Ground blessing sets the stage for next chapter in the story of the Iliff book

Today, Lenape elders blessed the ground in front of the Iliff School of Theology in preparation for a memorial that will be built later this year. The space will one day recognize, in a permanent way, its history of displaying a book that was bound in the skin of a murdered Lenape man.

The Iliff School of Theology proudly displayed a book of Christian history that was bound in the skin of a murdered Lenape man for 80 years. Student protests prompted the school to take it down in 1974. The school removed the cover and gave the human remains to the American Indian Movement. However, the Lenape believe the man’s spirit remained with the book.

The school kept the book and its dark secret until 2013, when a new school president started working with Professor Emeritus George “Tink” Tinker to bring Lenape elders to the school and discuss this issue. In 2022, the meeting at the school finally happened, and Lenape elders walked away with five recommendations for Iliff, including to create a memorial about the book.

Today’s blessing included speeches, songs and burning of tobacco, sage, cedar and other sacred and healing plants. Tinker, a member of Osage nation (Wazhazhe), became emotional talking to the crowd about what it meant to finally bless this ground.

“For a long time I never talked about him [the murdered Lenape man] in the classroom because I couldn’t,” he said looking at his wife, Loring Abeyta, an Iliff adjunct lecturer.

“This is hard stuff. We’re dealing with the presence of this man here to this day,” he said.

Curtis Zunigha, an enrolled member of the Delaware tribe in Oklahoma, historian, and Lenape elder, traveled to Denver to be here today because of how significant this moment is in the process of reconciliation.

“Anybody that listens or learns [from this], we want them to join us in being change agents,” said Zunigha, “and recognize the Indigenous people that this is their lands, which they never freely relinquished. But we also recognize let’s try to live together in balance and harmony.”

The artist hired to create the memorial is Bently Spang, a member of the Northern Cheyenne Nation and a writer, curator and educator. The plan is to construct the memorial in the next year.

Correction: Curtis Zunigha is an enrolled member with the Delaware Tribe of Indians in Oklahoma, not Delaware Nation of Oklahoma.

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