These apologies are about a history that should have been completely different!

"With pain, we the Collegiate Church, remember our part in these events."

"We consumed your resources, dehumanized your people, and disregarded your culture, along with your dreams, hopes, and great love for this land," the Reverend Robert Chase told members of the Lenape Tribe. "With pain, we the Collegiate Church, remember our part in these events."

This apology was offered in front of the Museum of American Indians ( www.nmai.si.edu) in lower Manhattan, where Dutch colonizers took up residence in FIRST NATION lands near what is now Wall Street. The Collegiate Church was a fundamental part of spiritual life in the new colony, whose members subsequently expanded their territorial control and subdued the Native population by force.

During the ceremony FIRST NATION music was featured, children exchanged gifts, and Reverend Chase embraced Ronald Holloway, Chairman of the Sand Hill Band of Lenape. "After 400 years, when someone says 'I'm sorry,' you say, 'Really?' " Holloway said. "There was some kind of uneasiness. But then you've got to accept someone's sincere apology; they said, 'We did it.' We ran you off, we killed you.'

The church plans to sponsor educational activities and exhibits to teach children history - including FIRST NATION views on preserving the purity of the land taken over by the Dutch colonists.