Presenters: Will Fenton (National Endowment for the Humanities) and Katelyn Lucas (Delaware Nation & Temple University)

The 2019 graphic novel Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga revisits the 1763 massacres of the inter-tribal Indigenous community in Lancaster, Pennsylvania by a mob of white vigilantes known as the Paxton Boys. Much early Americanist scholarship has focused on the political motivations of these vigilantes and the aftermath of their violence. Ghost River complicates this history, prioritizing the Conestoga peoples’ point of view by incorporating the perspectives of contemporary Lenape peoples, whose ancestors survived settler colonial violence in their homelands in the Pennsylvania borderlands.

Ghost River weaves a transhistorical literary web through both contemporary historical fiction and Native literature. Intended as an educational resource, Ghost River is freely available through a digital edition furnished with contextual essays and lesson plans. Its construction was uniquely collaborative, owing to the selection of a Native author (Dr. Lee Francis 4), Native artist (Weshoyot Alvitre), and sustained consultation with cultural advisors and historians.

This presentation will examine Ghost River as a case study through which to engage the possibilities and limitations of Native and non-Native collaboration for restorative storytelling in historical fiction. In the first half of the presentation, Dr. Fenton, editor of Ghost River, will provide an overview of the historical basis of the project: the Conestoga massacres and ensuing pamphlet war, as well as the collaborative creation process behind the graphic novel. In the second half of the presentation, Ms. Lucas will explore how the graphic novel restores Native literary representation by centering Lenape worldviews and humanizing Native characters. Ms. Lucas will highlight the challenge of Native literary collaborations, informed by her experience as Tribal Historic Preservation Assistant at the Delaware Nation. The presentation will conclude with shared thoughts on a potential solution: a transnational “Lenape Press,” which could support communication across all five federally-recognized Lenape Tribal Nations.