 I'm from this land is the name of a greeting word aqua knee cleaning peace unto you. I'm humbled particularly at this time in the world to be speaking from this land in this language of peace that grew from millennia from this land. I'm Stacey Klein, I'm the founding artistic director of Double Edge Theater and I have the honor to introduce the sixth in the living presence of our history series. Oppression and erasure through publics, plaques and statuaries presented by the Okitao Cultural Center in partnership with Double Edge. Okitao Cultural Center meaning to plant to grow was founded as an autonomous indigenous space the first of its kind since colonization in Western mass and central mass to develop and create much needed multicultural and multi-tribal space for traditional life in the environment and on the traditional lands of the Nipmuc and other tribal nations living or from this land. The Okitao space was donated by Double Edge in recognition of the historical and present denial of native sovereignty on these lands and the present need to redress this erasure. As Okitao fulfilled the truth of its meaning and grew beyond all expectation Double Edge also entered into a land share agreement of our 100 acres in our rural town and traditional practice has returned to this land. This joy of rematriation and cultural life in presence is palpable and brings meaning to the land, the people of Double Edge and all of the community. However, at the same time we live in a fragile and violent world and joy cannot exist in a vacuum. The millennia old story of native people on this land and their continued presence must be told in order for the story to include truth and commitment to decolonization. Therefore, Rhonda Anderson and Larry Spadec Roman the leaders of Okitao have generously agreed to share beyond their own people and practices this educational series so that our communities can learn about a long unacknowledged history and presence of the Nittmuk Nation and the other tribal nations among us. Curated by Rhonda, this series is a place where the voices of Okitao and native people are determinate and have the final word of their own identity. The first in the living present series delved into the reality of these tribes today and the relationship to their millennia long history of presence and the shocking lack of acknowledgement of this history. The second and third in the series were focused on mascots, logos, imagery and cultural appropriation and land back movements and land justice. Genocide and resettlement may appear to many to be things of the past, but until the history of colonial disappearance of an entire people their children and their land is recognized the clear and horrifying imprint remains in today's racist stereotyping and holds a supremacist mirror to native youth and to all who are subjected to an image not of their own making. The fourth installment of living presence was about Indigenous Peoples Day. What can be more just than our society naming one simple day in October rather than with the colonizer Columbus with the people who tended and cared for this land which we benefit from. The fifth segment of living presence was the Indigenous art and social change which gathered artists from this region all the way to Canada and Alaska to present their work and discuss and demonstrate how they are using their art for justice and voice. A revolution of the heart. All of the living presence series is a call for truth. It's also a call for action, to look history in the face and see how we can heal the bleeding wounds, to ask for a commitment not only to listen and understand the story of these many peoples but also to share responsibility for that story to live fully in the present and to make sure that erasure and disappearance gives way to reparation, decolonization of our minds and in our actions, sharing land, cultural space and most of all justice. Before I introduce the Okiteo team I would like to take this opportunity to thank HowlRound for broadcasting the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts and our sponsors at Jacob's Billow and particularly the Expanding Stories Program of the Massachusetts Foundation for the United States. Thank you all. So I'm going to introduce the team of Okiteo which since the last living presence series has expanded so I wanted to introduce everybody. Deshawn Talheradir Garate, a Nipmuk citizen is our resident youth contributing to all cultural projects including the monumental Mishun Dugout Project. Deshawn. Tracy Lubbing Medicine Aiz Ramos, Okiteo's new program associate is a citizen of the Nipmuk tribe and resides on her ancestral Nipmuk lands. Volunteering in indigenous women's groups and other efforts of cultural preservation and is completing her graduate studies in public health. Tracy. Andres Strong Bear Art Gains Artist-in-Resident is a Nipmuk citizen and father and is a cultural steward, public speaker, traditional dancer, indigenous activist and educator. He has led regalia and other traditional workshops at Okiteo and yesterday a more than full drum workshop and has left his exhibition of all of his different works which I hope you and our audience will be able to look at. And he also led the Mishun Dugout which was the first Mishun on Nipmuk land by Nipmuk people since colonization. And seated before you, Tumata Sylvester, Anishinaabe artist-in-residence at Okiteo Company member of Double Edge and the artistic director of the Anishinaabe Theater Exchange sitting in the middle there. Her theater is a group that uses theater to activate networks with native communities. She was the recipient of the 2018 female leader in the arts award at the Lake Superior University. Is a Miranda fellow through the National Theater Institute and an art and survival fellow through Double Edge and the Jupiter Performance Studio. She has performed her plays at the Eugene O'Neill Theater, the art of acting studio in Los Angeles and will appear at Double Edge just 40th anniversary theater festival in April. I hope you all come see her performance, something else. She has something else. Rhonda Anderson is a Nubiak out of Baskin from Alaska. Her native enrollment village is Cuktove. Her life work is most importantly as a mother of classically trained herbalist, silversmith and activist. She works as an educator, activist on the removal of mascots, water protector, indigenous identity and protecting her traditional homelands in the Arctic national wildlife refuge from extractive industry. Rhonda curated vital vibrant visible indigenous identity through portraiture, an ongoing collection and exhibit of native peoples of New England and as the curator of the Living Presence series. Rhonda has been named a Commonwealth heroine, is on the advisory board of NIFA, the New England Foundation for the Arts and is commissioner of Indian Affairs and Western Mass and a founder of both Okitao and the Native Youth Empowerment Fund. Larry Spotted Crow Man is a citizen of the Knitmuck Nation. He is a nationally acclaimed award-winning writer, poet and cultural educator, traditional storyteller, tribal drummer, dancer and motivational speaker involving youths, with sobriety, cultural and environmental awareness. Larry's books include Morning Road to Thanksgiving, Drumming and Dreaming and the Whispering Basket. Larry will premiere his new play Freedom and Season including an exhibit and post-performance Respondency at Double Edge in May during the Consolations Festival and is also in the process of making a film, Anoki, A Journey Beyond the Picture. He has been a board member of the Knitmuck Preservation, is on the review committee at the Native American Poets Project, is the artist in residence at Bunker Hill Community College and is writing a children's book series for Indigenous youth. He travels throughout the US, Canada and parts of Europe to schools, colleges, powwows and other organizations sharing music, culture and history of the Knitmuck people and lectures on Native American sovereignty. Among many awards and recognitions, he received the first Indigenous Peoples Award by the NAACP most recently and Larry was the first Native person to open the Boston Marathon with a traditional Knitmuck song and land acknowledgement. The first ever. As the co-founder and co-director of Okitao, Larry will now welcome you to the living presence of our history. Thank you. Good to be here. Thank you all for being here. It's the GI Year of the Knitmuck. We're going to open up with a traditional Knitmuck song and again it's a true honor to have all of you here today and share with us on this important day. Thank you. And by the way, this is one of the hand drums that was just made yesterday so I decided to use this one. I'm so grateful for the way you open and honor us in that way so thank you. Thank you, thank you. It's an honor to be able to do that. I'm so grateful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome and good afternoon. I said in my traditional language, thank you for listening. Thank you for being here today. I am Rhonda Anderson. I'm a New Piak at the Baskin from Alaska. here in Western Massachusetts in the town right next door, Plainfield. I went to primary school right up the street at the old Ashfield-Sanderson Academy, the beloved old school. I choose to live here in Western Massachusetts. And the land that I'm really privileged to steward and live on in Coal Rain is the traditional homelands of Sakoke Abinaki and the Pakumtuk on the Pakumagong River, which is known today as the Green River. As an Indigenous person, I am a guest on this place. I want to recognize this land and give deep appreciation for her living being and gratitude for all that she has provided since time immemorial. This land that we are all benefiting from is Wabanaki Confederacy Territory. Wabanaki means the place where the sun is born every day, making the people of this territory the people of the Donland. Tribes historically local to this area would be Sakoke Abinaki, Pakumtuk, Nipmuk, Nanatuk, Norwarak and Mohican tribes. Sakoke means the people who go their own way and Sakoke is still here. They are a state recognized tribe in Southern Vermont. Pakumtuk is a Mohican Pakumtuk word that would translate roughly to people of a narrow, swift river or people of a swift, clear stream. The Pakumtuk were absorbed into their kin of the Mohican Abinaki and Nipmuk peoples. Nipmuk means people of fresh water and of course they are still here today. They are a state recognized tribe in Massachusetts with a small reservation that the Nipmuk has never seeded or has never been out of tribal hands. Nanatuk means the oxbow part of the Kunatuk River and the local tribes that also absorb the Nanatuk. The local tribes that also absorb the Pakumtuk also absorb the Nanatuk. Mohican translates to people of the waters that are never still referencing the Hudson River. War, genocide, dispossession and colonization that press the Nanatuk and Pakumtuk to seek refuge with their neighboring kin tribes also push the Mohican Stockbridge and Muncie bands west late in the 1700s through 1800s to Wisconsin where they have a reservation today on the nominee territory. The Mohican tribe has an office in Williamstown and lands in Troy, New York to maintain their local ties. We are in the watershed of the Kunatukwa River or the Connecticut River as is known today. Kunatukwa means long tidal river and this river has known many different names by many different groups of people that live along its flowing path. The Kunatukwa kind of stuck. It is important to remember that while indigenous communities have lived, gathered, farmed, hunted, fished in this area for thousands of years they are still here, physically still here. So please get to know the indigenous people of your area and ask what you can do to lift and raise their voices, honor and respect their tribal sovereignty. So in that spirit, I have three action items. First, and this one never gets old. First, recognize and make changes to the dominant narrative that glorifies colonization and genocide of indigenous peoples of the area, even the area that you're in because people watching from far away, I'm sure it's there too. Be mindful that problematic terms like Pioneer Valley are a reminder of a legacy of dispossession, removal and subsequent erasure. Second, please consider supporting the land-back initiatives of the Nipmuc Cultural Preservation and Nipmuc Indian Development Corporation. Also please look for the resources list that will be forthcoming after this event to inspire you to learn, learn more ways to support, lift in center indigenous voices, narratives and public art. Lastly, there are currently five bills in the state house that six tribes of Massachusetts support that address removing racist mascots from public high schools. Spent a long time coming for that. Hopefully that one gets through. Changing Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day. A bill respecting our cultural heritages, another to create appropriate educational curriculum in our schools on Massachusetts tribes, and yet another one to create a permanent commission to ensure the education of native youth in the state. So please contact your local legislator through naindigenousagenda.org and encourage them to support these bills. So Koyanak-Nalak Nagivsi, thank you for listening. And welcome to the sixth, I can't believe it, installment of the living presence of our history. This conversation is on the continued oppression and erasure through our public plaques, memorials and statuary. We are honored to have a panel of Indigenous scholars and Indigenous activists to discuss how the colonizer lends on our local, regional and even national history in public spaces can further this extinction narrative. We will explore how these narratives affect native and non-native communities today and the possible steps to educate, decolonize and make changes using an Indigenous lens. So I've wanted to talk about this topic for a long time. In a way, I feel like the living presence series has given a clear pathway each time into the next topic leading up to this one here today. So I sincerely hope that I've given this essential and complicated, it's very complicated topic, justice at the end of the day. And I'm also really super excited to hear from everyone. As you will learn, our panelists' lives and careers have been dedicated to lifting this veil of invisibility, to raising Indigenous voices and pushing back against settler colonialism systems. I'm completely, I'm really honored to begin introducing our esteemed panelists. After each introduction, I will ask each panelist a quick question. That's how everyone can get to know each other a little bit better. It puts us at a better understanding of our lives and our experiences and maybe even on some even footing. And you might learn something you haven't heard before today. Jean O'Brien is a White Earth Ojibwe nation citizen. She's a distinguished McKnight University professor and Northrop Professor of History at University of Minnesota. She is co-founder and past president of Native American and Indigenous Studies Association and inaugural co-editor with Robert Warrior of the Association's Journal, Native American and Indigenous Studies. She has recently published seven books. It just, that blows me away. Allotment Stories, Indigenous Land Relations Under Settler Siege, which is edited with Daniel Heath Justice, University of Minnesota Press, 2022. Her most recent monograph with Lisa Blee, Monumental Mobility, the Memory Work of Massasoit, won the inaugural Winthrop Prize for Outstanding Book on 17th Century New England for 2019, 2020 from the Colonial Society of Massachusetts and an honorable mention from the National Council on Public History. And was a finalist for the best subsequent book on Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. O'Brien is an elected member of the Society of American Historians. So, Jean, I'm so happy you're here today. I honestly believe that you're a superhero. Okay, I'm just gonna put it out there right now. A superhero, right? Because you're inspiring and mentoring PhD students, right? To excel in the field of education. An important fact for everyone to understand in our listening audience is that less than 1% of PhD graduates are Native American, okay? Which is devastating as the educational domain could greatly benefit from Indigenous perspectives. So your essential perspective on Indigenous history and representation in the New England Genie, oh my gosh, particularly the Commonwealth is extensive. So I always call this like the rapid fire round and I say two minutes or less, but I don't know if we can manage anything under two minutes. So don't worry. How many, so let's see, what inspired you to focus on this area as many of your books are about Massachusetts and New England? So Miigwech for the many, many kind words. Thank you so much, Rhonda. You know, I ended up coming to New England really quite by accident. When I went to graduate school back in the 1980s, long long time ago, I was thinking that I was gonna be studying my own history, Ojibwe history, right? That was my intent. And I took my very first graduate seminar and it was on community studies, early American community studies. And as I had always done in my entire life, I searched and searched for a topic that was gonna be about Indigenous people and to try to make this work of my own. And I came across the town of Natick, Massachusetts, which I'm sure you all know was a praying town in 17th century Massachusetts. And so I did a paper about why in the world, Indigenous people, lots of nip blocks in fact, and Massachusetts people would come to Puritanism as something that made any sense at all. And that became my PhD dissertation because I came to this narrative about Indian extinction in New England after King Philip's war that made no sense to me. And so I took it upon myself to try to write a dissertation and then book that explained how that narrative was wrong by literally reconstructing the lives of individuals and families in connection to the land of Natick and the subsequent dispossession that happened there but not the extinction of native people. So maybe that was a little bit longer than you were hoping for in two minutes, but that's it in a nutshell. That's how I came to Massachusetts. And then I've been stuck there ever since, New England. I kept on having more questions that I had to ask because these narratives, you're talking about narratives as an extinction and an erasure, the narratives, the dominant narratives of New England Indian history made no sense to me. And so I've been grappling with that problem, I guess ever since. And, you know, thank you because you really have brought so much awareness. I really honestly, I believe that first thing and lasting should be required reading of anybody who moves or lives in New England. It's stunning, absolutely stunning. And I'm just really curious, how many pH students have you mentored that are Native American or Indigenous? Do you know? At this point, those who are finished, there's probably, I'll say about 20 and I personally have about seven or eight in process right now, but Minnesota has a big program. And there's probably, I mean, we've produced, I don't know, dozens of Indigenous PhDs and there are a lot more in the works. It's something that we really care about a lot. So yeah, and just on first thing and last thing, I have to say, I don't know if it's, I think it's, for me, I feel it's like it's the George Floyd moment. People are coming back to this book. It's been out for a long time now, but I'm getting a lot of invitations for the first time from little towns in Massachusetts and state historical societies where people wanna grapple with this problem now, which is cool. And you are, you are streaming into a little town in Massachusetts. Thank you so much for your mentoring and your voice. It's really making good things. Thank you. Tim Johnson, a Six Nations citizen, is Director of Landscape of Nations, 360 Indigenous Education Initiative. Artistic Director on the Great Niagara Escarpment Indigenous Cultural Map, Artistic Producer of Celebration of Nations and Creator and Producer of Indigenous Niagara Living Museum Tour. Tim is also the Executive Producer of the Multiple Award-winning Documentary Rumble, The Indians Who Rock the World. As an experienced education museum and arts executive, Tim was instrumental in recent development of four masterworks of public art in the Niagara region during the past five years. Again, how do you guys do this? That recognize and honor Indigenous people's contributions to Canada. The first is Landscape of Nations, the Six Nations and Native Allies commemorative memorial that was unveiled in Queenston Heights Park in 2016. The second is First Nations Peace Monument, designed by the world-renowned architect Douglas Cardinal in DeSauhouse Heritage Park in Therold in 2017. The third is Voices of Freedom Park, a public art installation in 2018 in Niagara on the Lake to African Canadians whose contributions are primarily underrepresented. Tim was instrumental in installing the contemporary art masterpiece of Lily Ostosevic, I hope I'm pronouncing her name correctly, entitled Curtin Call in 2019 on the side of the First Ontario Performing Arts Centre Building as a legacy project of Celebration of Nations and the City of St. Catherine's. As the former Associate Director for Museum Programs at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American Indian, Tim has managed the largest organizational group across Washington and New York facilities. Tim produced a long list of critically acclaimed exhibits and programs under his tenure. Tim is also the co-defounder and publisher of the museum's flagship quarterly membership magazine, which I love the American Indian, now in its third decade of publication. Among his many highly successful Smithsonian programs was the museum's Mother Earth Festival, which is now an annual event renamed Living Earth Festival. And it continues to bring together scientists, renewable energy, technologists, tribal resource managers, educators and cultural performers and exhibitors. Active in his home community of six nations on the Grand River and several prestigious education arts and journalism institutions for nearly four decades, Tim received the Dreamcatcher Foundation Award for Art and Culture in 2016. Since leaving the Smithsonian and returning home, he's dedicated himself to creating legacy projects. Oh my gosh, I think your entire life is a legacy project that educate the public about the indigenous experience. Tim, I was totally stunned. This is just a little fact. Totally stunned to learn that one of your aspects of your work is seen everywhere in Indian country. And that's the flag of the six nations, right? Like that was, that blows me away. But you are incredibly talented in multiple levels at telling the unseen story that surrounds us daily. And I'm thinking about the documentary Rumble as each of us here likely hears music that native musicians greatly influenced each day. And one thing that really stuck with me from watching that documentary was how the government sanctioned banning of certain native singers. So I'm guessing few people knew about this form of erasure and silencing. Can you talk a little bit about Rumble's beginnings and why the government might have silenced some artists. And this is a rapid fire round, but I'm sure it'll probably go over two minutes. That's okay too. I'm letting it go. Well, Nyawa, yeah, you've opened up an enormous topic just to start. The film, Rumble, the Indie to Rock the World really began as a Smithsonian exhibition called Up Where We Belong, Native Musicians and Popular Culture. And that grew out of a programmatic emphasis that we had launched to begin examining the influences and connections that indigenous artists had in the contemporary popular music scene. And the more we researched it, the more we were kind of blown away by what was there. And so it was one of those events where probably once in a lifetime event when you hit on something that's just really, truly profound and substantial. You know, the aspect of that particular subject matter is something that we'd searched for. I used to oversee the exhibitions and programs group. And we're always looking for exhibitions where we could cross over, you know, like find a subject matter that a broader audience could actually connect to. And so on popular music, of course popular music is known and loved by everyone, not just in North America, but all around the world. It's influence and characteristics have been spread all around the world. So we did a lot of research on that. And you're talking about the protests or the cancellation of indigenous musicians. In particular in the film, we deal with Buffy St. Marie and her being sort of taken out of the picture you know, she's, Buffy's an activist, you know, her music is really quite profound and moving and she's been an activist her whole life. And so that kind of expression represents a threat at some levels. And so that's, you know, that's one of the actions the government took. The other we mentioned is Link Ray and his music that was just too aggressive, generally just too aggressive for the time, you know, this notion of rumble and all of that. But what was very interesting to us is when we looked at the range of expression by these indigenous musicians, it was really quite significant. So the exhibition and therefore the film really is, in its essence is history told through biography. And that's the construct that we used or by the exhibition. And the film basically follows everything we put forward in the exhibition based on the thesis or the question mark, were there enough examples of musicians who had popular success and or whose contributions actually helped to shape these various genres of popular music. And then what we discovered and what we researched and what we found was just truly remarkable. Truly remarkable. I recommend you all go home and watch it, some prime video. I think it's very important and very important to understand the beginnings of some of the music that we listen to, blues, rock and roll, folk, you know, very important jazz, you know. Cedric Woods, good to see you again. I think I just saw you what earlier in the week is a citizen of Lumbee tribe of North Carolina. He combines over a decade of tribal government experience with a research background and has served the director of Institute of New England Native American Studies since 2009. The Institute's purpose is to connect Native New England with university research, innovation and education. And currently Cedric is working on projects with tribes in the area of tribal government capacity building, Indian education, economic development and chronic disease prevention. Before arriving at UMass Boston, Cedric completed a study on the evolution of tribal government among the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe and the Mash and Tucket Pequot tribal nation. While pursuing his doctoral studies at the University of Connecticut, he served in various capacities for the Mash and Tucket Pequot tribal nation. And those positions included director of career development, research analyst, tribal government spokesman and deputy chief operating officer. Wow. Cedric has served as a consultant for the National Museum of American Indian, the Haliawis of Pony tribe, Indian tribe of North Carolina and the Mash and Tucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Plymouth Plantation Bicultural Living History Museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts. So Cedric, I believe that I met you through the Institute of New England, Native American Studies in 2015. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's where we met in a profound listening series on Indian education in the Commonwealth. And we have since been working together as members of the Massachusetts mascot coalition to eradicate racist mascotry in the Commonwealth. So my question to you is, what drew you to the work of the Institute of New England, Native American Studies? Rhonda, thank you for that question. And it is a delight to be here in this virtual space with all of you, some of you whom I have known for quite a long time and others which are our new friends. And I come to you from my home in Matapan, which is in the traditional homeland of the Massachusetts people with whom the contemporary community, the Massachusetts Ponca Pog I work very closely with. But the answer to that question is one that predates my own personal life. Education has been a family tradition, if you will, going back to my great-grandparents on my mom's side. My great-grandfather was the first headmaster for what was then the Indian college into my community and is now the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. His wife, my great-grandmother was the first Indian teacher in our community. So for several generations, I guess you could say education is a family passion and a family mission. So it is a logical trajectory for me to end up working as an advocate, collaborator, co-conspirator with native peoples in the Commonwealth and with the conversations formed with Massachusetts native peoples that you and I were first able to connect and start working together with. Good, so my memory served me well. I was thinking about that. That was a while ago, but that was such an important series. And thank you so much for the work that you do at the important contributions to our native communities here in the Commonwealth. Thank you. And last but certainly not least is Malian Dana. Malian was appointed by the Penobscot Nation Chief, Kirk Francis in September, 2017. As ambassador, Ms. Dana is responsible for acting as a representative of the Penobscot Nation and serving as a liaison for the nation at a local state and federal level of government to educate and advocate for policy and laws that impact and protect the Penobscot Nation's sovereignty, culture, natural resources and the general welfare of the Penobscot people. Prior to being appointed, she served as an elected member of the Tribal Council. She has a BA in political science from the University of Maine. She has an extensive background in activism in ending the use of Indian sports mascots and replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous People's Day in Maine, both which have become Maine state laws. She is the co-chair of the state's permanent commission on the status of racial, indigenous and Maine tribal populations, co-chair of the Maine Climate Council's Equity Subcommittee and a member of the Maine Climate Council, board president for the Wabanaki Alliance and a member of the permanent commission on the status of women and serves on many, many other boards and organizations. She is also the playwright for an upcoming play and co-producer of an upcoming film about Margaret Moksa, co-produced with Upstander Project and is a featured participant and filmmaker on Bounty, a documentary. She is also a published playwright of Molly telling the story of Molly Spotted Elk, a Penobscot actress, writer, activist and dancer in the early 1900s. Her other passions are finding ways to strengthen and expand programs that help preserve and teach the customs and traditions of the Penobscot people and being a proud and loving mother to her too, soon to be three children, baby Molly Ann, I'm so happy to see you here. I hope you're doing okay. And I hope you can, you know, if you have to excuse yourself, please do. We'll be here. I know how it is because you're getting close to eight months now, I think. So my question to you is, can you please, you know, I was very excited to see that you're a playwright for the upcoming film about Margaret Moksa. So can you please tell us a little bit about Margaret Moksa and what life was like for her? Absolutely. Great to see you, Rhonda. And great to be here with you all. And I am Zoom talking over a very big pregnant belly. So it's getting more and more interesting by the day, but thank you for those kind words and that great introduction. And yeah, I would love to talk about Margaret Moksa. As you've heard, I spend a lot of my life in kind of policy work and government work and that can be draining and overwhelming. And, you know, you're carrying a lot of the trauma and stories of your people working within these systems that have oppressed our people. And that in and of itself can present this internal conflict of, you know, I wanna advocate for better things for my people and for my tribe and for all of us really, but we're working, you know, at these tables where our people have really been, you know, silenced and invisible for so long. So the story of Margaret Moksa was a great way to channel some of those feelings and some of that energy in a creative way and in writing. And Margaret Moksa was a Penobscot woman who was alive during the 1700s. And she was unfortunately murdered under one of these bounties placed on the bodies and scalps of Wabanaki people. And it was interesting at the time, the bounties, you know, and I should backtrack a little bit, these were documents put forth by the government, you know, the crowd and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And they were, you know, essentially telling colonists to go hunt indigenous people and produce, you know, their scalps as proof of them being killed and they would get money in return for these scalps. So very barbaric and dark chapter of our history that not a lot of people talk about, you know, not surprisingly. So Margaret Moksa was a victim under this system, but she was murdered at a time when the Penobscots were excused from these particular bounties because of, you know, helping the British and, you know, the kind of these political things. So you can see that, you know, just being an indigenous person around this time, even if your tribe or your people were excluded from these, you know, murder documents that didn't keep you safe. So she, you know, is known to us because of the circumstances of her death. Her family was attending a peace conference actually in Rockland, Maine, which is about, you know, an hour from where I live at Penobscot Nation. And while they were camping at night, a, you know, soldier named James Cargill came into their camp and actually murdered her and her husband and her infant son who is about six months old. So we know this kind of terrible bloody end to her life but what was interesting as we dug into how she lived was that she was a medicine woman. She knew a lot about healing and plants. She was a diplomat, you know, she, you know, as a woman was kind of, you know, traveling to these different things for her tribe to learn about relations with the settlers and other tribes and how to kind of live peacefully together. And she had even befriended some women at the local fort where this conference was happening and she had taught them about some plant medicine and there's, you know, documentation of them learning about her death and just being devastated and questioning their background and their role in things as settler women. So I was really excited, you know, coming off the work of Bounty to focus on one story of a Penobscot woman and exploring some of those themes of, you know, trauma and healing and taking an unflinching look at history and how that really helps us all go forward no matter what our background is. Thank you so much. I'm really looking forward, you know, to seeing the upcoming film, Margaret Moxa again, another essential piece of homework for you all is to see Bounty. That is a very short documentary and it's staggering the website. I was going through the website a couple of weeks ago and all of the bounties that the state sanctioned genocide on indigenous people is staggering. It took a long time to scroll through all the bounties. I think that that's an important piece of your homework too. But on a lighter note, we have a lot of budding native playwrights today. Larry has dipped his toes into the playwright pool and dived right in. His first play, Freedom and Season, opened June of 2021 and will be featured again May 27th through the 29th of 2022 here at Double Edge Theater. And this is my perfect moment to ask Samantha a question. Samantha, you wrote your first play, right? Yeah, in collaboration with Dr. Carolyn Dunn titled How We Go Missing, which will be performed by Anashinaabe Theater Exchange May 4th through 7th in Washington, DC. May 4th is an important day as this is the international day to recognize murdered and missing indigenous women, girls and two spirits. Can you tell us about your project? Yeah. First, I just want to say I'm very humbled and very honored to be able to speak today alongside these. Just totally inspiring and incredible panelists. So thank you for that. How We Go Missing is a work comprised of two works, actually. One is the ensemble piece, which we haven't written yet. We have a residency next week to finish that. And the other half of that is the solo piece that I wrote called Something Else. And How We Go Missing, the underlying sort of theme is we're gonna be examining the different ways in which native people go missing, whether that's through a physical way or not physical way. So whether it's through substance abuse or through incarceration or erasure in the many forms, that comes in, that's what that's gonna be. Thank you. Let me see this. I'm so honored that you're here with us. Oh, me glitch, me glitch. Thank you. Okay, so now, getting to this complicated panel topic. And understanding this complicated panel topic begins with understanding the intentions and the unintentional consequences of harm that these public plaques, memorials and statuary that are so commonplace, especially here in Western Massachusetts, but truly common across our entire state. Massachusetts is by and far the worst offender of writing indigenous people out of existence in this way. What we see the stories they tell, the settler colonial narrative of telling these stories critically affects our understanding of place and even our very presence. So indeed this settler colonial narrative is commonplace across the country and serves a foundational purpose. I'm going to paraphrase a quote from Tuck and Wreath. Quote, in order for the settlers to make a place their home, they must destroy and disappear the indigenous peoples that live there. For the settlers, indigenous peoples are in the way and the destruction of indigenous peoples, the land and through the destruction of indigenous peoples, the land is recast as property and as a resource. Indigenous peoples must be erased and must be made into ghosts, end quote. We have this unique mythical creation stories that permeate through the Commonwealth such as the first Thanksgiving, right? The Plymouth Rock. And Jeanie, you wrote this fabulous book, as you said, that was 2008 that this book was written first thing and lasting, writing Indians out of existence in New England. And you write extensively on this process of the very foundational beginnings of settler firsting, lasting, replacing and creating myths to support colonization. Can you please expand on what the book is about for our audience? I'm happy to do that. Thank you, Rhonda. I think I'll start talking about this from how I came to write this particular book. And that was, it came to me in writing my first book on Natick, which is called Dispossession by Degrees, Indian Land and Identity, Natick, Massachusetts, 1650 to 1790, where, as I said earlier, what I really wanted to show is indigenous survival and under incredible grueling circumstances, right? Under settler colonialism. And the thing that I was really obsessed with was this idea of Indian extinction that had taken hold and was just at the heart of all narratives. And so one of the ways that I saw that happening was through what I end up eventually theorizing as what I call lasting, which is the tendency across a spectrum of places where people make claims about the last Indian who lived here. So what they're doing is saying that you can mark the exact end of Indian history in the body of a certain individual. Sometimes that takes the form of the last leader, the last political leader, the last chief, or the last person who spoke the language fluently, those kinds of things. So it's a really complicated dynamic, but it's a way of saying just this, that we have eliminated native people. We theorize this now in Native Studies as settler colonialism that then non-native peoples can rightfully claim the land. And this is an obsession of theirs. So I started with idea of lasting. And then I thought to myself, how did people come to this idea? And what struck me is the process of writing local histories in the 19th century, which is where there's lots of claiming about this. And so I set about the crazy really task of reading every local history published in the 19th century in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Cause I think Northern New England's a little bit different, although not unrelated at all. And I found lots and lots of stories about what I ended up calling lasting. But one of the things that struck me as I was reading them was all of these claims to being first. And I became kind of obsessed by that. And I mean, the firsts that these local histories claim are what I think of as very mundane. I mean, there's the first Thanksgiving, as you mentioned, right? But there's also these claims about the first white child born in this town was the first church that was established, the first minister that was settled, the first frame house, all these things. And it's striking to me, these are very mundane things, right? This is about kind of everyday existence. But what they're doing is they're claiming that there was no legitimate people here prior to that time. And so I theorize this idea of firsting, that what New English people are doing in this is claiming that Indians are in the past and they're the only true origins of modernity in New England. They're the only source of legitimate social orders that are meaningful. So it's a story of origins for them. And it juxtaposes with this idea of lasting. So they function together. Those people are gone. And that complex really revolves around a lot of stereotypes and notions about indigenous people that they cannot change and still be native people. So that any kind of culture change that is normative for indigenous peoples throughout human history is something that in the New English mind renders indigenous people less indigenous. So the loss of languages through the crush of settler colonialism when native people are no longer hunting for a living, for example, or wearing feathers and paint and long hair, the way they dress, the way they appear, there's somehow, when they intermarry, they are somehow less indigenous to the point of vanishing in the notion the ideological construct really of New English people. So I came to these two ideas. And then along the way, it struck me that there's a different kind of claiming that's happening across a spectrum of cultural institutions. Such a, well, let me start with what I think is one of the most important is the claims that these local histories make in English colonialism in general makes that they did not seize indigenous homelands. They rightfully gained possession of them through the whole deed game. We've got a piece of paper that says that native people willingly parted with their homelands. So they're trying to create a justification that there's a virtuousness to English colonialism that we read through these narratives. But they do it so that there's the deed, there's a mapping that every inch of this land that we claim as ours came from native people to us as the rightful possessors. But it also comes across in things like selective renaming of the landscape. So the replacing of indigenous names of important sites, even some that had become talent names, but not completely erasing them because you're also claiming a unique Americaness. You mentioned the creation of monuments. There's the creation of monuments to people that they think of as the last native person or that signifies the last important native leader like Ankas for the Mojican, for example, or Miantanomi, these Massasoit, that I write about in monumental mobility. These are claims about a distant native past that is literally in the past. So these commemorative practices, literally they would have big commemorations that would bring people back because many people were leaving in the 19th century in New England, right? And these celebrations of the 200th or 250th anniversary of the origins of a town. And one of the things that it would do in these big celebrations is, I tell this to my students and just to shock them, literally the historical oration was entertainment at this moment, right? So they would sit and listen for an hour to someone narrate the history of a particular town. And part of that is embracing native peoples at a certain point. There's an endpoint to that history that's part of this creation of the extinction narrative. So, and I of course did not wanna leave it here at first, which actually say this too, in first thing there's also what I call famous first Indians like Massasoit, who figure in these narratives as engaging in a treaty with the English whereby basically they're inviting English people in that often so that authorizes the origins of all of this. So first thing replacing and then lasting, and I'm not gonna leave it there. So my final chapter is actually resisting, which shows how even at this moment, the narratives that they're telling are false. And you can find evidence even in the narratives that they're false, but you also find evidence of the falsity and really important figures like William Apis, who is one of our very first and important writers, who I have a section in that chapter that talks about how he's theorizing what I call a notion of dual citizenship for indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples having a rightful place as citizens of their own nations, as well as making a claim to the nation state that's being claimed on indigenous lands. And then I finally end with the federal recognition process in New England that's so important in the restoration of the acknowledgement of tribal nations in New England, which is incomplete and complicated and partly in reaction, not just to this whole history, but to the late 19th century when in connection with the Civil War, places like Massachusetts decide to enfranchise Indians and thereby claim that their nations themselves are being obliterated. So that's the book kind of in a nutshell. Thank you. I totally appreciate you bringing up William Apis. He was, his words, his work, his body of work was almost 200 years ago and it's still relevant today. I bring him up often. I am currently living in Colerain. So that's where William Apis was born, Pequot minister was born there. So I bring him up often because what he talked about 200 years ago still is relevant in our communities today. And that has to change. Absolutely. And his rhetoric is so amazing. It just, if I urge you to read that, put that in your list too. He himself is a really fascinating example of this erasure because he published five, he had five publications in his lifetime in the 1820s and early 1830s and there's a portrait that was done of him that I think still hangs in the American Aquarian Society in Worcester. He was really, really well known at time. He debated the elites of Massachusetts society about what we would now call settler colonialism. And yet he's forgotten. And in fact, why do we know about him widely now? Because Barry O'Connell is a literature scholar, teaches at taught at Amherst College. He's retired now, recovered his work and did the careful work of doing the research about his life and getting his works published so you can buy that book. I'm actually on my second copy of it because I broke the back of it. It's in pieces because I read it so often. So he's a splendid example of this whole process. He should be famous to all native, not just native people, non-native people as well as one of the first and most important native writers and publishers whose words, as you pointed out, still have relevance to this day. Absolutely. And I'm part of the William Apis Day Celebration Committee in Coleraine and we're having our second or third annual William Apis Day. So I'm pretty excited about that. It's starting to gain traction because he was invisible for so long in our town. Yeah. And I do wanna focus a little closer to this area, right? Shifting to the monument that is just down the road in South Deerfield at Bloody Brook and the many local plaques and memorials that are commemorating the fallen settlers to the savage Indians. These memorials are erected to honor the colonists imperialist nostalgia that I think really sums it up. It sort of gives this nostalgia of patriotism and sacrifice, right? Those are actual words on some of these monuments and give justification to the genocide. Anthropologist Renato Rosaldo describes imperialist nostalgia as a mood of nostalgia that makes racial domination appear innocent and pure and a people mourning the passing or transformation of what they have caused to be transformed, right? So I just wanna put that definition out there. I think that we are really suffering from this, especially here in this area with Deerfield, South Deerfield and the Mohawk Trail. Dun, dun, dun. This is what I consider to be the epitome of erasure and lack of indigenous agency over identity. Oh, you pulled it up. Thank you, Cariel. So I did have some photos I wasn't planning, but that's great, this is great because we're showing some of our imperialist sort of nostalgia through the old Deerfield plaque, the Bloody Brook plaque that is there and the Hannah Dustin statue in Haberrill, Massachusetts. She is being commemorated for her bravery as she was kidnapped and she and two others that were with her murdered for adults and six children while they slept and she brought their scalps home for the bounty and she is memorialized in two locations. One is in New Hampshire, which I believe is being taken down and in Haberrill, Massachusetts. And of course that sort of like lends to that idea that it's okay to be murdering because look at this poor woman, she's defenseless and she had to murder an entire family to be safe. But going back to the Mohawk Trail. You know, there's the two photos there of the hail to the sunrise and the big Indian, but the name Mohawk Trail itself is a misnomer. Clinton Q Richmond named route two in 1913, completely ignoring the fact that the Mohawk nation lies Northwest over 200 miles away and in doing so totally erased the nations that are here, still here even. The touristy roadside attractions that dot the roadway are really stereotypes and cultural appropriations. That the big Indian is a grotesquely red painted and is like this stereotypical caricature of a plain style cigar store Indian. It represents absolutely no one here. The hail to the sunrise statue was installed by the, at this improved order of the red men and is on every scenic highway signpost for over 100 miles. The soldiers of Liberty later known as the improved order of red men placed many of these statues, they took control of our images, took control of our agency over our images, our names, our identities and even cultures in order to quote, save them unquote. That the improved order of red men group had a compulsory membership that was white and male and the members were then given native names and belong to orders that were tribes whose names are on the nearby fountain in front of the hail to the sunrise statue. The improved order of red men also erected the Asameekwin statue in Plymouth and many other, as I said, many other monuments in memory, in memory because this hail to the sunrise statue is in memory of the Mohawk people. I'm really sorry, Tim, but you're not here today. You're a ghost visiting us. Maybe that's why you tell good ghost stories. So I feel that the big Indian and the hail to the sunrise statue and the name of the Mohawk Trail really solidify erasure by replacing, renaming and romanticizing colonization through westward expansion and manifest destiny, right? Samantha, this is my question to you. You are relatively new to this area coming from Michigan. What was your first reaction to seeing some of these spectacles on route two? And how does it make you feel? Well, the first reaction, my first thought was, here we go. And of course it's not surprising it's every, you see stuff everywhere, but I noticed that here, specifically there's, and I don't know if this is the right word, but there's a certain density there's a lot of things and it's in close proximity to each other, it's like everywhere you turn, there's something no matter which way I decide to leave Ashfield, Massachusetts, there's gonna be something and it's gonna turn out to be quick and it's gonna be right in my face. And this makes me think that, you know, I mean it makes me think a lot of things of course, but it makes me think that a lot of people in the area, in surrounding areas are sleeping and they can't, they either can't hear the alarm going off or they're choosing to hit the snooze button when it's time to wake up. And these things, you know, like I said, they make me feel a lot of things, but the baseline thing for me is that they're dehumanizing, there are a lot of things but they're dehumanizing at its core for me personally. And depending on what the display is, whether it's a statue, whether it's a memorial or a plaque, there's something attached to that through my eyes, you know, of a stereotype or a false narrative, a dangerous false narrative. And, you know, for example, when I look at this statue of this native man with this red skin and this sort of stoic face and this headdress, I see a lot of things, but the message I get is that you are of the past and you are this stereotype. Another example is I've seen a lot of plaques and memorials like this, especially around here, but if this plaque or memorial is telling the story of this person and they're glorifying this person and they've done all these great things, yada, yada, yada. And then the other side of the story has failed to be mentioned. It's not even mentioned at all of a massacre that happened or whatever the case may be. And so then that I get the message of you don't matter and your story doesn't matter, your people don't matter. The people of this area don't matter among other things. And with all of these things, right, whatever message is attached, the underlying primary message that I get from all of these is this is who you are. This is who you were, this is who you are. And as long as this statue is still standing, as long as this plaque is still hung, and as long as this memorial is still here, this is who you will be. And that's a pretty menacing thing to sit with, you know? And I was always taught to think of the past generations and the future generations and how that's gonna affect them. And, you know, it begs the question, it's not even a question, really just an observation of honoring and power and ownership and who are we actually honoring? You know, a lot of folks think that we're honoring these things, but through my eyes, who are we actually honoring, right? And who's actually owning these things? And most of the time it's not us, right? Like it's not us. And, you know, these images are not of our making. And if we're talking about anything mainstream, well, actually just anything, we're already not seeing ourselves in an accurate, and of course this is getting better, right? But we're already not seeing ourselves and hearing ourselves in an accurate and respectful way. And then when we do see ourselves, it's through these plaques and through these statues. I mean, anyways, and this isn't even mentioning really the psychological effects that this has on non-natives. You know, there's a reason why there's still so much racism and so much violence towards our people and it's because of stuff like this. And it might seem minuscule to some people, but, you know, to me, it's a large part of the puzzle that we need to continue this healing journey. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll add some, and thank you, Samantha, because growing up here as an indigenous person, growing up primarily in the 70s and 80s, where the teachers were still abusive and were coming from generations where our children were taken. And so it's a reminder that our folks need to hear this and that these changes need to be made on a substantial scale. And I just want to say, Jean, thank you for your work in NADIC because it's fascinating and as a NITMO person, the Senate of Vickers and Pagan, and we go into that library and we see the deeds, they're framed and really pretty behind glass and you see the name there, Joseph Pagan in 1750, wherever that date is. But they don't tell the story how these Indians came from these internment camps after the war, how they were enslaved, how their children were taken, how they were abused, gut-wrenching abuse. And so it never tells that story. And also, I'd like to carry if you can share slide three. And I'm going to take you folks a little bit over, really in the center of NITMO Comeland and you have the close-up there of that. And so, and this kind of goes back to Molly Ann's the play that she's putting together about Spotted Elk and so this is quite a contrast that juxtaposes that. And here, this is a sign that I have to see every day going home and this talks about the Johnson, a white family who was attacked and killed by Indians and they just say Indians, they don't say NITMO people and even recognizing that land that they're on. And so this is the sign that we have to see every day and it's laying the groundwork for, as Samantha laid out, racism, stereotyping, these Indians came and killed us and we're always under threat by Indians and brown people. So, and this plaque right here is going to let you remind you of that every day. And then if you show slide one, this is the other sign that we have to see going down that road, how the Huguenot settlement, right? And they're not indigenous to this continent but it makes it sound like they are. And they came here and, but their lovely settlement can tend to be disrupted by the Indians who kept attacking them and they had to leave. Poor Huguenots, right? And so these constant reminders that I've been, I wanna take that sign down. And so we have to drive by that every day, you know, to go back and forth to our, my kids see this, my young ones, my older ones. And so it becomes a very disturbing notion and as one of my colleagues, Robin Chandler once said, this is visual terrorism, right? And so this work is so crucial. And again, I can't thank you all enough to be on this panel. And I'm a big talker at that Crow Medicine. So I definitely have so much to say but I wanna really get to these different voices here. And it's such an honor to have you all here on this, at Oakie Tail, the first indigenous run and operated organization. So it's really exciting to have you all here and doing this work. And once again, Kitabatimish. I think I need to put a disclaimer out there in the world. We are not planning illegal action. I'm just kidding. But this really points to, you know, what you're saying about having to be assaulted, being educated on what the two stories are, that is missing. And the work, right, that Cedric and Malian and I do in removing harmful maskotry, it takes a lot of time to educate the public about the effects, the outcomes and we're frequently just right up smack against this settler narrative. It's so pervasive and it's so damaging. But we need to respect that and even understand that education is the best way to affect change. And Cedric, you lead workshops for educators on decolonizing education. Could you please talk a little bit about your workshop and how has this been beneficial? Have you seen benefits? Thank you so much, Rhonda. And before I can even really leap into that particular topic in relation to workshops, I want to read a couple of quotes from Indigenous scholars that are a lot smarter than I am. And these first two quotes come from Linda T. Smith. And it's really about not educating non-Indigenous peoples, but the process of Indigenous peoples go through being in these spaces. And it's probably resonant for Jeannie, Tim, Malian, Tom, and yourself as well. The reach of imperialism into our heads challenges those who belong to colonized communities to understand how this occurred. Partly because we perceive a need to decolonize our minds, to recover ourselves, to claim a space in which to develop a sense of authentic humanity. And I read that and it drives home the point, this is exactly why I went to graduate school. I needed to figure out how did this happen? How can I engage in the process of undoing some of the harm that has been done? And what I walked away with from graduate school is best summarized in this next quote also from Professor Smith. Research for social justice expands and improves the conditions for justice. It is an intellectual, cognitive, and moral project, often fraught, never complete, but worthwhile. Again, why I do what I do. It's not just because my great grandparents were involved in this endeavor, my parents, other relatives, but globally a push and a need for Indigenous presence in the academy. Rhonda, to your earlier point, about 1% of the people with PhDs are from Indigenous communities. And I do believe, at least the last time I checked the stats a couple of years ago, the numbers of American Indians, Alaska Natives receiving PhDs is decreasing in the U.S. And Jeanne's confirming that that has not changed, unfortunately. The other quote is from another preeminent scholar, Vine DeLoria, Jr., who stated in one of his writings, every society needs educated people, but the primary responsibility of educated people is to bring wisdom back into the community and make it available to others so that the lives they are leading make sense. So using that as a framework, it underscores the significance of leading workshops for non-native educators so that we become visible and human to them. And so that they understand that they have a role and a responsibility to do something about what they are learning. My students, whether they're teachers or undergraduates, frequently say, you know, I'm really pissed off, I'm really angry that I'm just learning about this now. Or I feel guilty about learning this now. And my response is always, don't blame yourself about what you were not exposed to. You didn't have the opportunity to learn this, but you're learning it now. And now the question is, what are you gonna do about it? How are you gonna become a co-conspirator or an ally to make change? And that is always how I want to challenge them leaving the sessions that they are engaged with me. And I absolutely pull from work from my dear colleagues, Tim and Jeanie's work, as well as work from the Upstander Academy and Molly and they will certainly be looking at excerpts from Bounty and we will be hosting and using screenings from your new work. When that comes out as well. And I'm just so fortunate to be in this space to have these amazing collaborators. Thank you. Thank you, thank you so much. And hey, out there, co-conspirators and allies, right? Support the legislative agenda. Appropriate curricula on Massachusetts needs. That is crucial. We absolutely need to continue educating and removing representations and monuments in place that honor indigenous genocide. Malian, you co-authored an educational editorial piece for the Boston Globe titled The Erasure of Indigenous People's History. A direct quote from that piece is quote, to support this policy of dispossession the system of settler colonialism, dehumanized native people and invented a false narrative about the origins of the United States, one that continues to erase native people and relegate them to the past, end quote. You also had a hand in removing a statue that glorified a kidnapping human trafficking slave trader Esteban Gomez in Bangor, Maine. What was that process like for you? And how did you accomplish this? Yeah, so that process went well. Not all of these things go well. And I think that's important to say. Some of this work, as you all know, and I've learned so much sitting here, listening to all of your journeys and stories and work, it's so tough to challenge these systems in which we've been so silenced and the settlers, the oppressors, the dominant culture has benefited from us being silenced for so long so that when we do speak up, that could be so jarring to them. And, as Cedric said, they don't know it, they don't know. So once these things are brought to light, do they double down and get defensive and question our reality or do they see the light and wake up to this and want to help and change? So in Bangor, so geographically, the Penobscot Nation is about 10 miles north of Bangor, Maine, and we are both on the Penobscot River, which is our ancestral homeland. So Bangor is very much ancestral homeland of the Penobscot Nation and other Wabanaki people. And we have a whole lot of tribal citizens living in the Bangor area, and we've worked with them in the past before it was a state law. We were doing a lot of work in towns and cities to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day. So I had been before the city council there making the case for making this change and we were successful in doing so at the local level for the city of Bangor. And in that process, I made a lot of good connections with city councilors and we'd already had a lot of these tough discussions about, are we rewriting history, they love to say? You know, when we take away Columbus Day, are we catering to political correctness? We had tackled a lot of these hot button things already so that when we started to talk about the Esteban Gomez statue, it's sort of a memorial, it was a cross with a circle. So it wasn't a statue of his likeness, but there was a plaque talking about what a brave explorer he was and how he made it to Bangor and kind of was along the Atlantic Ocean for a while there in the 1500s. And when the research came about that showed that he had kidnapped 25 to 50 Penobscot people to sell into the slave trade, the history on them was they were released and not sold into slavery, but they were also never returned to their homeland, which is a death of sorts as well. You know, when this research kind of came about and tribal historians started talking to me about, maybe this isn't the best monument to have in Bangor, they need to know the real history and what they're celebrating. It was kind of, it was really good that we had established those relationships with city counselors and that we had a lot of tribal citizens living in the city. They formed a committee pretty much immediately to study the history of the explorer, the history of the monument. They brought me into their committee a couple of times with some other tribal experts and historians and they did a whole lot of due diligence and good homework. They talked to a Portuguese society located in New England that had some more history on him and all of the research bore out and was factual about the history with the Pranosca people and they decided to take down the monument and put it into the Bangor Historical Society with context about everything he did and really included some learning about the slavery aspect of it with Pranosca people. So this was satisfactory. I think it was good. It was a good collaboration with the tribe and the city of Bangor and I think that we had done a lot of good groundwork already talking about Columbus Day and all of these things, all the things we've been talking about today are really connected. I think sometimes people see, you know, some of the stereotypes and fighting mascots and changing Columbus Day and all this stuff as separate from sovereignty and history and policy. And in my experience working with both and also the creative field, you know, writing plays and doing that kind of work, it really is all connected. If you're not seeing people as human, you're not going to treat them as equals and that's been so important in talking about these monuments and everything you just showed on the slides fits so well into this discussion because when people say, you know, oh, I'm an indigenous person from such and such a tribe for a lot of people their mind goes to that big Indian, you know, that statue that that headdress and that red face and it's so hard to work in a space of shared humanity when people are seeing you as that symbol and not assigning you any humanity like they have. So I guess the story in Bangor went well. I think we still have a lot of work to do all over but that was just kind of one case where we brought up some really valid concerns about, hey guys, what are you honoring? Is this what you want to enshrine in your city? And we were heard and, you know, you got to figure out politics and relationships and all of that, but it certainly can be done with open hearts and minds. Thank you for sharing your story, Malia. And it's so important to hear, you know, these steps moving forward. And I really appreciate how you tied it all in because you dear listeners, I hope that you're understanding that all of these things matter, that they're all interconnected. That is a really important piece to take away with today. And Tim, last but certainly not least, I saw in one of our communications, you've claimed to be an anchor, but I'm gonna take that away from you. I'm gonna say that you're gonna give us wings because we're not gonna be stagnating in place, we're gonna be soaring. And your influence, your extensive work to bring educational opportunities and awareness to mainstream society through museology, through public art installations and creating spaces. Like this is really an important piece where we can actually fly. And my question to you is, how to bring indigenous lens and perspective to these places. And what are the takeaway lessons to doing this work effectively? First of all, we say how wonderful it's been listening to the other panelists here today. I'm learning a tremendous amount just through the conversation. I think the story that I have to add to this conversation is around what has been happening in our neck of the woods here, which is essentially the Niagara Peninsula in Southern Ontario, Canada. And that there's a bit of a different trajectory going on in this country. And has to do with the government's acknowledgement and recognition of what took place with respect to the Indian residential school policies that the government had put into place many, many, many years ago. And then the legacy of those decisions and of the schools. And it's been pretty dramatic. I mean, in 2008, when I was still at the Smithsonian, the Canadian government actually issued an apology for all of that. And we did programming at the museum. And that led to a process that examined truth and reconciliation within the country. And that report came out another eight years later and included 94 recommendations that called for actions at all levels of government and local municipal, federal. And with respect to education and all kinds of areas where Canadians broadly should really think about how to rectify and come forward on this notion of reconciliation. And of course, it's all founded upon truth. You get the facts and then you can have a legitimate conversation once you have the facts in front of you. So we don't have a lot of time left, but I'm gonna run through a PowerPoint here to show you what we've done in the last five, six years. When I left the Smithsonian at the end of 2015, I shifted my kind of objective statement to really focusing on legacy projects within my community and within the Niagara region where the history was significant. And again, this was riding on the wave, if you will, of truth and reconciliation within the country. But it's about indigenous peoples being involved in creating their own markers, their own memorials, their own expressions of their own history. And in many cases actually rectifying what that history is because it was erased as our esteemed panelists have talked about so eloquently. Today, much of this history was erased. And so we're starting to put it back up. And that's what we've been focused on for the last six, seven years. So legacy spaces, that's been the focus of my work over this time period. And by the way, I should mention that my assistant, Amanda Hardward, is operating the control system here on the PowerPoint. So just wanted to acknowledge her. So Amanda, if you can move forward. So the first project we looked at that was unveiled in 2016, and I had actually started volunteering on this project when I was still at the Smithsonian. In fact, I called into the project to help sort of reactivate a process that had gone sour between non-indigenous Canadians and then the indigenous peoples and artists that they had reached out to. But in any event, that's a whole story in itself. And sometimes I would tell you that the processes involved in achieving each of these outcomes is probably more meaningful and more involved in the actual manifestation of the work. So go to slide three. So this is it. It's called a landscape of nations, the six nations and native allies, commemorative memorials. And it's much beyond a single sort of subject memorial piece, like a wedding cake memorial or anything. This is really an exhibition that was developed. And through this truth and reconciliation process, the commissioned artists included both indigenous artists by the name of Raymond Skye from Six Nations who created these beautiful statues and then these medallions on the walls of the core memory circle. And you talk about these historic figures in that. We're very cognizant of these two indigenous war captains during the war of 1812. Was it appropriate for us to memorialize them as statues? You have to be really careful these days about who you select to put up in the statue. But our scholars and historians reviewed the history and thought that neither one was perfect but nevertheless contributed substantially to the history and the early development of Canada. So we'll just run through these very quickly. We don't have a lot of time. So Amanda, just walk people through here. That's John Norton, Houghton the Shony Leader who was adopted in. That's John Brandt, son of Joseph Brandt. Keep going, another view here. We take people down a two row wampum pathway toward the center memorial circle. And these are some of the bronze medallions that feature the outstanding work of Raymond Skye Six Nations fine artist. And just keep going, Amanda. This is a top down view of the core memory circle. It's really a veteran's memorial really and we do ceremonies here every year. And I'll talk a little bit more about how once you create these spaces they take on a life of their own. Okay. This, by the way, is located in Queenston Heights Park and was placed where there was already a mature forest. So it looks like it's been there for a long time. First Nations Peace Monuments, the bookend to the memorial that we just saw. And if we can go forward. It mentioned earlier on that internationally renowned architect Douglas Cardinal was the designer of this memorial, First Nations Peace Monument. And it sits at the, this memorial sits at the end of a trail what's called the Lower Seaport Legacy Trail. It was an important heroine in the war of 1812 and whose own life intersected indigenous peoples in several different ways. So you can see that this is the the Hiawatha Wampum Belt symbol that symbolizes the six nations, the original five nations visually but a sixth nation coming through the Onitis. And we've held ceremonies here on a frequent basis as well. This is about 31 kilometers from the first memorial that we saw. The core of the first memorial of the landscape of nations was built out of Queenston Limestone. This particular memorial is built out of Indiana Limestone. This is in each of these projects, we developed these friendships and partnerships with allies from the non-indigenous community. This is Caroline McCormick, president of the Friends of Lower Seaport. And by the way, this memorial it's gonna be looking quite different in terms of the landscape around it because we're going through a process now of planting a landscape of indigenous plants all around this particular memorial. Okay, let's move along. Next, curtain call. This is one I kind of really like because it's a modern art piece. The first two memorials were really, although you could say there were modern art applications to it. This one is fully sort of a modern art expression. And it's on the Carlisle Street side of the First and Terror Performing Arts Center, which was a commission with the city of St. Catharines. And it's found that upon a wampum belt. And the artist is Lily Audeshevich. And we just thought that this was an absolutely brilliant creative expression that reflected diversity among the peoples in the region, the ebb and flow. And you can see these kind of like curves, flowing curves of a flexible wampum belt, reflected sound waves, modern dance movement, waves in the water, all of these types of things. And we just thought thinking that went in behind this was absolutely incredible. So this is a public art piece that says a real inspiration for art students and so forth in the region. And we're working on a couple more right now and we'll come back around to the voices of Freedom Park that's also already been established. But in the town of Niagara Lake, there used to be during the late 1700s through the early 1800s, the British Indian Department had constructed what's called the Indian Council House. And there were times when literally up to 3000 indigenous peoples from quite a range gathered here to conduct business and maintain relations with the crown. And so the building itself is long gone, but we're in the process right now working with Parks Canada, Federal Agency to construct this space frame structure that will recreate the Indian Council House and become a place for education and for programming. Again, another incredible legacy space. The parks are planning to have this done by the end of the year. I don't know if they're gonna achieve that, but that was the plan. It's basically in their hands now. And another one that we're working on is called Jordan Hollow Indigenous Cultural Park. Hard to see much here other than a top-down diagram from the commissioned artist group that we've given the commission to. So this particular legacy space is going to be focusing on the neutral nation, also known as the Edironduron or the Chinatown, but however, neither of those names are the names for themselves. So our style preferences to just continue to call them the neutral nation with context about what other peoples call them. But what's interesting about this and how you evaluate Indian history during different time periods is kind of crucial because this is the Niagara Peninsula. And at the time of European contact here, the neutral nation really occupied the entire Niagara Peninsula. But through conflict and issues, they ultimately were absorbed into the Haudenosaunee or other cultural groups. And essentially disappeared, it's not a word I should really use because they live on in some ways in being absorbed into other indigenous nations. But they've never received the attention that they deserve in terms of their history in this area. So the presence of indigenous peoples in the Niagara region here extends back some 12,500 years. And so you can look at any layer, any slice out of that time period, you've got a different thing to talk about. And so it's just something to consider. But I'm really pleased that in this particular case, the town of Lincoln is moving forward with a park dedicated to these people who were the first indigenous peoples in the area that were contacted by Europeans. Okay. I'm not sure how much time we've got here. I'll just go for a few minutes. We follow up each of these memorials in public art spaces with education. So there's entire plans that we built around this that we're implementing with school systems and so forth. Go very quickly here, Amanda. We'll just zip through this. Just keep rolling the slides every few seconds. We're harnessing the intellectual resources of scholars and indigenous cultural and language advisors in developing the curriculum that would correspond with the school systems. This grew out of some of my work with the Smithsonian, what we call the 10 essential understandings, a framework about indigenous peoples. In this particular case, we're focusing that methodology on indigenous peoples of Niagara. And here's a look at one of the 10 essential understandings that are there that our scholars work through. Every one of these sessions around this was like a graduate course. I gotta tell you in history and whatnot, it was incredible. The items you see in red there were for, well, the ones in black for, the ones that are in black, bold, are for elementary school and the ones in red for high school. Okay. Carl Ben, scholar on the war of 1812, which is very important in the Niagara region. Brian Charles, he's a master wampum belt maker indigenous. And then Darren Wibenga, historian with the Mississauga of the Credit First Nation. We bring all these folks in to help educate these are teachers here going through a significant training program around indigenous education. So part of what we do is create, have created this notion of place-based learning, establishing where we think it's necessary actual new spaces that you've seen. We created these destinations, but there are also historic destinations as well that are significant to the history that don't need us to build anything. But we combine all this together to create a comprehensive curriculum and experience for educators and their students. Okay, let's go on. We had hundreds of students come out. We're developing online exhibitions partnering with the Niagara Falls History Museum. Just slide through these very quickly. Amanda, producing videos. And then we're anchoring a lot of this work on what's called the Great Niagara Scarborough Indigenous Cultural Map. It's a multimedia online resource that brings out information about these locations, these important legacy spaces. Okay, keep going. This is the landing page, keep going. And you can see these blue pins that indicate each of these locations up and down the Niagara Scarborough. Again, much of what we're doing is anchored in Niagara. And we have one of the pins highlighted here for the Landscape of Nations Memorial. Okay, put a lot of content into the map. A lot of visuals. We produce films, all kinds of things going on with it. And here, again, we're conducting ceremonies. So the interesting thing to me, really, we create these legacy spaces. And these applications of the work come out. Let's slow down just a bit here, Amanda. So in producing those statues we saw at the Landscape of Nations, they begin with these finely crafted, precise paper composite statues. That's so that the molds can be created for the pouring of the bronze. However, they remain really the first statues. They are the original statues. And these were installed at Brock University permanently to bring the indigenous presence to that particular school system. And it's kind of cool. It looks like two-row wampan, right? You've got the two figures there and a purple background. So very interesting display there. Okay, next. Here again at the First Nations Peace Monument, we go to the next one. This particular monument's become a real location for people bringing in all of these offerings regarding the residential school issues. Recently, you see all of these items here, these children's items appeared at the monument after some 215, the remains of 215 children were uncovered or found or located at the Kamloops Indian Residential School and it resulted in this outpouring. Now, do we have any idea that this would happen when we develop this memorial? No, we didn't. But it shows you how these legacy spaces can come alive. Okay, next. Now, here's the one that we skipped a little bit earlier. This is the Voices of Freedom Park. Again, it was dedicated to African Canadian history that's been underrepresented substantially in the country and then the murder of George Floyd took place and the park suddenly became activated in a center for activism and location to launch marches and so forth and offerings were also left here as well. It's just extraordinary when you create these spaces, what the potentials are. So, Landscape of Nations 2016, First Nations Peace Monument 2017, this was 2018 and the Lillie Otishevich's peace curtain call was 2019, 2019. And we have two more underway right now. Okay, next. Oh, and just a reference to the connections between African Americans and American Indians. We did an exhibition and publication on this at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Indian was extremely, extremely popular. It was one of these ones that really took us by surprise but this became one of the best selling books in the entire museum's collection. Okay. And we work with all kinds of other institutions in incorporating indigenous presence. This is the Shaw Festival Theater, one of the most substantial repertory theaters in North America. And you can see they're flying the Haudenosaunee flag among the flags at their facility. Okay, next. And public programming. So, when you have these spaces, you can then think about, well, what can, what follows it up or how can you animate these spaces? Just like you used to do with exhibits. How do we animate the exhibits with public programming? And I guess this is a good place to end Rumble. So, we've watched a lot of work based on the Rumble inspiration, working with native musicians and folks and bringing things to life. So, we actually started Rumble with programming. It became an exhibition. It then became a film. And then it became a concert that we put on the road throughout Ontario. So, just wanted to do a quick run-through on what we've been working on over the last several years. But here again, the intent, just stay on this slide for a second. Go back to that intent. This is a 67 Amanda. The intent is to try to find those connections between the truth of indigenous history along with the settler communities. And things like Rumble, these memorials, they've all become sort of corridors in which we can find ways to exchange information and understanding. And it's been really, really powerful. Rumble the concert here was just at every location. It was just swarmed afterwards by people who didn't, they came into it not knowing what to expect. And then we're just amazed by the contributions that native artists made to popular music. Things that resonated with them. Okay, last slide. So, developing projects that are transforming the public's understanding of and engagement with indigenous peoples, in fact, it's happening. Every one of these programs involves a scholarly base, educators and cultural resource people, indigenous language specialists. We build these support teams around each of these to do our best, the best that we can to ensure the authenticity, accuracy and appropriateness of the expression that we undertake. Thank you so much, Tim. Wow, there is so much to jump into there. That is absolutely brilliant on so many levels of accomplishments, creativity, education, teaching our people. And a few things you said that stood out to me, making our own expressions. That is so vital for the presence, the living presence of our people. And you also mentioned education is paramount. And the more we learn about the true history of what happened here, the more we'll be appalled at these colonial markers of conquest and nostalgia. And that goes into education. As a writer, this is why, and I know we don't have a lot of time, but I've written books for young adults and older folks. And this is why I'm going into Younger Children's Books. And I wanna give a shout out to my brother, Cedric, who we have written together the Circle Type of Mother Earth, an 11-week curriculum for middle school children. The first ever for a native indigenous youth. And we realized it was so great. Now all middle school children are using it throughout Massachusetts. And I was really inspired to write a children's book series by the National Native Behavioral Health Network. So shout out to them. And in my research beginning this project is I realized that there were only 0.6% of native children's, but I'm talking preschool and that age, kindergarten, so on. 0.6% are on the market available. For us to mirror ourselves and have that self-determination and self-reflection. But there are 12% of animals and trucks books. And 78% of books for white children. And so this is where allies and accomplices can help and come in. And also getting back to making our own expressions. We've also talked to Massachusetts legislators in terms of helping us create these spaces. For example, in the Boston Commons, where many of my ancestors were taken there to be executed. I mean, and not just these memorialized places, but also places of creativity and art, much like Tim pointed out. So this is, we truly need a part two of this, wouldn't you agree? And so this is a work that's a collaboration of all of our peoples. And you've seen the vast array of disciplines that Tim shared there that we can dive into from education, art, visual music, and so on. So there's so much to do here where folks can get involved and support this work. As I said, it starts with our young. So help our young to reflect themselves back. And so that when we have Anishinaabe's visiting here, they're not gonna be seeing these terrible signs, right? So thank you all so much. Thank you, Tim, for sharing your slideshow because I think that that gives us this inspiration. This gives us possibilities, right? Seeing this just, I'm flooded with possibilities of legacy spaces and how when you create them, they come alive. I feel that here with Okateo and the relationship we have with Double Edge, it was created. And now it's come alive. And I feel, gosh, what are the possibilities in our Commonwealth? What can we do? Like it's limitless. And I think if I could just, yeah, I think there's certainly things as we've seen that should come down, but then the flip side of that is, what do we put up? How do we approach it from this other angle? And you all have such wonderful folks located there in New England with Gene and Molly Ann and Cedric and others to collaborate with and see what the possibilities are. But they are, from our experience, the possibilities are almost unlimited. Absolutely. And I have a quote here from Molly Ann and it's, quote, and I think any action we can have of unity between groups is a really positive thing, end quote. So I really kind of want to hold onto that quote as we kind of move forward. We also must hold that critical lens to our surroundings, surroundings that oftentimes go unseen, surroundings that some feel generational pain upon seeing, surroundings that tell one side of a glorified story and surroundings that erase the darkness of another. So we must seek the truth. We must learn from each other. We must recenter indigenous agency over our representation in public spaces. We must unite to create shared memories and connections that will carry us forward for the next seven generations. So Koyanak, thank you so much to this panel. I am so grateful for your voice. I wanted so much more and I struggled so hard to get this right today. So I hope I've done some justice with this topic. It's very hard, it's very complicated and you all have such amazing experiences. I really want to have a panel for each one of you. So thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for listening today. Thank you for sharing. Koyanakpak. Thank you. Okay, I think we are at a hard stop three o'clock. Thank you very much. Thank you.