Painted Bride Earth Day: Call Her By Her Name

About “Lenape Sippu: Call Her By Her Name”

Earth Day event and installation

April 20, 2024 in partnership with Painted Bride and REsistance Community Garden

Lenape Sippu: Call Her By Her Name is a window display, soundscape, and performance that will take place in and around the West Philly neighborhood surrounding Painted Bride. On Saturday, April 20, 2024 the window display will be the backdrop for a performance that will take place in the neighborhood surrounding 52nd Street SEPTA station and Painted Bride. Dancers, line drummers, musicians, storytellers, and performance artists will process to the Painted Bride space where they will be met with music, a dance party, free chair massages, and performances.

This piece will shed light on histories of Black and Indigenous communities who have lived and worked on the southern portion of the Delaware River. Delaware River is a colonial naming of this river and Lenape Sippu is the name of this river.

Call Her By Her Name, Lenape Sippu.

The window installation by Emma White Thunder and Heidi Wiren Kebe features the words of Lenape historian and scholar Karelle Hall and archival images of Propelled Animals, Lenape Sippu, and Philadelphia. Audiences can access bARBER’s soundscape by scanning QR codes posted outside Painted Bride. Together, the window display, soundscape, and performance become a multilayered work seeking to heal our relationship with the past through its presentation of suppressed languages and overlooked histories; heal our relationship with our bodies through dance, music, and ritual; heal our relationship with the landscape by encouraging the collection of trash that might otherwise wash into the waterway. It considers how our harmful, destructive role in our ecology is a direct result of our violent histories – by decolonizing our minds and bodies can change how we live and act.

Featuring Esther Baker, Emma White Thunder, Tchin, Positive Movement Drumline, Heidi Wiren Kebe, bARBER, Chloe Marie, Boubacar Djiga, Samara Byrd, Annie Peterson, Janae Broadnax, and YaFave Trashman.