Sisters, staff, associates, and members of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation gather at The Center at Mariandale

On the morning of August 27th, six youth and three chaperone members of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation stood in a circle with Dominican Sisters of Hope, associates, and staff overlooking the Hudson River. They were standing on the current property of the Dominican Sisters of Hope, and the ancestral land of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican tribe.

“We know that these two groups haven’t had a good relationship in the past,” Wanonah Spencer, an enrolled member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohicans, told those gathered. “I can imagine my ancestors being proud to see the healing between us in this circle now.”

The visit was initiated by the Dominican Sisters of Hope Land Justice Committee, which is comprised of sisters, associates, and staff. Peggy McHale, an associate of the Dominican Sisters of Hope and a member of the Land Justice Committee, said that the relationship with the Stockbridge-Munsee-Mohicans began with the committee “listening to the Earth.” In doing so, they quickly recognized that Native Americans “knew a lot more about that than we do.”

Shawn Stevens leads a prayer in front of the Hudson River

The group sings a prayer alongside the river

The committee then started researching which Native communities had been on the land, hoping to kindle a relationship with them. The Nuns and Nones Land Justice Project referred them to Shawn Stevens of the Stockbridge-Munsee-Mohican Nation, now in Bowler, Wisconsin. On a visit to Racine for the Nuns and Nones Land Justice Project, members of the committee visited the Stockbridge-Munsee-Mohican  reservation.

“Shawn mentioned the great sorrow that their parents and grandparents –and in some families three generations– were afraid to know about their spirituality [as a result of abuse at Christian boarding schools]” McHale said. “Shawn was saying to us that the hope was in the youth who wanted to know their heritage.”

A year after that visit, the Dominican Sisters of Hope invited these youth and chaperones to rediscover and celebrate their ancestral heritage. From Aug 26th through Sept 2nd, the group reconnected with their ancestral home in what is now known as Ossining, New York, on land currently owned by the Dominican Sisters of Hope. The immersion week was made possible by a grant from New York Community Trust – Westchester with support from the Mortimer Fund for Native American Indian Children.

The sisters and their sponsored ministry, The Center at Mariandale, hosted the group and facilitated visits to heritage sites, offered inter-tribal dialogue with the Shinnecock Kelp Farmers on Long Island, and provided time to enjoy Mariandale’s trails, pools, and 61 acres on the Hudson River.

The group visits a Chief Nimham memorial in the Bronx

For Janiyakuha Webster, a chaperone and singer, the experience was “beautiful.”

“When you’re away from home for a long time and you return, there’s relief,” she said. Webster sang prayers throughout the week, including powerful prayers to the land, to the water, and to her ancestors.

“Being able to sing here has been very special, because it’s like our ancestors are hearing that in spirit,” she said. “I know they’re with us when we’re not here at home, but I know there’s a lot of them here. Some of them might be stuck because the way some of them lost their lives are pretty horrific. So the song is just relieving them. We’re still here. We still hear them.”

Shawn Stevens (Red Eagle) worked with the Dominican Sisters of Hope to plan the weeklong immersion trip and and then lead the group. As Stevens told the cohort, this trip is about the “Indigenous mindset,” which is “not a racial thing,” but instead about “understanding the connection with where you came from, understanding that we all come from the Earth.”

What does it mean to grasp that we all came from Earth?

Themes that came up throughout the week were trust, especially with humans of all races. Sharing what you have. Generosity. Unity. Prayer. Healing.

The group intentionally featured intergenerational dialogue: participants ranged in age from high school students to early twenties while the chaperones and sisters who accompanied them were in their twenties, forties, and above. McHale noticed that the older participants were mentoring the younger ones, continuing the tribe’s tradition of mentorship from early childhood. She called the experience “really inspiring.”

“The way I would describe my experience with them is they are people who really, really live in hope,” she said. “These folks are always looking to the future. There’s a lack of bitterness. They are really role models, each one of them.”

Trinity Jourdan, a 15-year-old high school student and the youngest participant in the group, said that this was a unique experience for her to learn more about her own culture, as she lives with and was raised by her non-Native family at home.

The Stockbridge-Munsee Mohicans receive a blessing from the Dominican Sisters of Hope

When asked what experience resonated most with her during the trip, Alex Kosbab, a high school student, recounted a profound experience at Buttonhook Forest, a Native American sacred ceremonial ground. She and her peers walked into a circle of the rock walls and immediately felt the energy from their ancestors.

“It made your heart race, but it also was calming at the same time,” Kosbab said.

In the lingo of Catholic Sisters, such an experience would be considered prayer.

Sister Patricia Magee, OP, Prioress of the Dominican Sisters of Hope, was moved by the group’s “very deep spirituality.”

“They came with an innate appreciation of sacredness of Earth,” Sister Pat said. “They were inviting the sharing: they don’t want to hold the information about their heritage to themselves, they want to teach it and let it inform how other people can step into seeing Earth as a sacred place.”

“The mutuality of it is, to me, absolutely beautiful,” she added.

The values taught during the trip are, no doubt, countercultural. Chaperones encouraged the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican young adults to strive for something more meaningful than money or power, and to honor their own history.

“Our young people are getting carried by this flow of what society has created for us,” Spencer told the group, referencing greed, consumerism, and environmental harm. “It’s chaos. We get lost.”

Wanonah Spencer talks to sisters and visitors to Mariandale while an eagle flies overhead.

The Dominican Sisters of Hope know that defying cultural norms is both challenging and rewarding. The sisters embrace a lifestyle of poverty, chastity, and obedience; they’ve built their lives around the call to cultivate a deepening spirituality, to live in community. Care of Earth has long been a focus of the community: they have belonged to the alliance Religious Organizations Along the River (ROAR), a network of religious congregations and organizations concerned with sustainable land use along the Hudson River, for decades. The Dominican Sisters of Hope own mission statement notes that they are “in communion with all creation.”

While Native Americans and sisters may seem like total opposites, it’s clear that the two share values. Among them: caring for this land well into the future.

Webster said that her ancestors’ wish for her and other Native folks is to respect and work together with people from different cultures and religions, to work to heal Earth together. “What land back means to me is, since you’re on this land, you should take care of this land,” she said. “You should honor this land. You should love this land. Because the people before you loved this land and took care of this land and honored this land. So you should do it, as well.”

At the closing ceremony, which also overlooked the Hudson River, she summed up her immersion experience to the sisters, staff, and Stockbridge-Munsee Mohicans seated before her:

“The thing that I keep hearing and the thing that I keep seeing is unity.”