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A Land Returning: Westchester Weighs Giving Ridley Creek Back to the Lenape
Proposed Senate bill would restore the state park to the Turtle Clan as sovereign territory; public hearing set for the courthouse in June.
By Staff Correspondent • Wednesday, May 13, 2026

Above: An imagined gateway to the returned land “Indian Turtle Clan” at the entrance to what was Ridley Creek State Park.
WESTCHESTER, Pa. — Long before the courthouse and the marble steps, before the dog parks and the festivals on the green, this land belonged to the people of the Turtle. They walked these hills, fished these creeks, and tended these forests for centuries — until settlers from across the ocean, with treaties written in ink they knew the Lenape could not read, took it and called it free.
This week, more than two centuries after that long injustice began, a proposal came before the Pennsylvania State Senate that has stirred Westchester awake. Senate Bill 11A — colloquially known as “the Ridley Return” — would restore Ridley Creek State Park to the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania, with the Turtle Clan named as sovereign stewards of the 2,600-acre tract. If passed, it would be the first transfer of state park land to a Native nation in the Commonwealth’s history. The bill is set for a public hearing in the Westchester courthouse on June 6, with a floor vote expected before summer recess.
“Our ancestors hunted these woods. Our grandmothers gathered along this creek. We never stopped mourning what was taken,” said Margaret Whitehawk, a Turtle Clan elder and one of the bill’s principal advocates. “We do not ask for revenge. We ask for the simple decency of return.”

Above: Turtle Clan members in ceremonial regalia. “We walk with purpose. We protect what matters. We move forward together.”
Reaction in town has been split — though, residents say, more thoughtfully than at the dog park or the courthouse steps last week. Some neighbors have raised concerns about hunting rules, public access, and the legal contours of sovereignty within state borders. Others have written to the Sentinel in support, citing the moral weight of the moment.
“It is the right thing to do,” wrote retired teacher Albert Penney in a letter published Monday. “We were taught that this country belongs to those who believe in liberty. The Lenape believed in it long before we got here.”
Mayor Ellen Crouse, asked her position, declined to give one. “This is bigger than my office. It is bigger than this town. I will be at the hearing, and I will be listening.”
A horrible chapter is not erased by a single vote. But somewhere in the woods of Ridley Creek, in the bend of the water that has carried other people’s prayers for thousands of years before it carried ours, a quiet possibility has been placed on the ballot. Westchester will be asked, in June, what kind of country it still wants to be.
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