The Ramapo College Masters in Sustainability Studies Program

Invites you to the First Lecture in our 2017 Series

“Lessons of Sustainability: Voices of Key Practitioners”

Ford, the Ramapoughs and a Paradigm for Healing Environmental Injustice and Degradation

Chuck Stead. Ph.D.

Senior Program Assistant, Town of Ramapough, N.Y. and Adjunct Professor of Environmental Studies, Ramapo College of New Jersey

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

SC 219 Friends Hall, 6-7:30 pm

Free and Open to the Public—Help Spread the Word

In “Ford, the Ramapoughs and a Paradigm for Healing Environmental Injustice and Degradation,” Ramapo instructor and professional storyteller Chuck Stead weaves a tale of tragedy and then hope, drawing from his life in the Ramapo Mountains, with the Ramapough people and in the midst of Ford Motor Company’s legacy of toxic contamination. Stead tells the story of the SaltBox, an historic structure raised as an educational center which has served as well as a place for healing and recovery and community. The adjacent native medicine garden, the Ford cleanup and the Saltbox all attest to Stead’s fieldwork with Ramapo College students and the ability to grow something positive from a field of paint sludge.

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Chuck Stead grew up among the Ramapough Indians and witnessed, as a young boy, dumping of hazardous wastes in the Ramapo Mountains by Ford Motor Company. Later, in his work teaching for the Environmental Studies program at Ramapo College, he took his students into the field and discovered extensive areas of never before identified contamination. He then spearheaded a highly successful program of remediation in New York State, standing in stark contrast to the failed remediation of Ford sites in Ringwood, New Jersey with which he has also been involved. Later, working for Christopher St. Lawrence Supervisor of the Town of Ramapo, Stead has directly overseen the Ford remediation there. And he additionally involved students in erecting an historic salt box building he had saved from destruction as an environmental education center to tell the story of the Ford contamination and its impact on the land and peoples of the Ramapo region. The Salt Box has since become an important community resource bringing native and other locals together in a process of healing and community building. An adjacent native medicine garden Stead created with his students under the guidance of the Ramapoughs with the support of Ford has further extended this process of healing and recovery. Stead’s expertise in these novel and important aspects of environmental cleanup and social recovery led him to write an award winning doctoral thesis at Antioch New England University now being turned into a book. A new project with the Ramapoughs, the Ramapo Mountain Guardians and the Upsteam/Downstream curriculum add new tools to Stead’s rare ability to address the social as well as environmental aspects of environmental contamination. A long time story teller and writer of the Ramapos, Stead has involved Ramapo students in these activities, providing outstanding community experience and service along the way.

Those parking on campus should acquire a parking permit from the guard booth at the north entrance. For additional information or accommodation, contact Professor Michael R. Edelstein at medelste@ramapo.edu.