact our Media Relations team to request assets or schedule an interview with a member of the Class of 2025.

Listen to the episode .

The field school will include a blend of traditional classroom learning, fieldwork, hands-on learning, and working as part of a research team.

Specific activities include:

• working with tribal members to create a digital document archive related to the Ringwood Superfund site located in the Ramapough Turtle Clan homeland
• identifying and recording features of Native cultural heritage which may include a cemetery clean up as well as documentation of the Lenape ceremonial stone landscape
• creating resources to support tribal language learning and revitalization
• working at the tribally operated Munsee Three Sisters farm to support of Ramapough food sovereignty

The field school will meet Tuesday-Friday 4 days/week for 4 weeks 8:30am – 4:30pm. Students are expected to commit to the project full time. We will meet on the MSU campus as well as other locations including the Munsee Three Sisters Farm in Newton, NJ and the Ringwood Public Library. Transportation and meals will be provided when we visit off-campus sites. Students accepted to the field school will receive a stipend to offset personal expenses.

Please complete the following form to apply:

Application deadline: Friday, March 8, 2024, 5:00pm
Questions? Contact the programs directors at nais@montclair.edu

Download the 2024 NAIS Field Summer School Flyer

interviewed , Professor of Religion and co-director of Native American and Indigenous Studies, to delve into the controversy and offer insights into the challenges surrounding understanding and respecting Indigenous practices.

鈥淚t鈥檚 definitely a great place to start, but hopefully it鈥檚 not where we stop,鈥� says Farrah Fornarotto, a junior majoring in Anthropology, with minors in Archaeology and the new Native American and Indigenous Studies. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot to tackle.鈥�

The challenges date back decades. Munsee Three Sisters Farm provides traditional food for the Turtle Clan of the Ramapough Lunaape (Lenape) Nation, a tribe that can no longer safely farm its own land in Upper Ringwood, New Jersey. Environmental and health issues caused by industrial dumping have led to a generational decline in the Turtle Clan members鈥� ability to practice their culture, including the Munsee language, which is at risk of becoming as dormant as the winter fields.

An intensive, field-based partnership with the Turtle Clan Ramapough includes work at the Munsee Three Sisters Farm, where 麻豆传媒在线 students and professors are helping the tribe鈥檚 Indigenous food sovereignty and language revitalization efforts.

A key aspect of 麻豆传媒在线鈥檚 contributions are organizing the tribe鈥檚 records and documents related to the industrial dumping on ancestral land. Students are at work to help gather the scientific evidence documented at the Superfund site, the health impact and oral histories from eyewitnesses, and with University resources, creating a single, digitally accessible repository for future researchers and the tribal members who continue to fight for proper cleanup of the land.

More than 300 pages of newspaper articles detailing the dumping of toxic paint sludge from a Ford Motor Co. factory have been indexed by students. 鈥淢y students are going through and creating a table of contents identifying the names [of key players], the toxic chemicals listed in reports, physical sites that are listed, agencies that are listed, and creating a searchable tool for that whole collection of news articles,鈥� says Mark Clatterbuck, associate professor of Religion and co-director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies program.

麻豆传媒在线 students taking part in the class projects say they share a commitment for helping Indigenous communities. Jala Best, a senior Psychology major, says her drive comes from her experiences as an Afro-Indigenous woman.

鈥淥ftentimes the issues of Native communities are ignored or Native people are spoken about in the past tense, like we are not still living, breathing, surviving and fighting for justice 鈥�. You can鈥檛 even conceptualize that there are atrocities happening today because you believe that it鈥檚 a thing of the past,鈥� Best says.

Mark Clatterbuck, right, oversees the garden signage with students Camille Howard, Julia Rodano and Farrah Fornarotto. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the small things that build up, and eventually over time, the Turtle Clan鈥檚 language will be more visible to them and also to the public,鈥� Fornarotto says.

麻豆传媒在线 has initiated a field-based partnership with Turtle Clan Chief Vincent Mann of the Ramapough Lunaape Nation. The University support includes students working directly with the tribe on food sovereignty, the language revitalization effort and ongoing environmental concerns as part of 麻豆传媒在线鈥檚 new minor in Native American and Indigenous Studies.

鈥淭he issues and the challenges of the Turtle Clan, they鈥檙e huge, they鈥檙e varied and there鈥檚 no shortage of them,鈥� says Clatterbuck.

The program is closely tied to the University鈥檚聽Land Acknowledgement Statement. Clatterbuck, along with History Professor Elspeth Martini and Anthropology Professor Chris Matthews consulted with New Jersey鈥檚 three state-recognized tribal nations 鈥� the Ramapough Lenape, Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape and Powhatan Renape 鈥� in drafting the statement, and also considered how it could represent a commitment from 麻豆传媒在线 to working with and for their communities.

鈥淚t鈥檚 not just about making some sort of historical reference. It鈥檚 really about saying, 鈥榃hat is our responsibility to those communities?鈥欌�� Clatterbuck says.

Mark Clatterbuck, associate professor of Religion and co-director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies program, constructs signage as part of the field work helping promote the preservation of Native American land and culture.

The program is intentionally community-engaged, hands-on and focused on problem-solving, including finding creative ways to support community-driven language revitalization and environmental recovery. 鈥淭he Ramapough understand that part of their healing and survival is really dependent on recovering key aspects of their cultural ways,鈥� Clatterbuck says. 鈥淟anguage is on par with restoring foodways and their access to clean water, land and air.鈥�

Munsee language expert, Nikole Pecore, a member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Nation in Wisconsin, has guided 麻豆传媒在线 students studying Linguistic Anthropology in building a digital repository of instructional materials that will be used to train new Munsee teachers and support community learners.

鈥淲e鈥檙e looking at language as a key to culture, to bringing back Munsee speaking cultures, as well as other Lenape languages belonging to original peoples in the state of New Jersey,鈥� says Associate Anthropology Professor Maisa Taha.

Work on the farm also includes students preparing the fields and helping deliver the organic, healthy, medicinal healing crops to the community. 鈥淚t鈥檚 doing the nitty-gritty work with local communities and following their lead,鈥� Clatterbuck says.

Meryem Teke, a senior Religion major, paints a garden sign at the Munsee Three Sisters Farm. The work is among the creative ways 麻豆传媒在线 is supporting the Turtle Clan鈥檚 language revitalization and environmental recovery.

鈥淚t might be challenging to figure out how all of these different pieces fit together. But the fact of the matter is they are all intimately connected,鈥� Taha says. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 have language without culture. You can鈥檛 have culture without tribal sovereignty. You can鈥檛 have tribal sovereignty without environmental justice. What we鈥檙e bringing to our students and frankly, to ourselves as well, is this huge opportunity to work with our tribal partners in trying to understand those connections and come up with reasonable, impactful solutions that will serve them for years to come.鈥�

Clatterbuck adds, 鈥淲e鈥檙e all passionate about this on a personal level, and we see this as a matter of justice and addressing 鈥� you hear the buzzword 鈥榙ecolonization鈥� thrown around a lot 鈥� but as far as I鈥檓 concerned, this is what that work looks like. It鈥檚 messy, and it鈥檚 trial and error, and we鈥檙e figuring all this out as we go. But that is the work.鈥�

Photo Gallery

麻豆传媒在线鈥檚 new minor in Native American and Indigenous Studies is focusing on issues of indigenous sovereignty, cultural revitalization, environmental justice and language reclamation. Some of the field work is happening at the Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm in Newtown, New Jersey.

麻豆传媒在线 students have created signage for the Three Sisters Farm in the Munsee language. The illustrations will help tribal members as well as visitors to the farm visually connect the pictures and actual plants with the Munsee word. Efforts are also underway to create audio files so that learners can hear those words when accessed by QR codes added to the signs.

A rooster at Munsee Three Sisters Farm.

Story by Staff Writer Marilyn Joyce Lehren. Photos by John J. LaRosa.

You may also like:

• Celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day
• Community-Based Learning Makes an Impact

Please join us! Documentary screening followed by panel discussion with filmmaker and tribal leaders!

Film Description: In September 2020 the documentary crew filmed a talking circle of Ramapough elders, relations, and partners at the Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm. The resulting documentary- The Meaning of the Seed – is structured along the layers of the landscape, chronologically working up from the ground to the overstory. The first section, SOIL, describes the history of contamination in Ringwood and the contaminated ground that many Native Americans live on or near. SEED recounts the struggles of the Ramapough and their cultural connections to the land. GROWTH chronicles the Ramapough鈥檚 cultural restoration program and efforts to work towards food sovereignty through their recently inaugurated Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm in Newton, NJ. Finally, SUNLIGHT is a call to action, as the talking circle participants urge a younger generation to become involved with environmental justice movements.

The ancestral home of the Ramapough Lunaape (Lenape) Turtle Clan is Ringwood, New Jersey. The landscape includes former iron mines, Native American rock shelters, a forest in which people hunt and forage for food, a large drinking water reservoir, deep pockets of contaminated soil, streams that now flow with orange water, a stew of different chemical toxicants from the former Ford manufacturing plant, and the Ringwood Mines/Landfill Superfund Site. People live in the Superfund site, just upstream from the Wanaque Reservoir, which provides drinking water to millions of New Jersey residents.

Co-sponsored by:
鈥� Departments of Anthropology, History, Linguistics, and Religion
鈥� The Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Education Project
鈥� The University Senate Land Acknowledgment Committee

For further information please contact: Chris Matthews at matthewsc@montclair.edu

麻豆传媒在线 welcomed the Red Blanket Singers of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribe of New Jersey for a special performance as part of the early evening event, which also served as the formal unveiling of the University鈥檚 new Native American and Indigenous Studies minor and 麻豆传媒在线鈥檚 formal Land Acknowledgement.

Students from 麻豆传媒在线鈥檚 new course 鈥淚ntroduction to Native American and Indigenous Studies鈥� read the Land Acknowledgement to begin the event, which also featured remarks from President Jonathan Koppell and recent alumna and Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape member Brianna Dagostino 鈥�21.

Brianna Dagostino 鈥�21 (Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape) offers reflections on the significance of Indigenous Peoples Day.

Department of Anthropology Chairperson and Native American and Indigenous Studies Co-Director Christopher Matthews welcomes the attendees.

Urie Ridgeway, emcee for the Red Blanket Singers.

麻豆传媒在线 President Jonathan Koppell addresses the audience.

Members of the Red Blanket Singers participate in traditional tribal dances.

To see more photos, go to the . Photos by University Photographer Mike Peters.