‘We have a bright future ahead of us’
City resolution recognizes original inhabitants of what is Stamford today and their descendants
STAMFORD — The Board of Representatives this week passed a resolution recognizing the people who lived on the land that is now Stamford and their descendants.
The honorary resolution, which the board passed unanimously, is connected to City and Town Clerk Lyda Ruijter’s effort to restore a deed from the 1600s, which she learned was being stored in a city official’s office about halfway through her first term.
Ruijter told the board during its Monday meeting that through her work to preserve the document, she has connected with descendants of the original inhabitants of the Stamford area.
“A deed is always (between) two parties,” Ruijter said. “So far, too much attention has been paid to the white settlers — only one component of the deed.”
She then introduced Vincent Mann, the chief of the Ramapough Lunaape Nation’s Turtle Clan in New Jersey. Mann previously spoke at the city’s “Stamford Day” celebration in May and also attended a ceremony in November at Old Town Hall after the deed had been treated by the Northeast Document Conservation Center.
“We are very humbled by the events of 2021 and we really look forward to furthering our relationship and deepening it between ourselves as the descendants of the original people of that land” and the city, Mann said. “We have a bright future ahead of us. We have some wonderful, amazing human beings who are at the forefront of wiping away those traumatic tears from both sides of our ancestors and coming together as one for the betterment and the benefit of all.”
The resolution notes that “over the course of European settlement in the modern Northeastern United States, indigenous people were systematically displaced from their traditional homelands.” It states that the Board of Representatives “welcomes more dialogue” between the city and the Ramapough Lunaape Nation to “create more engagement … in order to acknowledge the wrongs of the past.”
Steve Kolenberg, a former city representative who helped establish “Stamford Day,” said he had hoped the holiday would “become a vehicle to unite the many thousands who’ve called Stamford their home through the generations.
“Our engagement with the (Lunaape) People has been very successful in finally recognizing the contributions of these original Stamfordites, who have been forgotten for too long,” he said.