Chief of the Anitsalagi Onselagi tribe looks over the crowd from the steps of the National Museum of the American Indian. (Jasper Fakkert/The Epoch Times)
Now 400 years later, Holloway accepted what he called “sincere apologies.”
“It is the first time that a major peoples have apologized for their parts of what happened in history. It is very moving, it is very emotional, to be able to look out into the audience and to see our elders, who never thought that that they’d see an apology,” Holloway said.
Members of the Lenape community, some from as far as Oklahoma, came to receive the apology.
“It’s a step, in the right direction. It’s a step for healing and friendship. And hopefully it will lead to other things, bigger and better things. It has been a long time coming,” said Chester Shadow Walker Robinson, Red Chief Anitsalagi Onselagi from New Jersey.
As a symbol of reconciliation, an American girl and Lenape boy exchanged necklaces, one made in the traditional Dutch style and the other made in the traditional Lenape style.
To the question why it has taken so long before an apology was made, Robert Chase said, “You know we get ourselves trapped in all kinds of preconceptions, stereotypes, and silo’s and we don’t talk to each other across each other's cultures and faiths, and national borders … So, it does take time and it does take courage sometimes to be able to reach out and offer a word of acknowledgement.”
Hope exists in the Lenape people that this will be the beginning of more changes for Native Americans to be fully accepted.
“To this day the effects can be seen and felt. There are still some who feel American Indians are second class citizens, in our own lands,” said Holloway in his speech.
