Ramapough Mountain Indians - Recent Events

Recent Events

In the 1980s, the Environmental Protection Agency designated the Ringwood Mines landfill site as a Superfund site for cleanup. Ford had operated an auto assembly plant in Mahwah and its contractors dumped industrial paints and other hazardous wastes in landfill owned by the company in an area where many Ramapough Mountain Indians live. EPA identified further remediation three more times as additional sludge sites were found. Following further investigation, EPA returned the community to the Superfund list, the only site to be so treated. The agency has directed the removal of an additional 47,000 tons of sludge and soil up to 2011, with cleanup continuing.

In 1995, New Jersey established a Commission on American Indian Affairs (then called the Commission on Native American Affairs) with two seats each for the recognized tribes of the Ramapough Mountain Indians, the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, and the Powhatan Renape (the latter two groups are located in southern New Jersey. In addition, two seats were reserved for Inter-Tribal Members, persons who belonged to other tribes but lived in New Jersey. It has been placed in the Department of State.

In late winter 2006, some 600 Ramapough Lenape Indians, led by Wayne Mann and with the aid of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., filed a mass tort suit (Mann v. Ford) against the "Ford Motor Company and its contractors, as well as the borough of Ringwood, for the dumping of toxic waste." They were represented by Vicki Gilliam of The Cochran Group. The suit was filed about the time of publication of Toxic Legacy, a five-part investigative series by the The Record (Bergen County), which had found lead and antimony levels in excess of 100 times the safety limit near some Ramapough residences.

In the spring of 2006, Emil Mann, a Ramapough Lenape man, was killed by gunshots from a New Jersey State Parks Police ranger in a confrontation with people on ATVs in Ringwood State Park. His family filed a civil suit against the state. Governor Corzine's staff met with the Ramapough Lenape and other Native Americans in the state to identify problem areas and improve relations. The state undertook an investigation into the shooting, and a grand jury indicted one of the rangers.

In August 2006, Governor Jon Corzine formed the New Jersey Committee on Native American Community Affairs to investigate issues of civil rights, education, employment, fair housing, environmental protection, health care, infrastructure and equal opportunity confronting members of New Jersey's three indigenous Native American tribes and other New Jersey residents of Native American descent. The Committee's report was delivered on December 17, 2007 and cited "lingering discrimination, ignorance of state history and culture, and cynicism in the treatment of Indian people".

State and federal officials have worked with the tribes on other issues related to their people. For instance, in preparation for the 2010 census, state and federal officials consulted with the recognized tribes on means to get accurate counts of their people. The Census Bureau has created local partnerships. It recognizes State Designated Tribal Statistical Areas (SDTSA), which are established by state consultation with local tribes to identify significant areas of American Indian populations outside reservations (these had been overlooked in the twentieth century). In New Jersey, these are identified as Passaic and Bergen counties for the Ramapough Mountain Tribe, and Cumberland County for the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape. The Rankokus Indian Reservation no longer qualifies, as the state has taken back much of the land it had earlier leased to the Powhatan Renape.