As a fitting commemoration of Indigenous Peoples Day (yesterday), the Lawrence City Commission will approve an agreement with the Delaware Tribe by which the Tribe will use their 90 acres of Tribal land in north Lawrence in ways that will preserve the prime farmland soils on the site. This is the same land that eight years ago farmland activists prevented the building of trucking warehouses on it.
This land is traditional tribal lands of the Delaware, the last location where Chief Sarcoxie lived before the U.S. moved them to Oklahoma to be subsumed by the Cherokee. Lawrence and Douglas County are honored that the Tribe is moving back to our community, because they will be using the land sustainably as indigenous people have done historically.
They are planning several uses such as: a cultural education center with tribal headquarters and classes in native food production and native culture, a food hub, agriculture production of indigenous crops and medicinal plants, a pollinator preserve and botanical garden, high tunnel growing, a farm-to-plate restaurant, and a wholistic health center.
Read more at - Delaware Tribe Cooperative Agreement.pdf.