On Saturday, November 19th, the Friends of Penn Treaty Park celebrated the 334th anniversary of the of the signing of the unbroken peace treaty. A small group gathered around the great-great grandchild of the original Peace Elm under which the peace treaty was made in 1682.

  The Reverend John Norwood, the founding Pastor of Ujima Village Christian Church, is a Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Councilman and Judge. He also serves as the government liaison for the Confederation of Sovereign Nanticoke-Lenape Tribes, which is a union of the three interrelated tribal nations of Nanticoke and Lenape people remaining in the area of the Delaware Bay.

  Reverend Norwood delivered a heartfelt speech on the meaning of the oneness of all people and the Earth. He led all in attendance in a blessing of this noble truth “by deeds of peace.”

  This blessing comes through prayer and the sacred use of tobacco. Norwood said that tobacco has the quality of being able to absorb. When made into a poultice, it can absorb toxins out of a rash or bug bite. When you pray with it, it absorbs your prayers. And when smoked, the smoke carries your prayers up to the Creator.

  Hold a pinch of tobacco between the first three fingers of your hand, say your prayer, then open your fingers and let the tobacco fall to the ground. Don’t toss it, let it fall. The nature spirits will then work on fulfilling that prayer.

  “White people misused tobacco, the sacred medicine of the native people, and it made them sick.  When native people misused white people’s medicine, the sacred wine of the mass, it became their undoing.”

  We must respect one another’s medicines.

  We must respect our different worldly cultures. •