How the Lenape Nation fights to protect the Delaware River, its ancestral home
For the Lenape Nation, an indigenous tribe in Pennsylvania, the Delaware River is their ancestral home and a place they come to pay their respects.
Clan Mother Shelley Windamakwi DePaul and her son Chief Adam Waterbear DePaul have dedicated their lives to protecting the river.
Asked about the significance of the river, Adam DePaul said, "There are pragmatic reasons — it's huge for traveling, of course, it provides food, but the spiritual significance, the cultural significance, the river just communicates so much humility."
Keeping a balance between nature and development motivates the Lenape's activism.
"What can we do to keep the balance, or in many cases restore the balance?" Shelley DePaul asked. "Because our early ancestors lived in balance, and now we need to relearn that."
"Finding a new harmony"
Partnering with other organizations, the tribe's efforts helped lead to a 2021 ban on fracking in the Delaware River Basin after concerns that those chemicals could cause health problems and hurt aquatic life and ecosystems. In 2002, they helped kill a proposed dam on the river that would have created a lake along the Pennsylvania-New Jersey border.
"It's really important to understand that we are not against construction and development," Adam DePaul said. "It's because there is severe and unwarranted risk to the environment and/or to the cultural history of the area."
Now, they're fighting against the construction of huge warehouses near the river because of concerns about pollution draining into the river.
"It's often one of the biggest points that people just don't deal with, that there's no realistic plan for," Adam DePaul said.
Whether it's protesting or lobbying, the Lenape are fighting for their future to pay homage to their past.
"The time that many of us feel that we're in now is all about finding a new harmony with all of our new neighbors here and establishing friendships and partnerships," Adam DePaul said.
National environmental reporter David Schechter and a team of CBS journalists spent five days traveling the length of the Delaware River to explore problems facing America's waterways. Watch "An American River" here.
