Lev Winickoff ’25 received a 2024 Barnabas McHenry Award to create a video project in collaboration with members of the Stockbridge-Munsee band of Mohicans. The video will document a Munsee story told by an elder (in English) with contributions by children in the tribe (in Mohican) and incorporate paintings reflecting the natural beauty of the Hudson River Valley along with Munsee symbolism.

The purpose of these grants, which are administered by the Open Space Institute, Inc., is to provide financial support to promising young leaders and for exemplary projects in five specific areas—environmental conservation, environmental justice, historic preservation, tourism, and the arts—in the Hudson River Valley.

Laura Newman, Professor of Art, and Molly McGlennen, Professor of English, are supporting Lev in this project. Lev wrote this positionality statement for the project: “As a white nonbinary artist and researcher, I acknowledge the privilege that I carry when I attempt to engage with the Stockbridge band of Mohicans in my work. I am committed to centering the voices of the Native American collaborators of this project in various ways, including working toward their community goals of language revitalization; creating community-centered tools that will benefit the community in both historic and contemporary homelands; and using the grant’s budget to provide compensation for their time and energy. My goal is to establish a creative methodology that foregrounds critical listening through the process of video making.”