2020

Pilgrim Hall Museum Executive Director on the Mayflower passengers’ first year in Plymouth

Donna Curtin, Executive Director of Pilgrim Hall Museumo gave a one-hour History Camp presentation on December 18, 2020 on the Mayflower passengers’ first year in Plymouth. Hosted by Lee Wright and Carrie Lund, the session describes the challenges that the passengers faced following their landing in 1620. Curtin uses Mort’s Relation written by Pilgrim Edward Winslow […]

How the Mayflower Story Fits Into Native American History

The 400th anniversary of the day the Mayflower dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbor on Dec. 16, 1620, is the 400th anniversary of an American beginning—for the nation as a practice, an idea, an experiment. That’s true even though, for the colonists and their descendants, 1620 was not much more than a blip in colonial history. […]

51st National Day of Mourning held in Plymouth, MA on November 26, 2020

Since 1970, Native Americans and UAINE supporters have gathered at noon on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US thanksgiving holiday. Many Native Americans do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims and other European settlers. Thanksgiving day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native […]

Caratunk Wildlife Refuge, where the rivers meet in Seekonk

The word caratunk in the Algonquin language means “where the rivers meet.” It’s an apt name for Audubon’s very popular wildlife refuge in Seekonk, where Cole’s Brook intersects with an unnamed stream amid ponds, forests, meadows and wetlands. Click here for a 90-second video of the Refuge trail.     Located at 130 Brown Avenue […]

Pokanoket Sachem Dancing Star tells the story of the Three Sisters

(Above) Pokanoket Sachem Tracey “Dancing Star” Brown (Po Pummukoank Anogqs) tells the story of the Three Sisters along the shore of Mount Hope Bay. Click here for a two-minute video by Roger Williams University of the story of the Three Sisters in her own words.     (Above) The Three Sisters sit along the shoreline […]

American Indian Study Committee begins meeting in Warren, RI

The Town Council of Warren, RI established an American Indian Study Committee to: 1) examine the history and culture of the Pokanoket Tribe in the formation of the Town of Warren and to create an historically accurate narrative of that history; 2) evaluate how that history is currently portrayed within the Town of Warren; 3) […]

400 Years and Beyond: Commemorating historic events in the twenty-first century

  After 400 years of colonization of Massachusetts by Europeans, we enter a period of town anniversaries. How can we use them as an occasion to start addressing that “settlement” in Massachusetts also meant “displacement”, the beginning of attenuated conflict, and the “disappearing” of Native American presence and history, often in plain sight? As some leading […]

Sowams was and is the ideal place to live

After 10,000 years of living in today’s New England Area, it’s not difficult to understand why Sowams was the ideal place for the 12,000 Pokaonket people who were known to be living there before the Europeans arrived. Jordan E. Kerber, writing in “Where are the Woodland Villages in the Narraganset Bay Region?” (Bulletin of the […]