Lenape time of sustained European contact in the 1600s and 1700s the Lenape were a powerful Native American nation who inhabited a region on the mid-Atlantic coast spanning the latitudes of southern Massachusetts to the southern extent of Delaware in what anthropologists call the Northeastern Woodlands. Although never politically unified, the confederation of the Delaware roughly encompassed the area around and between the Delaware and lower Hudson rivers, and included the western part of Long Island in present-day New York. Some of their place names, such as Manhattan ("the island of many hills"), Raritan, and Tappan were adopted by Dutch and
Settler colonialism the United States, especially in the area of treaty rights and sovereignty. Much contemporary literature written by indigenous scholars and scholars within the field of American Indian Studies/Native Studies centers around recognising the disruptive effects that settler colonialism has had on Native American tribes, including land loss, destruction of tribal languages and cultures, and tribal efforts to maintain recognition of rights they have gained via treaties with the United States government. The United States has acknowledged its history of slavery, but has not yet publicly dealt with the historic violence of settler colonialism. Although settler colonialism is a racial issue,