 It started for me at a really young age because I can remember as a young child being in school and the Thanksgiving story is typically told in November and brought to light. And I had a teacher who described the story but didn't really speak about Wampanoag, just said that there were these Indians that helped the pilgrims and they were wonderful but sadly they all died. And that was it. Yeah, so I had to raise my hand and say, no, that's not true, you know, that I'm still here. And I feel like I've been saying that ever since. So, you know, it has been something that sort of drives me to continue to get our story out there in a balanced way. I don't feel like I'm rewriting history. This is not revisionist history. This is just pulling history out of the margins. And good evening, everybody, and welcome to your library. My name is David Leonard, president of the BPL. Tonight's program is part of our Baxter lecture series and also selected as part of our Repairing America themed series. This program tonight is also being presented in conjunction with our production partners at the GBH Forum Network, as well as with our colleagues and friends at American Ancestors in the New England Historical Genealogical Society. The James Finney Baxter lecture series at the BPL is dedicated to Baxter's vision of America, realizing a promise of liberty, justice, and equality for all. The lecture series includes subjects that promote commemorative and public understanding of the history of, the settlement of, and immigration to New England past and present. And now our guest tonight, we are in conversation with Paula Peters. She's the founder of the Native American Creative Agency, Smoke Signals, spelled with a Y, an independent scholar. She is a politically, socially, and culturally active member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe. As an independent scholar and writer of native and particularly Wampanoag history, she is a producer of the traveling exhibit, Our Story, 400 Years of Wampanoag History, and is currently engaged in the Wampum Belt project in search of the lost treasures of MediCom, including an effort to restore the art and tradition of Wampum making among her people. She's the executive producer of the 2016 documentary film, Mashpee Nine, and author of its companion book. She lives with her extended family in Mashpee and travels internationally to speak and educate on the true Wampanoag story. A graduate of Bridgewater State College, she was formerly a writer at the Cape Cod Times, where she won numerous national awards for her journalism. Paula, thank you so much for joining us. And I'm now gonna turn the screen over to you for the next 20 or 30 minutes to give us some context to our conversation tonight. Thanks so much for being here and over to you. Kutah Bhattash, David. Wani Kisak, Natasha Lee, Sok Waban, Nui Demas, Masa Piyak. I thank you, David. I appreciate the opportunity to bring our story to this wonderful audience. I also appreciate the opportunity that I have to introduce myself in my historic language. So tonight I wanna talk to the people about what I call the critical backstory to colonization. And it comes to us despite the richness of opportunistic documentation, the colonial history of New England is rarely told with the balance that comes from inclusion of the native perspective. Diaries, letters and journals of witnesses like Gosnold and Smith and Bradford and Williams and other Europeans are primary sources of the experience that are actually ripe for reasonable interpretation from the point of view of the people who are encountered. Even without a written language and very few advocates to document our perspective, it really hardly takes a stretch of the imagination to consider how the wives and the children and the mothers and the family of 27 Wampanoag men who were captured from villages of Patuxet Nasset in 1614 reacted to that loss. We don't need to guess, excuse me, we don't need to guess what impression was left with the Wampanoag men who welcomed, who were welcome to join Martin Pring in 1603 for feasting and entertainment only to have Pring sick the dogs on them to leave when he wanted them to go home. And that was because he didn't know how to say it's time to go home and Wampanoag. And you can just imagine how Eponaag must have felt. He's kidnapped from his island home in 1611. And I'm sure that he began plotting as soon as he was thrown into the bowels of that ship on how he might eventually come home. The details of these inhospitable encounters have been recorded as a matter of fact, actually shamelessly in some cases with artful prose in chronicles that provide a framework to which can be applied what is known about the indigenous people of New England and human nature. Or what I like to say in each instance of unapologetic, confessed atrocity to a human being simply employ the millennial logic that expresses itself in one word, really. It is widely agreed that the European explorers perception of pre-colonial indigenous people of North America was one of a primitive, godless savage. It was a conclusion reached despite a language barrier and without sociological investigation or theological inquiry and then trapped enclosed minds. The native lifestyle, while simple, was not unsophisticated in terms of the natural order that placed them within and not on top of the circle of life. They understood the interplanetary significance of the sun and the moon to Mother Earth in establishing a cycle of seasons for growing and harvesting, hunting and preparation. There were people who managed their presence on earth to be in balance with nature, sustaining themselves without starving the living world around them. They hunted and fished with knowledge of the habits and the habitats of the finned and the winged and the four-legged, employing basic yet sound weaponry, weirs and traps. They harvested wild growing roots, nuts, herbs and berries while cultivating other foods and a coveted tobacco. Their dome-shaped dwellings clustered in village settings further reflected the simplicity of their lifestyle and were more often than not multi-generational confines including some that were seasonal to afford access to the coastal regions for fishing and planting. There was a hierarchy of governance and leadership so pragmatic it eventually became a model for the democracy framed by the post-revolution founding fathers of the United States. It was evidence of a civilization and humanity of a much higher intellect than old world interlopers had any use for. Colonization was the buzzword of the 17th century among British and European nations racing to stake their claim on a new continent not unlike cosmonauts and astronauts of the 1960s scrambling to plant a flag on the moon. But for those forged in the land of holy wars colonizing among indigenous people would have required compromising hard-fought religious principles. Recognizing no God among the natives served a much higher purpose and as a result, not much effort was made to see one. Had they bothered to look for it native spirituality was everywhere. It centered on the tributes of the earth and the wonder of other worlds honoring the sun, the moon, the four directions as well as animals and birds. No chapel was necessary as ceremonies were held wherever and as often as the occasion called for without an assigned place or day of the week. It required only a circle where each one was as individually unique as they were part of the whole. Birds and animals had spiritual significance like the crow that delivered the first seed of corn from the Southwest. There were many Thanksgiving opportunities honoring the creator's gifts like the celebration welcoming the strawberry as the first fruit of the season. Drumming and singing and dancing had spiritual significance as did adornments including beads and shells and copper pendants and symbolically painted faces and tattoos. However, a well-established ignorance to indigenous civility that began with atrocities committed by Christopher Columbus continued with explorers like Giovanni de Verrazano in 1524. He was determining that an entire continent the size of Asia likely stood in the way of a Northwest passage to India. Verrazano expressed frustration with the inability to communicate with tribes he encountered from Cape Breton to Maine but that didn't prevent him from drawing a conclusion that would have a profound impact on the way that native people were treated. He wrote in a letter to the King of France due to the lack of common language we were unable to find out by signs or gestures how much religious faith these people we found possess. We think that they have neither religion nor laws nor are there any temples or churches of prayer among their peoples. We consider that they have no religion and that they live in absolute freedom and that everything they do proceeds from ignorance. I find that pretty amazing that he was able to determine all of that after admitting that he absolutely could not speak to these people. Abuse of native people at the hands of European adventurers became conventional. George Weymouth was a renowned navigator, mariner and explorer despite having never discovered that elusive Northwest passage to India and he was mutinyed against as he slept in his final attempt to do so in 1602. Nonetheless, in 1605 Weymouth was commissioned to explore present day coastal Maine in a territory then referred to as Northern Virginia with the intent of reaffirming trade routes and establishing a location for settlement. Among his crew was James Rossier who wrote a true relation of their voyage on the archangel. And Rossier's journal spares no indignity committed against the natives that they met along the way. Initially Weymouth and his men spent their days endearing themselves to the abnacky with exotic gifts, knives, kettles, cloth, food even. And Rossier recalled the people amiably. He said, they seemed all very civil and merry showing tokens of much thankfulness for those things that we gave them. We found them then as after a people of exceeding good invention, quick understanding and ready capacity. But during a mission trade, it was discovered that the natives were as much armed and fortified as they were civil. Weymouth became intimidated by hundreds of abnacky men armed with bows and arrows and flanked by dogs, tamed but they were ready to pounce on command. While no aggression resulted, Rossier wrote that we began to join them in the rank of other savages who have been by travelers in most discoveries found to be very treacherous. But the demonstration of militia by the abnacky was not without cause. Just as Weymouth's reaction was based on the chronicles of travelers before him, the bad acts of rogue adventurers were no doubt preserved and shared in a unique oral tradition practiced by Algonquin tribes up and down the Eastern seaboard. So now I wanna share with you a little video that might be a little fun also to talk about that tradition. Nature of our tribes to send messengers traveling frequently among neighboring villages and territories. And this was something that was documented by Roger Williams as a result of his genuine compassion and sensitivity toward native people. Williams became keenly aware of tribal customs and wrote about the importance of the messenger runners. He said that they were runners of strength and stamina but also sharp-minded as well as trusted to recall with confidence messages of vital social and political importance with accuracy. According to Williams, it was not uncommon for a runner to travel as much as 100 miles a day, enabling them to effectively spread the word of ruthless recitations of European adventures far and wide. Perhaps they would have been able to warn about people like Verrazano, the 16th century explorer now immortalized in double-decker steel suspension known as the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, connecting Brooklyn and Staten Island. Cape Fear in North Carolina might well also have earned its name from Verrazano, who in 1524 came upon a small tribe of people there who fled inland upon the site of Verrazano and his exploring party. They chased the petrified natives and all of them were able to escape except for an elderly native woman, a teenage girl or young woman and a group of children who tried to hide in the tall grass. They grabbed the boy, a young boy, and the young woman who was described as a very appealing prize, a very beautiful and tall young woman. And they kept the boy, but were forced to sacrifice the woman. Verrazano wrote that it was impossible to take her to the sea because of the loud cries she uttered and as we were a long way from the ship and had to pass through several woods, we decided to leave her behind and take only the boy. While the young woman's recollections were never written down, there's little doubt her desperate cries echoed up and down the coast by way of messenger runner, creating a bridge of another sort, a bridge suspended by grief and horror, connecting tribes with a dire forewarning about the merciless sea captain. Despite the known threat for native people, the fear of aggressive acts and kidnappings was tempered by the allure of appealing and novel trade items like the brass button coats and wool blankets, copper kettles. So those things were tolerated to some degree and it was just something that they had warned themselves about. And in some cases, they found these explorers to be entertaining. During the summer of 1603, Martin Pring, his initial tolerance of the Wampanoag got him into a bind when he didn't know how to speak to them to tell them how to go home. Pring was on Cape Cod, a region pretty heavily populated at that time with natives and he would have done well to ingratiate himself. His party was there harvesting sassafras, which was a plant of sovereign virtue for the French pox. The pox was in fact, a pandemic of syphilis rapidly spreading throughout Europe and they believed that sassafras was helping to assuage that plague. Pring's company had stumbled upon a vast growth of the presumed cure, which it actually wasn't a cure, but nonetheless, they wanted it. And they then broke for the evening and entertained a group of Wampanoag who were singing and dancing and they had a young man who was playing guitar. So that was something that I'm sure fascinated the Wampanoag men, but they didn't know how to speak their language. So when they grew weary of their guests, Pring said to be rid of them, we would just let loose the mastiffs. So if you can just imagine being invited to dinner, then it was time to go, you know, just let me, I have some dogs here. I don't think that that would be the way that I'd wanna ask my guests to go home. So unsurprisingly, the unfriendly gesture was followed by a deterioration of relations with the natives. Realizing what Pring had come for, the Wampanoag sent them off in a hail of arrows and burned the forest where they had been collecting the sassafras. Pring departed without kidnapping anyone, but he did steal a canoe as a parting trophy. Along the coast of Maine, Weymouth leveraged the appeal of the novel trade goods and employed it liberally in his encounters with the Abnaki. At least until they assembled their militia to avoid being victimized. But the paranoid Weymouth would not be caught asleep again in his cabin. He resolved to leave the area, but not before collecting some human trophies. Rosier wrote, whereas, wherefore after good advice taken, we determined so soon as we could to take some of them, meaning the men. And so they went ashore for food and water and came upon a group of Abnaki men who were lured into confidence with a box of peas and then grabbed like animals. And this is what Rosier wrote about that. He said, we used little delay, but suddenly laid hands upon them. And it was as much as five or six of us could do to get them into the light horsemen, which was what they called their boat. For they were strong and so naked as our best hold was by their long hair on their heads. And that they considered the capture of the men a matter of great importance for the full accompaniment of our voyage. Whereas by all means, adventurers were not to return without commodities of value, including the expressed goal to capture indigenous people for various reasons. From the most inhumane selling into slavery to the more self-serving, siphoning cultural knowledge and language to the very arrogant conversion to Christianity as if they had no religion of their own, to the most misguided, the idea that they were rescuing them from the wilderness. By any definition, this was kidnapping. Unless according to the doctrine of discovery, the captured is presumed to be godless. And in fact, according to Rosier, the abnaki were without appreciation for the godly gift, a conclusion once again reached without any shared common language. And so five men were stowed in the bowels of the archangel for what must have been a terrifying journey to an unknown destination. Three of the captives were turned over to Sir Fernando Gorgias, a wealthy financier of the New World exploits who began to collect native men for his own bizarre entertainment and social experiment. The men also helped to produce a glossary of abnaki terms and place names that was likely put to good use by Captain Edward Harlow in 1611 when he was commissioned by Gorgias to sail to New England and bring back more natives as slaves. Harlow returned to many of Weymouth's ports from Monhegan Island to Cape Cod and he captured nearly 30 men to be traded as slaves and to entertain his financier. From that lot, Gorgias obtained a stunning specimen called Epinau. Epinau was a Wampanoag man. Harlow had captured on Nopay which is the present day Martha's vineyard. Gorgias was impressed that Epinau while short on intellect and able to utter only a few words of welcome was a person of goodly stature, strong and well proportioned and so apparently concurred much of London where Gorgias displayed the big Wampanoag as a curiosity and Epinau became a popular attraction. He impressed John Smith who described him as of no less courage and authority than of wit, strength and proportion. And William Shakespeare, a known acquaintance of Gorgias is believed to have been inspired by Epinau to develop the character of the strange Indian who fascinated the ladies with his great tool in the play Henry VIII. But despite his celebrity, Epinau was far less rescued than a prisoner desperate to return home and much smarter than Gorgias gave him credit for. Observing the culture and customs of the English, Epinau saw opportunity in their strong desire for precious metals and leveraged Gorgias' greed for gold into his passage home. After Epinau crafted this deceptive tale of gold that can be found on Nopay, Gorgias financed another expedition in 1614 that enabled Epinau to go home. And in fact, this ship was met in the harbor by canoes of Wampanoag warriors who Epinau could openly conspire with in a language that was cryptic to the ship's crew. And he devised a plot for his own escape. It was a disappointment for Gorgias who expected that his kidnapped, the kidnapped man that he held hostage for three years owed him a debt of honesty. And he was very upset that Epinau had privately, as it appeared, had contracted with his friends how he might make his escape without performing what he had undertaken. So very disappointed he was that he didn't get the gold. At about the same time that Epinau was returning and that was being celebrated, there was a rogue sea captain who was lurking in Patuxet harbor inviting men to trade with him. Thomas Hunt was master of a ship in the fleet of John Smith who led an expedition scouting for settlement locations and establishing trade and also mapping the region. It was a mission that Smith knew from past experience with antagonized natives in Virginia could not be successful without establishing goodwill among people already predisposed to mistrust European adventurers. Determined to leave a very different impression he engaged with as many natives as he could and he took copious notes on the people, the language, the customs, the humor and relationships. All would be considered excellent preparation to establish neighborly goodwill but for the actions of Hunt and his men. They grabbed 20 men in Patuxet before sailing off to Nosset where they took seven more. Admitting his relationship with Hunt had been a test of wills from the start Smith deeply regretted leaving him behind with a simple instruction to conduct parting trade with Wampanoag. Smith reflected on the damage done and his personal disappointment in Hunt's duplicity in his published journal, a description of New England that was published in 1616 in that he said, notwithstanding after my departure he abused the savages where he came and betrayed 27 of those poor innocent souls which he sold in Spain for slaves to move their hate against our nation as well as cause my proceedings to be much more difficult. So Smith who had done all of that exploration and work so that he might eventually, it was his goal to establish a settlement in New England was never to return to New England again because while Hunt saw only profit for savages Smith knew that there was a human toll. He knew that human beings would have a visceral reaction experiencing the devastation at the loss of loved ones and that the economy of at least two villages would be greatly impacted at the loss of more than two dozen providers. In Malaga, Hunt attempted to unload his cargo of stunned and bewildered Wampanoag men in the slave market with little success between disinterested brokers and the intervention of a religious order of friars. One of the Wampanoag men from Patuxet to Squantum also called Squanto, ultimately made his way to London where he also earned a celebrity as a curiosity. He lived there with a gentleman, John Slaney a merchant of the Newfoundland company but Squanto also longed to be home. In 1619, Slaney had allowed Squanto to travel to Newfoundland presumably as a guide and it was there he met Thomas Durmer an English explorer in the service of gorges. It was Durmer who engaged Squanto as a guide and would ultimately return him home. Very few details of Squanto's life are known not how old he was or if he had a wife or children. And with the exception of a brief remark nothing is really said about his homecoming but just as one can imagine the loss experienced by the families in Patuxet the day that the men were taken five years earlier Squanto's emotions were certainly raw as he returned hoping for a reunion and instead found weeds overtaking the planting fields fire pits were dark and cold there were probably tattered mats swinging in the breeze on the abandoned cedar wheat two frames. And also there was the sun bleached bones of those who had died where they lay with no one to bury them. Were some of those his parents, his brothers or his sisters of wife or children? During the time he was away native villages along the coastal region of New England from southern Maine to Cape Cod had been stricken with a catastrophic plague not unlike what's been going around the world for us in the last year and a half. That plague killed tens of thousands of people. Traditional cures were of no use while the specific nature of the disease remains unconfirmed to this day it was likely a common illness to Europeans to which the natives of New England had no immunities. Essentially it was a virgin soil epidemic whether passed on unwittingly or by design the great dying as it was called convinced pious European adventurers of God's influence in their destiny. John Smith wrote, it seems God have provided this country for our nation destroying the natives by the plague it not touching one Englishman though many traded and were conversant amongst them for they had three plagues in three years successively near 200 miles along the sea coast that in some places their scarce remained five of a hundred. And at Patuxet a village that would ultimately become Plymouth colony there was simply no one left alive to welcome Squanto home after his five year odyssey. At the finding moment Durmer had remarkably few words to describe me said we arrived at my savages native country finding all dead. Further that Squanto unwittingly returned with an agent of gorgeous may have sealed his fate as an outcast from his own people. Squanto accompanied Durmer to Nopay to meet with Eponao who had risen to become a sage and since his return what had been at least a cordial meeting soured quickly I think when Eponao learned that Durmer worked for gorgeous Eponao's man attacked and there were casualties on both sides before the wounded Durmer retreated to his ship and then left for Virginia leaving Squanto to bear the shame of actually bringing him there. The popular history of Squanto begins in 1621 when he's one of two native men who actually greet the pilgrims in their own language. He's portrayed as a hero credited with teaching them to survive in a village he was oddly familiar with. He then became an important emissary between the English and Masasoya Ussimiquan morphing easily into that role in what may have been a sort of Stockholm syndrome or simply an attempt to seek protection from his own people who continued to lack trust in him for the brief remainder of his life Squanto lived among the pilgrims. He became once again a prisoner of the English by his own choosing after he was accused of plotting against Ussimiquan. According to the colony's governor, William Bradford the Wampanoag King demanded his head, demanded Squanto's head both privately and openly which caused him to stick close by the English and never durst go from them until he died. Even while the Catholic faith was out of favor with the English in theory or substance that church's doctrine of discovery was a convenient tool that enabled them to assume preeminence over the people and their land so long as the people were defined with a subhuman distinction, godlessness. William Bradford living in exile from his English homeland in the Netherlands had little regard for the inhabitants as he set sights on the new world to transplant his transient colony of religious renegades. The place that they had thoughts on, Bradford wrote growing weary of the unholy conditions among the Dutch was some of those vast and unpeopled countries in America which are fruitful and fit for habitation being devoid of all civil inhabitants where there are only savage and brutish men which range up and down little otherwise than wild beasts of the same. Cast in the role of interpreter, Squanto was far more helpful to the English than he was to his own people. In fact, if we were to judge his effectiveness as an interpreter by his first and perhaps most significant translation he was an epic failure. He assisted in the construction of the treaty of peace between the settlers and the Wampanoag. To this day, this five principal points of this treaty is passed off as a harmless and friendly agreement but even the authors penning the document in English took clear advantage of the language and the cultural ambiguity to deceive Ussumekwin who was unable to discern the not so subtle threat to Wampanoag sovereignty. Among those with less confidence in the good intentions of the English newcomers was Corbaton who was the brother of Ussumekwin and he objected to the English coming and the settlement there but he was really powerless to overrule his brother and they were able to establish the village there. The English were allowed to freely brand their armor and blast their muskets and did so with regularity and that was a custom that was unnerving to neighboring sages like Corbaton and it was a contradiction of the colonists proclamation of friendship. Corbaton actually said to them if your love be such and bring forth such fruits he told Edward Winslow how come it to pass that when we come to Patuxet you stand upon your guard with the mouths of your pieces presented to us? The treaty also empowered only the English to punish an offender and exercise the rule of law. The Wampanoag were served by their own system of justice to address disputes and breaches of conduct from their thievery to homicide to forsaking treason. The fervently overbearing treaty would establish a new law of the land that doomed the Wampanoag. Ussumekwin expected a cooperative alliance and while he was placated to his dying day in 1661 the colonists leveraged an oppressive rule of the Wampanoag dissolving trust and setting the stage for that inevitable King Phillips IV. Whether Squanto intentionally blurred the lines when translating the treaty terms or was himself duped is unknown but his loyalty to the English quickly became apparent as he morphed into his diplomatic role perhaps to seek protection or even as a result of a sort of Stockholm syndrome which I mentioned earlier. When the English celebrated their first harvest with a bullish muster performed by the Colonials militia and then repeating blasting of the muskets they considered it entertainment but I think that it was interpreted as a threat by the Wampanoag and soon after Ussumekwin arrived with about 90 warriors and the virtual army of natives appearing without warning contrary to the diplomatic efforts of Hopkins and Winslow just a few months earlier it was a clear show of force on the part of Ussumekwin and his men they were responding to this muster this blasting of the muskets and all of this threatening behavior but that quickly got turned into a feasting situation. Bradford's history makes only a brief reference to this harvest feast with no mention of the participation really of the Wampanoag. Winslow however does write about the uninvited dinner desks whom for three days he said we entertained and feasted no doubt in another act of diplomacy to ease the strain confrontation which could only be achieved by each letting down their guard for his part Ussumekwin and his warriors contributed to the feast. They went out and killed five deer which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor and upon the captain and many others but nearly 250 years later this event serves as the inspiration to one of America's most popular holidays. So on the third Thursday of November American families gather together and celebrate a national day of unity and mutual gratitude inspired by a warped interpretation of that first harvest feast. The contemporary holiday perpetuates the myths of the Wampanoag and pilgrim relations. It further buries the truths of kidnappings, pestilence and subjugation and ignores the scant details of the tense encounter while it conjures up hallmarked images of happy natives and pilgrims feasting on a cornucopia of corn pies, meats including a fully dressed roast turkey with cranberry sauce. Squanto's true circumstance as a man without a country is virtually depleted from the pages of history. Either orphaned or rejected by his own people he found comfort among the English who took pleasure in his company and invaluable service. There could be no solace in the arms of his new family for the loss and betrayal of his own people. So that is the actual backstory to your pilgrim summit. Paula, thanks for doing such a clear and compressed story in essentially just over 30 minutes. And I know I have a ton of questions based upon what you've just told us. I've actually just learned a few things, many things that I didn't know. But maybe I can start out with a sort of a personal biography question is how did you get to realize it was your mission to tell this story at this level in this way? You know, that's a really good question. And you know, it started for me at a really young age because I can remember as a young child being in school and the Thanksgiving story is typically told in November and brought to light. And I had a teacher who described the story but didn't really speak about Wampanoag just said that there were these Indians that helped the pilgrims and they were wonderful but sadly they all died. And that was it. Yeah, so I had to raise my hand and say, no, that's not true, you know, that I'm still here. And I feel like I've been saying that ever since. So, you know, it has been something that sort of drives me to continue to get our story out there in a balanced way. I don't feel like I'm rewriting history. This is not revisionist history. This is just pulling history out of the margins. And in the description we talked about this as being the true story or the true history of the Wampanoag people. I also believe this is a, your family is very important among the Wampanoag as well. So this is not just a personal story. This is a family story in many ways. Yeah, and you know what? I think all of our families are important. We still are a very vital tribe. So that's why I thought it was gonna be fun to show that video of the Messenger Runner story because we are still here. And some of us are a little bit more vocal than others. And I do get out there and have a little bit to say. But I do that on behalf of the whole tribe because we are still here. And at what point do you feel the broader community in America has started listening to this story? Is that a very recent phenomenon or was there always some who are more open to hearing the bigger truth? You know, ironically, I would say that, sure, it had primarily been scholars who are doing so much deeper research into primary sources and that sort of thing. And then little kids, little kids who would ask that question, like they're not duped by this stuff. I remember being a little kid and saying, wait a second, how does Guantos speak English? And that question would get glossed over by educators back in the day when I was being educated because it wasn't part of the curriculum. Now at least it's part of the curriculum. And I would say in part due to the lead-up to the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower arrival, which actually has elevated our story, both here in the United States and in the UK and in Europe. And I think we've started to see, I'm not sure how far back this goes over several years, many organizations beginning to incorporate land and water acknowledgments into their, either their missions or their statements. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on that as one way forward. It's nice. I'm just gonna try and say that's nice, but what would really be nice is having our land restored to us and being able to continue to maintain our culture and our heritage in our ancestral homelands. And I do wanna get to the treaty work and the way forward in a little bit. But I also wanna go back to a couple of things that struck me as you were telling the early part of the story this evening. What comes through in terms of your description of the people who were here before people like myself is a richness of culture and a richness of connection to the earth and to nature and the spirituality that goes with that. That comes through very, very strongly. And yet it's the very thing that these colonists, these arriving colonists could not see or could not appreciate. Yeah, and I often point out the irony here and these are people that were, they were persecuted in their homeland and they had to leave to go somewhere else to have their own religious freedom, but they could not see their way clear to allow for the indigenous people to have their religious and spiritual freedom. Particularly as we get to those arriving 1600, 1620 and later that is completely, completely accurate. The other thing that has struck me is that in New England there's this tendency to look at the 400 year period as the defining moment of history. And I think this evening you've pointed to 1492, 1524, 1603, so many events prior to the 400 year mark that are relevant to interactions between arriving Westerners and peoples that were here. And that's before we even talk about the history of the peoples that were here and your own tribes history. Right, and this was why it was so important for us when we were invited to be partners really in the 400th anniversary commemoration. It was really important for us to start our clock for 400 years, at least back as far as 1614 because that is such a critical part of the story. Do you think about the fact that Plymouth was Potoxit? Potoxit was Squanto's home. Squanto was taken and Squanto's whole family died of the plague there and they literally had to sweep away the bones of the dead to build Plymouth. And that's stuff that just gets completely ignored or marginalized in history. I'm also struck by the use of treaties and there's actually one question already from an audience member that I wanna take in regards to this because the question relates to this notion of the native peoples selling land to the colonists. In what way could that even have made sense as we look back from where you sit now? Yeah, quite honestly, there was no concept of land ownership, there were territories and there was caretaking of land. And so I cannot imagine, especially, as I said, about the ambiguity between those who did speak somewhat of this language or the other that they were not communicating truthfully and there are parts of the treaty. I mean, I'm not gonna break it out here, it's kind of complicated, but there are parts of the treaty that even Bradford admits in his own writings that weren't expressed accurately. And I cannot imagine that Usamikwin being the powerful leader that he was to be called the Massasoid, which means great leader. So Usamikwin would have agreed to a treaty that empowers a king that he had never met in another land to be the ruler of his people, to be the law of the land. I think that didn't happen. Right, right, or they must have assumed that meaning in English, cause it would have been English for the majority, had a completely different meaning or just would not have translated into the local language, right? And that's where it does beg the question with Squanto, whether or not Squanto knew or whether Squanto was also duped, it's really hard to say, but it's funny, I sometimes compare Squanto to the bird that fell, the baby bird falls from a nest. And my mother always told me, you can't touch it. If you touch the baby bird that falls from the nest, the other bird will not, she'll just abandon it. So that was Squanto, he was the baby bird that fell from the nest and he got touched much. What's your research process been like to get to the point of telling the stories with the clarity that you have? Well, my research, I like to point out that I am not an academic, I am a storyteller and I have had the great benefit and also as a journalist for my journalistic background, I just love researching things. So I have had this passion of researching and hoping against hope, finding new evidence of things like the Wampum Belt, which I still hope that at some point we'll be able to get that return to us. But it just, I'm just so intrigued by these mysteries and being able to tell these stories with the validity that comes from just our basic indigenous knowledge about ourselves. And like I said, I mean, that's human knowledge. It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination. Someone like that little boy that was taken by Verrazano. They just talked about it, very matter of factly. We had to let the girl go because she was screaming. Well, she was probably screaming. In fear. That's my little boy, give him back. I mean, it's horrid when you think about it. So you just have to layer that human experience on top of it. So it feels like, because the written records are presumably mostly colonial historians, but what I hear you doing is asking the right questions and interrogating the written stories from the point of view of basic humanity and the tribal history and understanding that's passed down presumably orally as well. Sure. I mean, and it is coming at it a bit like a journalist. When I was wearing that hat, I would have to ask myself those questions. Yeah. You used one word, which also occurs in the video. Sechem, is that how you pronounce the word? Sechem, could you tell us what the meaning of that is just for the people understand? Sure. Sechem is also meaning a leader. Somehow Masasoyet is like a supreme leader over the Sechem. And each village, as I understand it, would have had a Sechem. And the Masasoyet was over many of those villages. So he would be a supreme Sechem, a supreme leader. We talked a moment ago or started to talk a moment ago about the restoration of lands to the tribal peoples. Could you just give us a small view of recent history and the federal process for dealing with that challenge and where we are today? Yeah. I'll try to do that without getting too ticked off, but I usually avoid talking about politics because it makes me so angry. But when you consider that I am 62 years old, when we initially petitioned the government to recognize that we are still here, I was 14. In 1974, my father was chairman of the Mashby Wampanoag tribe then, and his board of counsel had sent a letter to the Department of Interior, and he essentially died waiting for a response to that letter because that became the federal acknowledgement process. Prior to that, in the 1970s, there was no federal acknowledgement process, but it became clear to the Department of Interior to the government that this was gonna be a new Indian problem, that they hadn't gotten rid of us, and not only had they not gotten rid of us, the tribes to the east of the Mississippi, which they had just hoped that we would just assimilate and become part of the great melting pot, but that we hadn't, and that we were still living tribally in our villages, in our places here along the East Coast. So there needed to be a process to eliminate us further. So they developed the federal acknowledgement process, which I to this day feel like is the most cumbersome and bureaucratic and expensive legal litmus test that this country has ever developed. It took us 30 years to work through it. In the end, I mean, we started out, my dad was working on it, it was something that I just lived with. And it started out, we were working with Native American Rights Fund attorneys who were just young budding attorneys who wanted to get their feet wet in Indian law. But at the end of the day, we were really forced into a situation where because it was such an expensive process, because we needed lobbyists and lawyers and everything that went along with that, aligning ourselves or the tribe aligned with a gaming backer. And that became another ugly chapter in tribal history. Yeah, and it continues to be challenged to this day because we did finally get our acknowledgement, we also have our land in trust here in Mashby and in other places around the state. And that was something that some other gaming enterprises did not want to see Mashby have. Neighbors of the Taunton facility did not want to see that happen. So there was a great deal of pushback and that caused sort of this new look at what is the Mashby Wampanoag tribe trying to do. When from the very beginning, it has always been for us about preserving our heritage in our ancestral homeland. And that it became a part of a gaming initiative. It's only out of pure necessity that that happened. There were, and I'll tell you a little anecdote about that. I was still a working journalist back in 1995 and our tribe was number five or six on the ready for active participation list by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is just another mouthful of bureaucratis which meant that, yeah, we've got these 30,000 pages of documentation. Another hoop to jump through really, right? Yeah, and we were getting jumped over by other tribes who had gaming backers because gaming was the big deal at the time. And because native tribes had the Indian Gaming Act to assure the success of gaming facilities, deep pocketed investors really wanted to get aligned with young tribes or tribes that would be new, and really acknowledged. So I don't know, I probably told you too much. Well, it gives us a flavor of what's been happening recently and where you are now for those of us who are not as familiar with all of that struggle that continues to this day. There's a couple of questions I'm gonna start taking now. You may or may not know the answer to a couple of these. So we can always look them up later if we need to. The first one, well, this is a more broad question. So let's start with that. How should we transform America's story of Thanksgiving? You talked a little bit about what really happened in so far as we can imagine and how that story really deleted so much experience as it got told. So the question from this guest is, how should we transform the story of Thanksgiving today? You know, I think that the holiday itself is certainly not a bad thing. It's one of America's most popular holidays. But if it can begin to be acknowledged in a way that acknowledges the real history of what occurred, that's an important thing. And we also, and this has come about as a result of the 350th anniversary of Mayflower arrival was an opportunity for that organizing committee to invite a native speaker. Unfortunately, they were not very smart about how they did that because they invited the native speaker and they censored his truths because he, being Frank James, presented his proposed remarks, which did talk about these truths of the backstory and the kidnapping and the disease and all of these things. And they said, no, no, no, no, no, we don't wanna talk about that. And he ended up walking away from that and going up to the top of Coles Hill, which overlooks Plymouth Rock in Plymouth and giving his speech as he originally penned it. And that became the first ever national day of mourning. And that is a time for us to reflect on the sacrifices of our ancestors and to acknowledge that we are still here. And that's something that goes on in indigenous communities across the country and actually around the world to this day. So there's those two things. I mean, just acknowledging the real history and honoring the sacrifices of our ancestors. There's a couple of local questions here. Do you know stories about the Wampanoag Cemetery in Lakeville, Massachusetts? No. Okay, we'll send these along to you and Stephen later if you wanna get back to people. The next question is about a work by Professor Silverman. This land is their land. The person is asking you what your opinion of that recent book is. And I'm not personally familiar with it at all, so. Oh, I have a copy of it right back here. So his work is, you know, he is one of at least more recently a scholar who has addressed history in a more comprehensive way. And because he had some difficulty with some of the native people that he communicated with on that, I don't wanna say a whole lot more about it because he ticked off some people in the native community. And I can certainly understand why that happened. But, you know, that's part of the bigger issue of, you know, our story continually gets written and interpreted by non-native people. And non-native people are bound to step in shit. Right. Am I allowed to say that? We just did, so it's okay. To that point, I think non-native people struggle with the right way to refer to native peoples or the tribes or by their name. And do you wanna take maybe a minute or two and give us a little primer on the right way to do that? Sure, you know, obviously being called Indian is incorrect, but it has been done for centuries. It is something that I just came back from New Mexico where I was visiting with my daughter and my niece and visited some Indian Pueblos and marketplaces. And, you know, they openly used the term Indian. But also, I think that we are being so much more progressive in the way that we refer to all kinds of people. I mean, just look at all the acronyms that are out there. I'm just glad we don't have acronyms, but in most cases, if in fact, you know a person's or a tribe's tribal name, for instance, we prefer to be called Mashby Wampanoag, not, you know, call people by their tribal name. It's probably the best way to look at it. Indigenous, native, tribal name. Okay, great. Thank you very much for that. This next question asks about Duxbury, so close enough to Plymouth. Again, you may or may not know about this area. What was the indigenous name of the Duxbury area before the colonists came and who lived there? I believe that was a Massachusetts territory and it could be close to, you know, depending where in Duxbury, is that Wesa Gusset or is that more in Quincy? I don't know. I can't say for certain. Yeah, it would be a good research topic for someone to take up. Yeah. This next question talks about global migration to the USA, which clearly goes back, you know, quite a period of time. Is there a way that you have a perspective on today's global migration to the USA and how recent arrivals, what is their relationship to indigenous peoples? By recent arrivals, you mean immigrants? Yes. Yeah, what is it? I mean, I think that historically, indigenous people have welcomed refugees. We welcomed, not so much welcome, but we allowed the pilgrims to stay. They were refugees. For me, it's a really hard thing to imagine that this is a nation that does not welcome with open arms, you know, people who are fleeing persecution, people who are fleeing places where they can't live and speak freely. It's just one of the prouder things about being of this country and being an American because I am also an American is that we are this place that welcomes those people. And which, if we go back to the 1600s, there was probably a respectful way for visitors or explorers to arrive and be here, maybe? Yeah, and I did bring up some pretty, you know, nasty examples of bad behavior, but there were also those who knew enough to come and participate in local customs, just like we would do if we go to another country. You know, we wanna know, well, what's appropriate? What is culturally appropriate for these people? Some of us are suitably deferential and others are obnoxious and arrogant when we travel today. So, you know, you make the distinction, I think between, was it Hunt and Smith, their behavior and understanding of the local culture at one point with two radically different approaches. Right, and you know, not that Smith could have been defined also as kind of a bad boy and he did have some sour encounters and there was one in particular with Wampanoag prior to him leaving. But I see that more as a stumble than at least as he was making his way through New England. But, you know, his time in Virginia, he, I believe, learned from that experience that these people are, the indigenous people are a force to be reckoned with and you don't just march in and demand to have your way. There's a question here about involvement in the whaling industry in New England. Is that something that you have a familiarity with and could comment on? Only to speak about it, to say that yes, that did occur, that, you know, even, you know, historically before there were ships, our people were very adept in making huge dugout canoes and launching parties out to harvest whale from canoes, from large canoes. Sure. I know that one of the things that makes me really curious about, you know, what happened how, I guess the word is diaspora of the Wampanoag is that there were many of our men that got on whaling ships from Cape Cod and Nantucket the Islands and drifted off to other parts of the world. So we have ancestors who were probably all over the world who just became part of that whaling community. Great. And maybe given that, what is the strength in numbers of the Mashpee Wampanoags today? Well, from what I understand, there's about 2,500 of us today and of the Aquino Wampanoag, there's probably about 1,500 and then there are also these many smaller bands of Wampanoag, Herring Pond, Chepaquitic, a sonnet where communities of Wampanoag people have thrived for hundreds if not thousands of years. And then we have archeological evidence that shows that Wampanoag people have lived here for over 12,000 years. And so these other small bands, even though they're not federally acknowledged bands, they are recognized by us as part of our overall community. So there are literally hundreds and hundreds of us. Cause I think if we take the longer history view, people begin to wonder if migration is a way to explore human history over much greater periods of time. But the notion that 12,000 is certainly a long period of time to be able to trace roots back. So that's really good to know. Yeah. And as we move towards closing out the conversation, there's a few questions here related to future. And Diana asked us, what is the best way that non-natives can support the Wampanoags and other tribes as we move into the future? You know, I think that just as we are, I would never co-opt something like Black Lives Matter, but to acknowledge that the indigenous communities across this country have, what we have suffered. I mean, most recently, the story of those poor children who died in the boarding school has kind of taken over some headlines and rightfully so. You know, it's important for us to acknowledge these horrid histories so that we can move forward and just be supportive to one another. So yeah, I guess to be aware and acknowledge. And maybe out of the current movements and discourse, there's perhaps a greater appreciation for racial differences more broadly. That's a hopeful reading of our current time, clearly, but one that I would like to hope is possible. Right. And this is an actual question from an audience member. The correct pronunciation of Wampanoag. Wampanoag, would you please see are both correct? Is one wrong and one right? I guess both are correct, but within our own community, we say Wampanoag. Okay, great. Thank you. We're all coming towards the end of this, we hope towards the end of this COVID-19 pandemic. I have two questions on this for you. One, as a people that were afflicted by sickness early on that was brought from Europe, I think you even mentioned that in your remarks. Does that give you a perspective on current reality and how have you as a people fared during this pandemic? You know, it does and I felt like, wow, you know, here this is happening around the world and I did read back some of the quotes from the Puritans who talked about this plague being God's will upon us and obviously using it as a tool to take over our lands and our people. But now we live in a time where we fully understand the implications of a plague like this. We have a World Health Organization which helped us to navigate this horrific plague pandemic around the world. And even though there are still places where it is ravaging, we can have a better hold on it. There were some people in my community who were hesitant about getting the vaccine and you can completely understand a lack of trust in government and that sort of thing. But I put it to them like this. I got the vaccine as soon as it was offered to me because I felt like I owed that to my ancestors because had they had a cure or a treatment for that great dying that had happened in the 1600s, just imagine what a different world we'd be in. And because had they survived, we would have been so much stronger of people. And so I feel like I kind of owed it to my next generation to survive. But yeah, it was kind of ironic too that that came about during this 400th anniversary and causing for so many of the events and activities that were planned to commemorate Mayflower were sort of put on hold or canceled. Now some of those things are getting picked back up again. I'm supposed to be actually I do have a trip planned to Plymouth, England to speak on this in July. So, and I keep thinking, okay, this has got to be almost over and maybe I can just relax a little bit but people keep asking me to talk about it. And my son makes me do it. And I think I'd curated exhibitions or part of exhibitions during this period or right before COVID at Provincetown in Plymouth and in Plymouth, England as well. Yes, yeah, it's been fun. Good. From your perspective, and I'll make this my final question and then any closing thoughts that you wanna add, what will we learn from these last 15 months? What could we learn from these last 15 months? You know, I hope we learn. I hope that, you know, because there's been a lot of insanity. I mean, there's just been, you know, they COVID deniers and the people who, you know, have made it a political sort of a political pawn. And this is serious. It's very serious. And if we are to, I think what it has shown us is that no one was spared that we're all human. And that if we want to protect one another, you know, we needed to take those precautions. We needed to mask up. We needed to be able to, in order to get to where we are today. And, you know, like I said, I just felt like an obligation to do that, not just for myself, but the people around me and, you know, and my next generation. Well, Paula, thank you so much for joining us this evening. I know it's virtual and we're still, you know, trying to make virtual work. Really appreciate you being willing to come and join us for this Baxter lecture here at the Boston Public Library. I hope to have the opportunity to meet you in person at some point. And I really want to thank you for sharing your truth, Juan Penoa truth, the truth. So thank you. If you would like to learn more about the information spoken of tonight, here are some resources provided to you by American ancestors, New England Historical Genealogical Society. We'll be dropping the links into the chats that are on this slide. And they'll also, of course, be part of the recording when posted. Once again, thank you all for joining us tonight. Our thanks go to the BPL staff, to our friends at GBH, to the New England Historical Genealogical Society, American Ancestor staff, and to Paula for sharing her story with us. Until next time, be safe, be well. See you then.