Drums, dancers and artisans will fill Prospect Park's Lefrak Center at Lakeside on October 3-4, as the Third United Lenape/Lunáapeew Nations Pow Wow returns for its free, two-day run celebrating Indigenous culture, history and community. Vendors open at 10 a.m. both days, with the ceremonial Grand Entry launching each morning at 11 a.m., and hours stretch from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.
The gathering is presented by the Éenda-Lŭnaapeewáhkiing Collective, the American Indian Community House and Prospect Park Alliance, according to Brooklyn Paper. Prospect Park Alliance President Morgan Monaco said reviving the pow wow tradition gives Lenape/Lunáapeew people a chance to reunite in their ancestral homelands while offering Brooklynites a chance at cultural immersion, per the same report. The word Lenape/Lunáapeew translates to human beings, or more specifically, the ones who came from thought — and the term refers to Indigenous peoples whose ancestral homelands encompassed Brooklyn and the surrounding region.
A Homeland Interrupted, Then Rebuilt
Prospect Park hosted intertribal pow wows from 1916 to 1972, a decades-long tradition that quietly ended and stayed dormant for more than 50 years. Prospect Park Alliance began rebuilding that legacy by holding a culture fair with the El Collective and American Indian Community House in 2024, then hosted the full Second United Lenape/Lunáapeew Nations Pow Wow at the Lefrak Center in September 2025 — the first formal pow wow held in the park since 1972, according to BKReader.
The pow wow series traces back further still. George Stonefish, founder of the El Collective, organized the first United Lenape/Lunáapeew Nations Pow Wow at Park Avenue Armory in 2018, Brooklyn Paper reports. Stonefish has said the pow wow brings together Lenape communities from across Turtle Island and teaches the broader community about Lenape culture. His son, Brent Stonefish, co-founder of the El Collective, has said the event focuses on Lenape youth from across the continent and develops young coordinators' leadership skills — a mission reflected in this year's youth spotlight, which features performers aged six to 17.
Ancestral Lands Stretching Far Beyond Brooklyn
The Éenda-Lŭnaapeewáhkiing Collective's name translates to the land of the Lunáapeew, and the coalition unites Delaware, Munsee-Delaware and Lenni-Lenape communities dispersed across North America to reconnect with ancestral homelands through shared projects and storytelling, according to BKReader. That dispersal has deep roots: Lenapehoking, the ancestral homeland, historically extended across eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the lower Hudson Valley, western Connecticut and Delaware before colonial forced removals scattered Lenape communities into Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada, per the Brooklyn Public Library.
New York City sits at the geographic heart of that homeland, and it also holds the largest urban Native American population in the country — an estimated 180,000 residents representing dozens of Indigenous nations, according to U.S. Census data reported by Urban Omnibus. The American Indian Community House, one of this year's presenting organizations, has served that population since 1969, when Native American volunteers founded it following a project that began at the 1964 New York World's Fair. The organization now serves urban Native Americans from more than 70 distinct tribes as the city's central Indigenous advocacy and social service group, per Village Preservation.
Reimagining a Colonial-Era House
This year's pow wow is part of Prospect Park Alliance's ReImagine Lefferts initiative, which reworks the Lefferts Historic House to explore the lives, resistance and resilience of Lenapehoking's Indigenous people alongside Africans enslaved by the Lefferts family, Brooklyn Paper reports. The house itself was built in the 18th century as a Flatbush farmhouse originally located at 563 Flatbush Avenue before being physically relocated into the park in 1918 to preserve the structure, according to Prospect Park Alliance.
The initiative has drawn substantial institutional backing. In March 2025, Prospect Park Alliance was awarded a $1.5 million Humanities in Place grant from the Mellon Foundation to support outdoor exhibits at Lefferts Historic House, building on a $275,000 planning grant the foundation awarded in 2023. This year's pow wow also receives official funding support through the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs alongside the Mellon Foundation. As part of the initiative, the video exhibit Eelunaapéewi Ehaptoonáakanal: Voices of Lunáapeew/Lenape, featuring interviews with Lenape knowledge-keepers and culture bearers, is on view at the historic house.
City Officials Weigh In
NYC Parks Commissioner Tricia Shimamura said public parks are welcoming spaces that foster connection and bring people together, according to Brooklyn Paper. Pow wow coordinators Javid Ridgeway and Emma Hannah K. Stonefish are helping organize this year's event, which will include performances, artisans, food and youth programming throughout the weekend.
Prospect Park's efforts also echo a broader citywide reckoning with Indigenous history. In May 2021, the Metropolitan Museum of Art permanently installed a bronze land acknowledgment plaque on its Fifth Avenue facade recognizing Lenapehoking as the homeland of the Lenape diaspora — part of a wider trend among major institutions to honor original Indigenous land stewards, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Third United Lenape/Lunáapeew Nations Pow Wow is free and open to the public, and organizers ask attendees to RSVP through Prospect Park Alliance ahead of the October 3-4 weekend.
