Ramapough Lenape: Take Racist Snapchat Tag Down

HILLBURN, NY — A member of the Ramapough Lenape Nation is looking for answers after he was made aware of a Snapchat tag he said uses a racial slur earlier this month.

Rodney Van Dunk was sent the Snapchat message about three weeks ago, he said on a Tuesday phone call. The photo was of a mountain with the photo tag “Jackson White Mountain” in Sloatsburg, New York.

The Van Dunk family has been written about well before Rodney was born, and are often used as an example of the Ramapough people, who have lived in the area around Mahwah and the Ramapo Mountains for years.

For his family and others, the term "Jackson Whites" is a slur, something they've often compared to the n-word.

Van Dunk, who lives in Hillburn, New York, said there is indeed no mountain in the area that people refer to in that way, and hopes the filter will be removed.

"I thought Snapchat, such a big company, they would catch something like this," he said. "I think they should definitely have some kind of oversight where this racist stuff can’t go on."

The photo tag is what Snapchat calls a Geofilter. Some Geofilters fall under the community filter umbrella of the Snapchat app, meaning they can be created by users. According to a reference page, these tags go through a review process, and not all are used.

Mahwah Mayor John Roth said that no "mountains, trails, roads or other locations or facilities" exist with that moniker in the Township.

The name, he said, "has been associate(d) by some with the Ramapo Indians who consider it offensive and I agree with them," he added in an email to Patch.

Lydia Cotz, an area lawyer who has worked with the Ramapough over the years, said they have received no response from Snapchat.

The company has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

The terminology, often used to describe specific families within the Ramapough Lenape Nation, has been a consistent presence in this particular area of New Jersey and New York.

In a 1938 New Yorker story, George Weller wrote that the Nation — who he referred to by the slur — was a "primitive race living in the Ramapo Mountains."

"They are a mixture of three races, the white, the Negro, & the American Indians. Next to being an Indian, the greatest point of distinction for the Jackson White is to be an albino," he wrote.

Van Dunk, whose family was cited by name in the article, said this reductive view of the tribe has died down for the most part, but every so often creeps its way back into the public conscience.

"It comes to a point where people got to respect other people’s living. People think we’re like some kind of freak show," he said.

The most recent instance of this fight was a lawsuit filed in 2014 against the creators of the movie "Out of the Furnace." A federal judge eventually threw out the lawsuit, which claimed the movie was defamatory, and depicted the Nation in a negative light.

Emil Mann, a member of the tribe, was shot and killed by New Jersey State Park Police in 2006. The officer, Chad Walder, was indicted but not convicted in the killing, according to a 2015 Washington Post report.

In a 2010 New Yorker story, it was reported that online comments about Mann's death referred to the Ramapough as "freakin monkeys" and "inbreed lowlifes."

Eventually, Van Dunk told Patch, he'd like to stop having to speak about the slur and defending the humanity of himself and other members of the Nation.

"Hopefully this stuff will leave and never come back again," he said. "Which I doubt."