Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Dear editor:
I work as the school superintendent in Ringwood, New Jersey. In our borough, there still exists a section of the community that is the proverbial "wrong side of the tracks."
Upper Ringwood, sometimes known as "the mine area," contains a large population of Ramapough Mountain Indians. The ancestors of this population worked in the area’s iron mines for 250 years.
The Ramapough are a proud people, and they often keep their thoughts and words to themselves. They are also a very poor people, and, I believe, their poverty has exposed them to the social and economic abuse that often accompanies a lack of money, and the influence it can generate, in our society.
In the late 1960s, the Ford Motor Company, which was operating a nearby automobile manufacturing plant, was searching for a place to dump chemical waste from its factory.
This waste included hundreds of tons of paints and solvents. A financial deal was struck with the Borough of Ringwood that allowed Ford to deposit the waste in the deserted mine shafts of the old iron mines, as well as on adjacent fields. These shafts and fields are in close proximity to the homes of the Ramapough.
Not surprisingly, over the past 50 years, the residents of the Upper Ringwood community have witnessed a decided spike in the incidences of skin disease, cancer, asthma, and infertility.
This is where my association with Wayne Mann comes in. For quite some time I had read newspaper articles about the battle the Ramapough were, and still are, waging against Ford and those who allowed Ford to deposit dangerous debris in Upper Ringwood.
Often, I would read about this person named Wayne Mann, who was identified as the leader of the Ramapough community. I envisioned him as a fierce warrior, a descendent of other Native American chiefs who fought my country, the United States of America, and our nation’s favorite sons like the Ford Motor Company, for justice.
I was interested in meeting Mr. Mann for two reasons. First, I, like many other Americans, feel uneasy about what happened to the Native American peoples during our nation’s "manifest destiny." How far removed is the dumping of the Ford toxins on the land of the Ramapough Mountain Indians from the slaughter of the Native Americans on the American frontier? I wanted to express my personal empathy for his cause.
The second reason I wanted to speak with the leader from Upper Ringwood is that children from that community are enrolled in the schools I oversee. The history of those youngsters in our schools has been a troubled one – too many low grades, too many behavioral issues, and eventually too many dropouts.
A local hero
One day, through a series of unusual circumstances, I was able to meet with Wayne Mann at a coffee shop on a Saturday morning. I was surprised when I encountered him. Though his physical stature was that of a proud warrior, his eyes and his voice described a gentle and loving soul in his breast.
For several hours that day, and for many hours since, Wayne Mann has described to me the motivation behind his relentless fight with Ford as well as his dream for the future of his people and for all people who share
the land (even those who have tormented his community). This dream, passed onto Mr. Mann by his grandmother and other elders, is to realize a world family where people respect each other and the land upon which we live.
The vision may sound trite and sophomoric to some, but I wonder. As I write these words, hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil from a man-made error spill into the Gulf of Mexico each day, destroying wildlife of every description. Perhaps the warnings of the Native American chiefs of yesteryear have been dismissed too cavalierly by all of us.
To many others and me, Wayne Mann is a hero. He continues, as he has for years, to work with the young people of Upper Ringwood.
He leads them on hikes through their beloved fields and forests... he brings them fishing... and he counsels them to blossom into the robust adults which they are capable of becoming.
One might see him planting pumpkins in a backyard garden with little children, and the next day one might see him at the basketball courts talking with neighborhood teenagers, and then, as a change of pace, the following day one might see him mowing the lawn of an elderly neighbor.
Wayne Mann has visited our schools (where children run to him as if he were the Pied Piper) and he continues to collaborate with parents, principals, and teachers to pursue his sacred vision. Amid the piles of standardized test scores, over-priced textbooks, and hand-held computer devices in one of our schools the other day, I spied two children, one white and the other Ramapough, speaking to and working with each other as true brothers.
Might it be that it is not too late to stop the formidable leak of poison that we know as intolerance and bigotry?
Dr. Patrick Martin, superintendent,
Ringwood School System,
Ringwood