 The series were focused on mascots, logos, imagery, and cultural appropriation, and land back and land justice movements. Genocide and resettlement may appear to many as things of the past, but it must be acknowledged that a history of colonial disappearance of an entire people, their children, and their land has a clear and horrifying imprint in today's racist stereotyping that only holds a false supremacist mirror to native youth and to all who are subjected to being forced into an image not of their own making. It is for this reason, among others, that Double Edge determined to add easements to the 100 acres of our farm center to the Okiteo community, in addition to the workshop and studio spaces for the cultural center, where the voices of Okiteo are determinant and have the final word on their own identity. Please learn more about the previous parts of the series on HowlRound or sign up for the next two in the series. September 19th on Art and Social Change and October 24th on oppression and erasure through public plaques and statuary. I want to take this opportunity to thank HowlRound for broadcasting and also holding all of the Living Presence series on their website, to the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, and to our sponsors at Jacobs Pillow and the Strategic Partnership at Mass Humanities. I hope you've had a chance to see the exhibit in the pavilion by Andre Strong-Bearhart Gaines, Jr., the Okiteo artist and resident. Or if you haven't seen it, you can also see it following this event. And now the co-directors of Okiteo. Rhonda Anderson is a Nufiak Atabaskin from Alaska. Her native enrollment village is Coptovic. Her life work is most importantly as mother, a classically trained herbalist, Silver Smith, and activist. She works as an educator activist on the removal of mascot's water protector Indigenous identity and protecting her traditional homeland in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from extractive industry. Rhonda curated vital, vibrant, visible Indigenous identity through portraiture and ongoing collection and exhibit of native peoples of New England and as curator of Living Presence. Rhonda has been named a Commonwealth heroine and is commissioner of Indian affairs in western mass and a founder of both Okiteo and the Native Youth Empowerment Foundation. Larry Spotted Croman is a citizen of the Nipmuk Nation. He is a nationally acclaimed award-winning writer, poet, and cultural educator, traditional storyteller, tribal drummer, dancer, and motivational speaker involving youth sobriety, culture, and environmental awareness. Larry's books include Morning Road to Thanksgiving, Drumming and Dreaming, and the Whispering Basket and are available online or through the Double Edge or Okiteo websites. Larry recently premiered a segment from his new play Freedom and Season and the full-length production will be presented over the course of the next year. He has been a board member of the Nipmuk Preservation, is on the review committee at the Native American Poets Project and is the artist in residence at Bunker Hill Community College and travels throughout the U.S. and Canada and parts of Europe to schools, colleges, powwows, and other organizations sharing music, culture, and history of the Nipmuk people and lectures also on Native American sovereignty and identity. Larry is co-director of Okiteo and also the Native Youth Empowerment Fund, Foundation. And now Larry will welcome you to Living Presence. Thank you. Thank you Stacey for that beautiful introduction. Thank you all for being here. I greet you in the words of this land. I welcome you all. Konipiem, our word for welcome. I greet you in the Algonquin Nipmuk words that reflect the ground that we are on right now. The trees, the water, and all the land around us that we must reflect and kind of center ourselves and think about those words because they are not just words as we are taught. They are the ecology of the space. And so with that I also want to share a welcoming song. Thank you all once again for coming to Okitayu. Okitayu is a Nipmuk word for a place to plant and to grow. And so because of all of you, we are growing. Thank you. I greet you in the words of this land. I greet you in the Algonquin Nipmuk words that reflect the ground that we must reflect in the Algonquin Nipmuk words that reflect the ground that we must reflect me and Native Youth Empowerment Foundation. Thank you for being here. I just said good afternoon and welcome in my language. My name is Rhonda Anderson. I'm back at the Baskin from Alaska. I grew up here in Western Massachusetts. I lived in Plainfield and went to school, elementary school at the beloved old Sanderson Academy right in the center of town. But I choose to live here in Western Massachusetts. And the land that I'm really privileged to steward and live on is in Colrain. It's the traditional homelands of Sokoke, Abinaki, and Pekamtuk on the Pekamagon watershed, which is known as the Green River today. So I want to recognize this land that we are all guests on. Not all of us, most of us are guests on. And this land that we are all benefiting from is Wabanaki Confederacy Territory. Wabanaki means the place where the sun is born every day. And that makes the people of this territory people of the dawnland. So tribes historically local to this area would be Sokoke, Abinaki, Pekamtuk, Nipmuk, Nanatuk, and Mohican tribes. Sokoke means people who go their own way. And they're still here as a state recognized tribe in Vermont. Pekamtuk is a Mohican Pekamtuk word that would translate roughly to people of a narrow swift stream or river or a swift clear stream. Pekamtuk were absorbed with their kin, the Mohican, Abinaki, and Nipmuk. Nipmuk means people of the freshwater. And they are a state recognized tribe in Massachusetts with a small reservation of land that has never been seated or out of tribal hands. Nanatuk means the oxbow part of the Quinnituk River. And local tribes also absorb the Nanatuk. Mohican translates to people of the waters that are never still. And that's referencing the Hudson River. War, genocide, dispossession, and colonization that press the Nanatuk and Pekamtuk to seek refuge with their neighboring kin tribes also pushed the Mohican Stockbridge and Muncie Vans west in the late 1700s through 1800s to Wisconsin, where they have a reservation today on Menominee territory. The Mohican tribe does have a office in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and lands in Troy, New York to maintain their local ties. We are in the watershed of the Quinnituk River or Connecticut River. Quinnituk means long tidal river. And this river has known many names right by many different groups of people along its flowing path, but Quinnituk was kind of stuck. So it's important to remember that while indigenous communities have lived, gathered, farmed, hunted, and fished in this area for thousands of years, they're still here and not metaphorically, 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, to honor and respect their sovereignty. So in that spirit, in this land acknowledgement, I would like to give three action items. First, recognize and make changes to dominant narratives that glorify colonization and genocide of indigenous people of this area in particular. Be mindful that problematic terms like Pioneer Valley are a reminder of a legacy of dispossession, removal, and subsequent erasure. Second, please consider supporting any one of the Native tribes and organizations represented here today. We will post a resource list and toolkit after this event. Lastly, there are currently five bills in the State House that five tribes, no, six tribes of Massachusetts support that address removing racist mascots from public schools, changing Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day, that's why we're here today, and a bill respecting cultural heritage, another to create appropriate educational curriculum in our schools on Massachusetts tribes, and one to create a permanent commission to ensure local education, to ensure the education of local Native youth in the state. So please contact your legislator through MAindigenousagenda.org and encourage them to sponsor and support these bills. So Koyanak-Malak-Nagivsi, thank you for listening. And Pagalagivsi, again, welcome to the living presence of our history part four. This is going to be a conversation with Indigenous leaders and scholars regarding the importance of Indigenous People's Day. And my goal is centering and listening to Indigenous voices as that is the very first step in understanding and moving forward. So this IPD movement has been happening since 1977, right, with the first official IPD happening in South Dakota in 1987. So this is nothing new, but it took 10 years to get the first one to happen. So thankfully, locally, we have seen the neighboring towns of Amherst, North Hampton, and most recently East Hampton, as well as Great Barrington, Brookline, Cambridge, Newton, and Somerville begin to celebrate Indigenous People's Day. Massachusetts is on track to join these 14 states in observing Indigenous People's Day. Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia. So 26 states do not currently celebrate Columbus Day and more than 130 cities and towns observe Indigenous People's Day instead of Columbus Day, with many, many more joining the right side of history each year. So, you know, I personally applaud every city, every town, every school system, every business, every state that chooses this right side of history on making this small but vital step in creating a resolution that's inclusive of all their residents, of all of us. So I also want to give this standard warning that we will be using terms today in language that is difficult to hear. Uncomfortable words that you're likely going to hear are intentional genocide, intentional cultural genocide, dispossession, torture, rape, murder, and white supremacy. But we must acknowledge these challenging words and these truths of colonization and its legacy. We must understand that colonialism is profoundly impacting Indigenous People in many ways to this day. We must be able to understand that colonization is not only a historical action, but colonization is an ongoing and continuing practice. So please listen, check where that energy of discomfort begins, and feel those emotions by all means, and understand where fear or guilt might sneak in, maybe even feeling defensive might come into play, but learn how to sit with those feelings and use that energy for a greater good. Only when we recognize these horrible atrocities can we then move forward in a good way. We must move forward by lifting Indigenous voices and bringing balance to this heavy narrative by highlighting our contemporariness, our successes, and contributions to mainstream society. So I am honored to, I'll get to this now, I'm honored to introduce the panelists here today, and I am grateful for their presence and voice on this vital topic. As I introduce each panelist, I would like to ask a quick round of questions to get to know each individual and how their lived experiences intersect with this topic today. And unfortunately, I ask that the panelists try to keep the answers to around two minutes or less on this, this round. Jorge Baracuta esta vez, Taíno, hails from the Sibo Mountains of the island of Quisquea, also known as Dominican Republic. He is one of the architects of the Taíno Reclamation Movement, which began in the New York City area some 35 years ago. Esta vez was also employed at the Smithsonian National Museum of American Indian for 25 years, and he was a museum program specialist and assistant to research. He organized over 424 programs with Native people from Alaska and Greenland all the way down to the tip of South America. This is what this is the kicker. Every Monday between 1 and 5 pm, you did 961 workshops on Taíno culture, language, and history. In addition to this, he is founder and classique of the Iwagwa Taíno people of the Caribbean. This tribal group is Pan-Caribbean in scope, with membership originating on all major Caribbean islands and the diaspora. Currently Esta vez and his group are in the process of publishing a Taíno language dictionary. So Jorge, I need to mention, how did you find the energy to accomplish 961 workshops in one afternoon? So really, when did you begin to understand the need for education on your tribe? What events led you to this life path? Well, my own personal journey began when I was five years old, so I've been on this journey my entire life. I would constantly run into individuals from Puerto Rico, particularly in some of the other islands who I did identify as Taíno, but we never had, we didn't have anything organized. We began meeting each other at powwows, and slowly but surely the need grew to get this thing back going and to acknowledge our ancestors and also to show the academic world that the Taíno did not disappear, that we were still here, very much here. So it's not a single effort, it's an effort of many people, but eventually we won. Eventually, quick story, when I first joined the museum, when I first went to the museum for the first time, I was 11 years old, and there was a sign that said, sadly by 1565, all the Taíno had disappeared, and I always wanted to kick that sign down. And when I left, when I retired two years ago, I left behind, not myself, but a group of people, an exhibit which was about the Taíno survival. So now the Smithsonian acknowledges Taíno survival, and that to me was amazing to see that come full circle like that. Thank you, that's beautiful. Thank you. Did you get to kick the sign? Sort of, but not the way I wanted to. Dr. Jaleen Flores, a rival and chiropractic physician, is a mother of three children. Born of Boracua parents, she was raised in the metro area of Massachusetts. Her great-grandmother Irene was a traditional corandera, midwife, and Santa Agüera. Dr. Flores continues her family's legacy as a holistic worksero, which is a bone setter, and holistic, energetic worker to treat patients of all ages, and her treatments combine traditional acolados and teas. Dr. Flores is a traditional medicine keeper for her Taíno-Egua Agua tribe, and she is also a United States veteran who is highly decorated for her participation in the war in Iraq. Dr. Flores owns and operates a wellness business in Brooklyn, Massachusetts, called Karaya Wellness Clinic. Known for her activism and advocacy for more holistic medicine to be taught and practiced in the BIPOC community, Dr. Flores prides herself on preserving the ancestral ways to raise her children and serve Native and Indigenous communities. So, Darlene, welcome and thank you for your service to this country. You know, as an herbalist myself, like I'm really happy to know that you're continuing these traditions, right, of healing. So where did you learn your traditional healing from? I think it was innately that I just had certain abilities as a child, and it wasn't until I guess, coming of age, my grandmother took me aside and said, wait a minute, you know, you're doing this, you're doing that, and there's a lot of things that I did not know were Native, but we just automatically would do them, like the teas and the massages and, you know, the type of stuff that we ate or how we interact with mother nature at the beta. So I really didn't realize that was Indigenous until I'm growing up with non-Indigenous people. They said, what are you doing? I'm like, what do you mean? What am I doing? You guys don't do this, you know, and so things like that is what I continue to do, and I am a mom of three children, so I'm very involved with the community and trying to keep my children following the ways of our ancestors, and I am a member of Kigua Yagwa, and I owe a lot to my kassike, which means chief, keeping me in line and making sure that I'm following the ancestral path. Thank you, Mavarika, for having me. Thank you for being here and thank you for sharing. Melissa Ferretti. Can you wave, Melissa? Hi. Melissa Ferretti was born in Plymouth County, daughter of Bernard Marston Harding of Herringpond, Wombanoag, and raised in Cedarville, South Plymouth by Verna M. Harding, who is a Herringpond Wombanoag Tribal Elder, a descendant of Love Saunders. Melissa attended Plymouth Carver School System most of her life and graduated from Pembroke Academy. Melissa is a Commonwealth of Massachusetts licensed real estate associate and a Notre Republic. She is elected chairwoman of Herringpond Wombanoag Tribes located in Plymouth, Mass. I know Melissa is super busy. She's crazy busy, but she volunteers much of her time to her tribal community, like all of her time, I'm going to say. In her dedicated role as chairwoman, she currently serves on several committees and is engaged in social justice, health, and educational initiatives. So welcome back and thank you so much for finding time to be here today, Melissa. Nice to be here. Thank you for having me. So my question to you is, did you get a sense that the education in the schools that you attended and maybe even the surrounding communities, did they support the history and contemporariness of your community? Well, I would have to say, you know, without giving my age away too quickly. When I was educated in the Plymouth Carver School System, I would definitely say that the, you know, the Mayflower and the Pilgrims and the, you know, the romanticized Pilgrim story and Thanksgiving story was certainly more recognized and appreciated than the Indigenous story. I don't really feel growing up that I myself even really knew who I was until I, you know, got much older and was able to really get to understand the actual genocide that happened and just, you know, it's just a really, it's really tough when you get to that point when you realize how oppressed you really were growing up. So yeah, no, I don't, to answer the question, I don't feel as if my time growing up in Plymouth School Systems, Plymouth Carver, it was at the time we were very much appreciated, unfortunately. I would imagine, I would imagine that there was a time where I wore, you know, where we were celebrating Thanksgiving and I was to wear paper hats and feathers and all of those, those wonderful things that we at least, you know, are cognizant of now. And I do hope, moving forward, that Plymouth Carver and Plymouth School System and others in the Commonwealth do start to really think about getting Indian education into the system. We are in talks with Plymouth Schools currently to try to get these programs, but when I was a child, you know, in the 70s and 80s, we were, I don't really feel that we were supported, no. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. That's such a hard thing to hear and, you know, but we're making changes, right? Moving forward. Another panelist I'd like to introduce is Claudia Foxtree, Arawak Yoraman, is a professional educator. Can you say hi, Claudia? Wave so that we know who, yay. Educator and social justice activists who teaches courses and workshops on transforming curriculum and culturally responsive training, teaching practices. Claudia has been a middle school special education teacher for over 30 years. Claudia also earned her bachelor's degree in psychology and anthropology from UMass Boston and a teaching certification from Fitchburg State College and a master's degree in education from Northeastern University with a focus on educational research. She's currently a doctoral student at Lesley University. Claudia has been a board member of Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness for over 20 years. You are a, Claudia is a tribal member of the and a Massachusetts liaison for United Confederation of Taíno People headquartered in New York. UCTP is dedicated to promoting human rights, cultural heritage, and spiritual traditions of the Taíno and Caribbean indigenous citizens in their social, economic, educational, cultural, and spiritual development. Welcome, Claudia. My question for you is, I heard you once quote your daughter as saying, our existence is an act of resistance and intervention. Can you please expand on that really powerful quote? Let me begin. Taigwe Dichunu, Kena Ateano, Neurman Arak, Dacadiere, Claudia Foxtree. She, her currently a guest on traditional unceded, unsurrendered Pawtucket territory. You know, we've already heard just a touch of what indigenous people have gone through on their own lands. And when I say own lands, I mean our own lands in terms of territorial land that the same groups have inhabited for millennia, and also the lands that we visited, traded, and moved upon even if they weren't the lands that our people settled on. And everything from that first contact with a lost sailor has been about making indigenous people invisible. From writing out of history books to erasing languages to forcing changes in religion to doing a census and saying, well, I guess they've all disappeared because indigenous people aren't showing up in the square to be mass murdered, for example. So everything has been about making us invisible. So when we speak up and when our allies speak up to include voices to point out inaccurate information, we are resisting the forced invisibility. And even with what I would call hypervisibility, it works in two ways. One way is a performative way. See, I have invited an indigenous person to be in my teacher at my school or a presenter at my school. So in a performative way, which is only the reason it's done is because there's already an invisibility. So that's kind of funny. And also in the hypervisibility way, where false images and explanations of history are shown as see, we include only it's not an accurate story or image or words or, you know, fill in the blank. And so our visibility is almost in a pretendish kind of way, like a cartoon, where our true people speaking for us or us speaking is our act of resistance of being here. And I want to add one other small piece about resistance. Even if there were a day where there were no indigenous people, everything we have contributed to this country and the world would continue to exist. So even in that way, we are in our future generations and the thing, the legacy of what we have contributed to the world continues to resist being made invisible. Thank you. That's really powerful explanation of that quote. Thank you very much for sharing. Next, I'd like to introduce Brittany Wally. Brittany is a Nipmuc anti-tribal mascot representative and a member of the Mass Mascot Steering Coalition and a member of the Special Commission established to redesign the state flag and seal of Massachusetts. She has sat on a lot of panels focused on the removal of native mascots and the observation of indigenous people today. When she was young, Ms. Wally's father, Big Tree, Bradley Big Tree Wally, served as a Nipmuc powwow with her uncle Henry Sly Fox Wally. This strengthened Brittany's motivation to examine the needs of her community and it pushes her to seek out where she can apply her strength to serve it. Ms. Wally is also a traditional and contemporary artisan focusing on the woven goods of native eastern woodlands cultures. Her work has been featured at Plymouth and Patuxet and also at Concord and Antiquarian Society where she is currently cataloging local native artifacts to help the museum comply with NAGPRA, which is Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Ms. Wally holds a bachelor's degree in sociology with minors in philosophy and business management from Rhode Island College and she will be starting critical ethnic and community studies programs at UMass Boston this fall with the goal to become a stronger advocate for indigenous voices. Thank you, Brittany. Welcome back. It's so good to see you. So, you know, playing off of what we've just heard about, you know, Melissa made a comment about Plymouth. I'm going to go there. So, did you, like, have you experienced any of that, like working with, I don't know if I should say that, working with Plymouth and Patuxet, did you like the experience like that sort of romanticized mythological point of view regarding colonization and how that leads to our invisibility of our cultures? So, just to start off, quite a quack well on me. Good afternoon. To answer that question would take a lot more than two minutes. I would definitely say that there are some things I miss about working there. I've always interfaced with the public. I usually interface with younger folks because I used to teach martial arts to little kids too. So, being able to educate from that standpoint is something that I think is really beneficial. I do think that there are some structural issues that can be addressed when it comes to telling history, this kind of history, and with a place that's established really as Plymouth and Patuxet, I think that they should have the experience and the minds and the knowledge to really deeply understand that those changes need to happen and they need to be happening yesterday. So, I would say that there are some things again that I did enjoy doing there, but I think that there are deeper issues that do need to be addressed. The romanticizing of the colonists story can definitely happen. I can't control. No one can control who comes through the museum and everyone's going to come with a different outlook. You could get someone local from Plymouth. You could get someone from across the globe who has no concept at all. I might have been the first Native person that they ever met. It's a little daunting. So, you can't really control what people are coming to you with, but you do have control to a certain extent from where I was working from to educate them and hopefully when they leave, they're at least brought to a place where they can have a transformative moment to get over that romanticizing and to see some truth. Thank you for sharing, Brittany. And last but certainly not least is Heather LaValle. She, her hers. She is a second generation Italian American and co-founder of Italian Americans for Indigenous Peoples Day, a Massachusetts-based group supporting indigenous-led efforts to rename Columbus Day and eradicate Columbus statues and place names in the public realm. She is co-founder of two successful Indigenous Peoples Day campaigns and is the first in her former city of Melrose Mass and more recently in Bedford, Massachusetts, where she currently resides. Both communities are located on the unceded ancestral lands of Massachusetts tribe. Heather also assists the Massachusetts Indigenous legislative agenda in advancing anti-racist legislation addressing critical concerns of indigenous communities. Heather is a museum director and curator in the Boston area and a mother of two. So Heather, thank you so much for being here today. Hi everybody. Thanks for having me. It's so good to see you in this way. We're always on panels together. So what brought you to this movement? What brought you to this movement to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day? Well, first I wanted to say that I'm just really honored to be here in an awe of every single one of you and you've all educated me so much and I'm just very appreciative of all the time and energy that you spend on this. So I think I got here today just by just my sense that I've always wanted to understand, like in order to understand myself and my place in this world, it's always been driven to kind of learn about who has come before me, not just my own family's history, but the histories of the first peoples of Atlanta, which I live and that understanding has always kind of been based in the past and I have less of a knowledge of the living presence of Indigenous people that we're talking about here today. But that did change when I became a mother and I realized that we had moved to a school district with a racist mascot and I learned very quickly that it's very difficult to compel school administrators and community members to feel empathy for individuals that they don't believe even exist. And so I really began listening to and learning from Indigenous people, Claudia being one of them in those early days and developing a broader understanding of how profound the erasure has been, particularly in our part of the country and the many ways that the genocide continues today, our celebration of a white supremacist being one of them. And so I've learned to know that as an ally it's really important for me to help to create a space to center Indigenous voices and that Indigenous people must lead in any advocacy work that issues that affect them. So I began to get more actively involved in Indigenous people's day efforts after witnessing the war finally raises pushback directed at Indigenous people, by my own people, at public meetings where we name the holiday was being discussed. And I talked to Matoi Monroe of Indigenous People's Day in Massachusetts, that's the Indigenous led group that has been organizing IPG campaigns for decades and learned from her that it would be really helpful to have a group of progressive Italian Americans that could help provide sort of an anti-racist argument, counter argument to the intense pushback. And so that's how Italian Americans for IPG was formed. Great, thank you for sharing. So I hope you, the audience that every one of you kind of heard this collective lived experience, right? The experiences and the need to create educational opportunities to understand the many cultures of Indigenous peoples better and to reasonably assert that we are still here. So I feel like I should really mention today that we have two tribes on the panel that experienced two of the most significant first contact events, albeit nearly 130 years apart. So I believe it's essential to recognize that Indigenous people on Turtle Island today are compromised of over 600 tribes of rich roughly 560 some odd 574 are federally recognized. And we have many different cultures and even different races. So it feels important to highlight the many points of view on what Indigenous People's Day means because that will be different for everyone. So I think it's important to ask like that question directly. You have traveled extensively, right? And you have worked at the National Museums of American Indian. So what does Indigenous People's Day mean to you? Well, a lot of things, but I remember one day I was at the museum and a tourist came in and asked me what the museum meant to me. And I told her, you know, that having the objects in a certain space and everything, you know, but then I realized that outside of the museum, it's like nobody knows what's happening in Native America. It's almost like Native people don't exist at all, you know, it's not in the public consciousness whatsoever. So the Indigenous People's Day is that same thing, you know, it's like having that awareness out there so that people understand that there are issues and that Indians are not something that you just see in movies, you know, that there's a lot of real issues that are going on and the people are still here. At the museum, you would get a lot of these questions that relate to this from foreigners who were more interested in Native people than the people from this country. And that to me was amazing and very disturbing, you know. There were people that would come in from Belgium who knew where the museum was and people right up the street who did not know that the museum was there. And here was a museum with over 1.5 million objects, you know, from all over the Americas. I mean, there's so much history there and it was basically unknown. So a day like this puts a lot of focus on Native people, you know, and to tell the truth about what actually happened here, you know, so that's it. Thank you for your point of view. I think that's very important. Melissa, what are your thoughts on Indigenous People's Day and its importance as your tribe was one of the two that was directly impacted by these significant contact events? Well, okay. So I mean, I guess as an Herringpond Indian, as we were called, you know, back in the day, you know, we were a once powerful nation, right? Nearly 90% of our people were lost after the disease and the people at Patuxet, I mean, we were literally under the boots of the colonizers. Our ancestors were forced out of the colony to flee down to the furthest reaches and the borders between Plymouth and Borndale. I think for me, in some way, it would be a great form of healing, right? We're often, as Claudia had said, invisible, we're misunderstood. Our histories and our narratives are unfairly or not written at all. You know, the narratives and the blatant forms of cultural erasure are just really right in our face. So I guess for me, you know, all of these things, they, once again, I echo that it makes us feel invisible, you know, it perpetuates false information about the Herringpond tribe, the Patuxet people, that it was a total loss. And, you know, this is written in history book after history book, inaccurately. And I just feel that if we were to be able to embrace Indigenous people's day, then it would give us some form of, you know, healing for our community. You know, we idolize these, these murderers and, you know, not just Christopher Columbus. I mean, growing up in Plymouth, we have a mile standard state forest named after a murderer, a man who kept the head of Witte Weyman on a pole in the colony for however many years, along with King Phillips head that sat in this colony, literally under in the heart of our traditional homeland. So I don't think it's much to ask to recognize and acknowledge the first people of this land and throughout the country and abroad. So I guess for me, it would be a great, great amount of healing. And I would hope my community would agree with me on that. Yeah, thank you for, thank you for sharing. And I think what was that 20 or 25 years? King Phillips head was on a pole in the center of town. So it's a little excessive. Larry, what does Indigenous people's day mean to you? Like, what is, what does it look like to you? And why is that important to healing in this country? Well, yeah, that's a very profound question on many levels. You know, just to think about, you know, I come from three generations of children who were removed from their home. The last one was my grandfather's oldest brother in 1907 was taken. And the hell that me and my siblings went through going to school here in Massachusetts, as we discussed in the previous panel. And the way we were treated. And then thinking about now in my 50s that there's actually an Indigenous people's day. It's, it's quite profound to think about the abuse, not from other people, but from the teachers that now we have this day. And people have different thoughts on it. But what I look at it as an opportunity to open up space, space for this education to take place of the things I'm sharing in a more significant way about the brutality, the racism, the removal and things that happen that are not abstract. They're shared and lived experiences for myself, my little cousin over there, Brittany, and all of our community people that are from here. These are not things that, you know, you have to read in the book, I can tell you, you know, I knew my grandfather, and he knew his grandmother. And so these are things that are passed down, not only physically, but dramatically through our genetic makeup that bring about all this different pain. And so I applaud this opportunity to have a day that allows people to engage in that, that pain. And as Rhonda pointed out earlier, it's going to be a hard conversation. There's no easy way out of this. And people should really understand that, you know, you're talking about over 500 years of suffering. And so that has to be accounted somewhere in some place, you know, we've been taking that, doing that heavy lifting. And now we have our allies coming on board supporting this and kind of engaging in that because we know we all need this to heal. And so I see it as a wonderful opportunity as an educator myself to bring forth this information wherever people find themselves living on somebody's ancestral homeland that you can learn and engage with that community right there and see how you can actually help these intentional actions that can make change real change. And I think we're moving in that direction with this Indigenous people's day. So yeah, thanks. Thank you for sharing, Larry. That's really important to understand the healing aspect. You know, I thought really hard, long and hard about the topics and the flow of this panel. I'm on the phone with Jorge like, how do I do that? You know, and I, I really want to have a conversation. I want you to get to know our humanity and our shared experiences. I do understand that we must tackle the issue of Christopher Columbus, however, I do not feel like we need to center him here. I even had him on our flow at one point. And I was like, you know what? No, I realized that we really, we really don't have to, we don't have to include him here. But I also realized that we cannot talk about Christopher Columbus and colonization without first understanding who the Taino are. Because this is where the centering should be when we talk about Columbus. So Jorge, you have mentioned before that you constantly educate others who deny and invalidate your identity and insist that Taino is an extinct culture, right? So who are the Taino and how are they thriving culturally today? Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. All right, so that's a very broad question. And what a very important one. So you can break it up like this. Who were the Taino when the Europeans first landed? The Taino people are derived from various tribal nations, all of the Arawak language who migrated from Venezuela and Guyana across seven to eight thousand years. So that by the time that the Europeans landed in 1492, when we discovered Columbus on our beaches, we had already merged into a single unit. Diverse regionally, but our languages were very similar and our material culture was the same. What a lot of people don't know is that the history in the Caribbean, when it's told by the Europeans, it's done in a paragraph. So Columbus landed, sorry for using the name, but Columbus landed the people that were there were enslaved because they were very peaceful, et cetera, et cetera, old myths, and within 50 years they're all gone. And that's it. The story is gone. What the people don't know is that it took over a hundred years for the Spaniards to actually conquer the region. There was a lot of small bands of people fighting across the island. For example, a very first treaty that was signed in the Western Hemisphere between a native nation and an Indian nation with the Europeans was in the Caribbean. So when you read a lot of the Caribbean history, you'll always find mentions of Indians living here and Indians living there. But we're always, I like to use a term paper genocide, because for example, there's a town in the Dominican Republic called Boya that was listed as an Indian town until 1793. And basically the way we lost our jurisdiction in that town was that when the census takers came, they realized that a lot of the people no longer spoke their language and therefore they were no longer Indians. That was just their idea. So they listed us at extinct and that that village lost its jurisdiction. And this happened all across the Caribbean. In Puerto Rico, you have an instance where again, in the 1790s, it must have been something concerted. But in the 1790s in one year, they list 4,000 Indians living in a certain location. The next year, they call them 4,000 people of color, no longer Indians. So you see with the pen, they can, I think the pen did more damage to us than even the weapons. And that's what we've had to contend with throughout our history. As I was growing up, my whole my entire life, I always, you know, I remember when I first came to the United States, I was living in a predominantly white neighborhood. And in school, the teachers would ask me if I was Indian. And when I mentioned the S, and they asked me from where and I would say the Dominican Republic. Then the story changed, like, Oh, you can't be an actually one teacher actually brought me an encyclopedia to show me that there were no Indians in the Caribbean. You know, after she herself asked me if I was so this was always on my mind, you know, was always yet at home, I'm hearing all these stories about the Ochoa was a shapeshifter and he could do this and he could do that and listening to all these stories, how we plant how we grow things. So that's what drove me to try to understand what where did this myth come from and how and how did it develop. And that's what I did for most of my life. And sadly, but amazingly, it was a DNA, you know, which is something that it's like a double H sword as you know. But it was DNA analysis and sequencing that finally brought us back into the limelight because when they started doing DNA sequencing in the Caribbean, they weren't even looking for Indians because it's taken for granted that no Indians in the Caribbean. And then they found that Justin Puerto Rico on that over 61% of the people were of in fact indigenous ancestry. And you would think that that there it is now that we would accept it. But the historians couldn't believe that their narrative was wrong all this time. So they countered with, well, these are Indians, but they're not Indians from here because Indians were brought as from slaves from the mainland. And it wasn't until three years ago that they started doing ancient DNA testing and they found four skulls in the Bahamas, one of them, one of which they had a tooth with a full strand of ancient DNA, which is over a thousand years old. And that was like that moment for us because now that we're going to compare the modern day people with that one strand. And they chose 170 Puerto Ricans. And 170 Puerto Ricans came out connected to that so too. So the Tainos were back, you know, but for us, the people that always identified as Taino, it's like a slap in the face because it's like we were here, we were telling you this all along. I have always focused on our culture because I think that's more important than genetics. You know, there are what we call eight markers of indigeneity, everything from spirituality to planting ways. And if you look at these markers all across the Caribbean, you'll find that they're everywhere. You know, but for a lot of ethnographers, when they come to the Caribbean to do these works, if you start out with extinction, they don't go in that direction. They don't follow, you know, these traditions. They just claim, you know, assert or rather imagine that they're African or Spanish and no mention is made of them, but they're there. And now we have an opportunity to show the truth, you know, to tell the truth. So that's what I do. That's what I do for a living. Oh, that's so beautiful. Thank you. How many languages are dialects? Well, Arawak and dialects, the Arawak language is the most is the most widespread language family of all the Americas, actually, because it's spoken all the way from southern Brazil all the way to Central America. But within the Taino ourselves, you know, we have, we had sort of lost our language in the sense we've lost a lot of, a lot of words survived. So different individual Taino organizations have begun working on languages themselves, you know. It's a problem for some for me. It's a good thing because I figure like 35 years ago, we had no languages. Now we have five or six. So it's a lot better, right? So but we even our language is back, you know, we are actually in the process of of publishing our own language dictionary, which will be out pretty soon. So that's great. Congratulations. Thank you very much. It's a lot of work. So I would also like to center that Indigenous people have long been struggling to overcome colonization. Right. So my question is for you, Claudia. I've heard you speaking at the Genocide Awareness March in Boston, March has in Boston several times. Can you please expand for us the lasting effects of ongoing colonization, genocide, historical traumas and our current outcomes as Indigenous people today? Not in five minutes. And I can still get us started colonization, especially in the U.S. as described by some researchers like Brayboy is European thought, knowledge and power structures that dominate present society. And how that thought and knowledge system underlies Indigenous people's loss of land and sovereignty. So colonization is directly related to what happens to Indigenous people. And colonization is an ongoing process that is endemic to the United States policies. It's a drive toward material acquisition. And for material, that can be controlling land, people, resources, traditional schools. And that's really my expertise, the educational K-12 system, although I speak in a lot of places, teach the values of the colonizers, the beliefs, the knowledge systems, everything that supports the colonization narrative of these are the ways to be, to take, take, take. If you read Robin Wall Kimmerer's fantastic book, Braiding Sweetgrass, she has a, it's a longer title, that's a short version of it. She has an entire chapter on the Windigo, the Windigo who just keeps taking and never gets in a relationship and never has reciprocity and doesn't care what gets destroyed in the process. And that is colonization. De-colonization is making the Indigenous stories visible, so going from that invisible to the visibility. That means that we recenter Indigenous knowledge, we recenter Indigenous role models and histories, and we do it not just in our curriculum, but also in our teaching practices. So instead of sitting in rows in a classroom, we're sitting in a circle. Instead of always raising our hand, we have a process that everybody gets to speak. So changing the practices from the colonizer way of looking to the Indigenous way of looking. And as it turns out, many marginalized and vulnerable populations, including the Black population and students with special needs benefit from some of these decolonizing strategies as well. And some of decolonization is also directly, directly related to dismantling things that have been culturally appropriated. So a lot of things within the Indigenous community like images and language, place names and names in particular have been appropriated by the dominant culture and cultural appropriation is about a relationship where the dominant culture takes something from the marginalized group and then often repackages it and sells it back to their own group. And then that becomes the way that you see the thing instead of the original way that the Indigenous people had or the original word and it morphs into something else. So that is in school systems and educational programs, something that we need to always be aware of. And other things in our school systems that have to do with colonizers and genocide and not respecting Indigenous people who are here and caring for the land is, for example, the requirement to say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning in a school system. The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892. And if that sort of starts to ring a bell, it's because it's the 400 year anniversary of 1492. And it was written as a way to celebrate Columbus. So that act in itself is keeping colonizer perspectives alive and retraumatizing probably not just Indigenous children and other folks too. It wasn't until 1942 that under God, no, 1954 that under God was added. So those kinds of practices also are part of the traumas. For me personally, I remember knowing I was Arawak growing up and not knowing a single other person who identified as Arawak or even Ta'ino at that time except my own relatives. And I remember asking my father, who is the Indigenous of my parents, how do you spell that? How do you spell that? For years and years because I never saw it in print until 1992 when there was an awareness to get Indigenous information out at the 500 year anniversary of that event. And that affected my identity. That was about 35 years ago, so similar to other panelists. And in that time period, I would meet people who identified as Arawak and as Ta'ino and as other Kareeb, other groups from the islands. And it was like putting together a puzzle. Everyone had a piece. So if it was about what did this clay pot mean, someone knew where to get the pottery. Someone knew the song that you sang when you gathered the clay and the song that you sang when you built the pottery. Someone else knew the story that went with the image. Someone else knew the name. And from those pieces, part of decolonizing and part of reaffirming our own identity is putting those pieces back together in the way that we need to do in this contemporary society. So might be a written dictionary where we didn't have written language in that way forever. We had other kinds of ways to communicate. So we have the right to adapt to our environment around us and to prepare, be a good ancestor to the next seven generations as well. So thanks for letting me speak. Oh, absolutely. Thank you for your point of view. I think it's very important to understand the different forms of colonization to indigenous people on this continent. And it's also important to realize that our outcomes today are still affected. And that's a direct result of our struggles with colonization. I want to go back to the land acknowledgment, because that's the first step in recognizing and celebrating indigenous people's day. That's understanding that anywhere you are on Turtle Island, you're on indigenous land. And understanding that dispossession, war, genocide, that all gave you the result that allows you to benefit. So the first step should be part of your planning. And IAPD event is whether you're in a school or a town is finding out whose land you're on. There must be that kind of equity in planning and inviting local indigenous people to the planning table is crucial. There needs to be a seat at the table for them to be able to have a say in how indigenous people's day is going to be celebrated. And even I, from Alaska, even I need to recognize when is my time to sit down and give space for the appropriate indigenous people of the area to be centered and lifted. So I might be indigenous, but not always the right kind and in a good way. So that's kind of a big question that we encounter often is how to appropriately celebrate indigenous people's day and know what are some of the appropriate ways to commemorate this much needed holiday. Brittany, I'm going to go to you. Can you add more, like add some examples of appropriate ways to celebrate, you know, maybe lifting and centering indigenous people celebrating our successes? Sure, yes. And I really do enjoy that question. It touches back to a conversation that I know I had with someone who's Taino Vina. I don't know if she's in the audience or around Marina Aduro. And we were talking about this list. We wish there was a list of dos and don'ts that we could distribute all across the land to different areas, different communities of what you could do to respectfully and properly observe indigenous people's day. And I know I actually chatted about that with you too, Rhonda. And I think it sparked a really good conversation. So starting off with, yes, of course, acknowledging the land that you're on is a huge, huge part of it. It's so huge and basic to me in the sense of sometimes I'm functioning in this bubble where that's a given, right? But I have to take a few steps back and realize not everyone is there yet. So when someone asks what do we do, even though you've already said it, I would say again, really look into the land that you're on. But in that same breath, I would then say, what are you going to do about it? There's a good, there's a good kind of humorous video on YouTube. I think it really talks about a television being the land, right, for the land acknowledgement. If you walk into someone else's home and you take their TV and you bring it to your house and you bring your friends over, have a movie night and you start your movie night out with the acknowledgement that the television used to belong to so and so. And now we're going to watch our movie and enjoy ourselves. You're not doing anything about the fact that you know you stole that TV. So what are you going to do about it? And that goes back to creating relationships, right, reciprocity. And that can come in many different forms that I could never address in five minutes. But I think personally, the next step is to reach out and connect with your local tribe, of course, really hear what they have to say. And I think from there, you'll be able to walk forward together in a good way. If you are an ally, if you're a non-native person, or if you're a guest in the lands that you are on. So it's really, I know it sounds so basic, but that I really think is going to be the key. Another thing that I would consider too is that a lot of the things we're dealing with when we talk about how colonization is still active, it's still a present phenomena. It's not necessarily native people's fault, right? I always think about one thing. One way that land was taken from us was if colonists decided that we weren't using it. You're not using your land to the standard that a colonist thought you should be using it. It's not yours anymore. I struggle with that a lot because I think that everyone doesn't use every square inch of everything no matter what way you're looking at it with what culture. But anyhow, acknowledging the land that you're on, making a connection about it, but then even if you can't reach out to those native people, because it's not our fault that things are the way that they are, still try to follow something that is truly respectful. And that's what brings me back to that first point of having a list of do's and don'ts because just like native mascots, I can imagine Indigenous People's Day going sideways in a sense of, oh, we're doing this to honor you. And then all of a sudden, people are back in paper feathers all over again. So I would say really thinking deeply about how can a non-native or how can someone still help fix a problem? Because it's not always native people's burden to shoulder. It's not a problem that we created. So it's not going to be our responsibility to fix the entire thing. Having a seat at that table, I think personally, is fundamental. But how can communities do it without having to make native people feel like they're spread thin? I think that links back to having a relationship, even though you may not be able to bring, let's say, five different towns invited me, not that they have, to their Indigenous People's Day, but I certainly wouldn't be able to make it all. But if they had a connection with my tribe, they might be able to then go, okay, we should avoid doing the paper feather situation. We should look into doing something more constructive. So I can't say that I have all the answers, but those are the connections and kind of the stream of thoughts that comes up when that question is brought up. But back to the fundamentals, learn who's land you're on and what are you going to do about it? Excellent points. Thank you very much, Brittany. Darlene, you have been working with Newton, right, to bring the first Indigenous People's Day celebration to life. So what are some appropriate ways to celebrate that you've been working on? So I am in Newton, Massachusetts, and we are in the process of having a ceremonial celebration on Indigenous People's Day, which it is officially changed from CC to Indigenous People's Day, which is usually the second Monday in October. So this year it falls on the 11th of October, which is a Monday. And we have invited my chief, Maika Sika, to come and do a cultural presentation on Taino because a lot of people don't even know what or who Tainos are. Like I said, we are the people that found Christopher Columbus when he was lost at sea in 1492, when he sailed the ocean blue. But I was born and raised here in Massachusetts. So when I learned about CC, I thought he landed on Plymouth Rock. I had no idea that they were talking about my people. And when I did get older and I knew the true history, and I said, why are they teaching this in the schools? I'm the oldest of 10 children. And having these conversations with my younger brothers, they said, how many of our friends would have graduated from high school if they just included us in the history books? And that to me was profound. And how many of us would actually admit that we have Indigenous roots? And that to me was an eye-opener. So my children, I have age nine, seven and five, they know their history. And two years ago in kindergarten, when the teacher said to my son, all right, everybody, remind your parents, Monday is Christopher Columbus Day, do not come to school, my son turned white. And he said, that guy is a bad man. He killed my grandparents and chops off the hands and arms of little kids, boys and girls. So everyone in the classroom starts to cry. And they said, we don't want Christopher Columbus coming to our house on Monday. So this is a kindergartener. And that's when the teachers were like, wait a minute, you know, we need to know who are the children in our classroom. And then, you know, then they brought me some of his paintings. And they said, we thought we was, he was having a little bit of a delay in speaking, but he was saying, you know, this word and that where I said, those are Taino words. And he was talking about doing a candy dance at a powwow. I said, yep, we do that too. You know, and they're, they had never even, these are educators that don't know who Tainos are. So to me, that was an eye-opener. That was, to me, it was like, this has got to change. You know, I lived through this, I'm not going to allow my children to live through this. So it's so important where Matawin came to me and said, we have a chance to fight it again and try to change CC to indigenous people's day. You being a Taino descendant, it's super important that you come and speak your story, share your story. And you know, so that was, I was like, no, this is, this has got to stop, you know, and it starts with education in your own home. You know, like I said, you guys even speak some Taino words, you don't even know it. Hurricane is a Taino word. Canoe is a Taino word. And there's a ton a lot of the Taino words that you guys speak that you didn't even know. Some of our foods you eat, sweet potato. So there's a lot of stuff that you guys don't even know that are Taino. And it's like, we're invisible, a paper genocide. And so I am here to say enough is enough. Every two years, we've been bringing up to the state to try to get this changed. So speak to your local councilmen, speak to your representatives and support changing. CC to Indigenous Peoples Day come January. So we can continue making Massachusetts anti-racist. We're working towards that, right? And we need allies, because when we do have these votes and they say, oh, 1% of the population are indigenous, that's right. So to say we're going to have a vote. And just us over here, yay, we want this to change. And everybody else is like, you know, on the opposite end, no, we need the allies, we welcome you. And so don't feel embarrassed to say, hey, we would like to, how do we change in our school system, the history books to represent the truth, right? And not to mix, you know, like I said, 1492, the first people to experience genocide were the Taino and the Caribbean. And then 200 later, 200 years later, two centuries later, it was the Europeans here in Massachusetts. So we have to unite. We're asking to, for everybody to think about this, you know, how does it affect our youth? You know, and now my children, they're learned, they know how to say in their own language, hello, my name is, they love their casique. Culturally, we are reindigenizing and welcoming other people to reindigenize. And one other thing that I thought was super important, as I became more vocal in my own heritage, people popping out of the woodwork, you know, I have my grandmother is this, oh, I do this, and I'm like, exactly, this is what I want, you know, and everyone says, new and there's no indigenous people and new. No, there is, there really is. And so when you have these celebrations, we are having a ceremonial celebration. It's not a powwow. We have other natives that are coming, and we're going to share in ceremony, and we're going to have non natives there as well. And everyone is welcome. This is a community events. And we're hoping that this would spread to the other communities, you know, we are in touch with Heather LaValle, I absolutely love her. And Claudia, I've seen, you know, walking by her in a powwow, and I see some of our petroglyphs, and I'm like, Oh my goodness, you know, and it really does feel so good. And so what we're trying to do now is the different cities and towns. And we're saying if you need help to change CC indigenous people's day, reach out. We've done it. We have people that can support you. It's about just learning the truth. And, you know, when people say how important is IPD to me, it's basically my life and my children's survival. So it's super important. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. It's beautiful. Thank you for all the work you do. That's hard, right? It's a lot of heavy lifting. Yes. So thank you. Larry, I see that you are scribbling. You have some words. I'm scribbling the whole time. I scribble. So yeah, I am. I'm really excited to have this panel, and especially to have Darlene here speaking about that day. We'll have a link for ways for folks who can support that. And also Newton being a knit muck homeland, it carries a special place to me. Newton was one of the first praying towns, villages set up where knit mucks were forced into this place to make room for white expansion. And incidentally, in 1675 during the King Philip's War, those same peaceful Indians, knit muck people were round up and put on deer island, hundreds, over a few thousand, and many were stolen off the island, starved to death. It was during the winter, they froze, they died. And eventually about eight months later, the survivors were released from the island, and they put them in, they went back to Newton where they lived on a place called Newton Hill. And those survivors lived there for some time, eventually went back to Nadek, hasn't amiss it, we have a quasset, and that's how I'm here today from those survivors, the pagan people, the vickers, many other families. And so it's very, when I think about Newton, I think about that legacy of that land and the people there. So it's important to have that indigenous people's day. And this is what I'm talking about when I say expand that history and that knowledge, because people really need to know where they're standing and that benefit that they're having today. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. I think I keep going back to like the land that we're on. And I made a quick note when Claudia was talking, is that in Alaska, where I'm from, there is a number of schools that are now incorporating with the Pledge of Allegiance, which I think is kind of a nationalistic way to indoctrinate your kids, but so with the Pledge of Allegiance, they're also incorporating a land acknowledgement every day. And I think that that's a beautiful way to get people comfortable with hearing our words, our tribe, understanding whose land that they're on. Very simple, you know, so just throwing that out there, if there's any teachers listening, might want to try that. It's a very great way to do this. Heather, oh my goodness. So you are part of a movement to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People's Day, right? So you're Italian. So what would you say to Italian people or anybody really who believe that this is sort of erasing your history Yes, we hear that a lot. And you know, first of all, I just want to say that I think there's this perception that all Italian Americans are pro-Columbus, and it simply is not the case, even though most of the Italian American organizations in our country claim to speak for all of us. It's just not true. There are so many progressive Italian Americans who feel the same way that I do. And he believes when we call in our people, we talk about how that Indigenous People's Day is a holiday that celebrates the resilience of Indigenous people. It's far more truthful and reflective of our values as Italian Americans than one that honors like one of history's greatest villains. And that any association with Columbus diminishes us, diminishes our culture and does not honor the experiences and the achievements of our ancestors. All of that, our people's history is obscured. And Indigenous People's Day is not about erasing our history. It's about correcting history, telling history more truthfully, more inclusively. And really our goal is to un-center ourselves from the conversation because too often discussions about we naming the holiday are really centered around the feelings and the concerns of Italian Americans. And it's really Indigenous People's Day, as we know, as you know, it's not about Italian Americans at all. It's not anti-Italian American. It is anti-Columbus and it is pro-Indigenous people. And often there's this false equivalence that's established and we see this all the time in local conversations around we naming the holiday that hits Indigenous People against Italian Americans that, you know, some Italian Americans say that the holiday commemorates a time when our ancestors overcame terrible ethnic and religious discrimination. And since both groups experience discrimination, these Italian Americans say, why is the pain of Indigenous People being prioritized over ours? And what we say is, first of all, genocide and discrimination are not the same. And second of all, many immigrant groups experience discrimination in violence while assimilating in this country and Italian Americans are not unique in that regard. And the issue of how immigrants were and continue to be treated in this country is an entirely separate conversation. Indigenous People's Day is about acknowledging and making amends for one of our country's original sins, that the way we have treated the first people of this land. And also we remind people that Columbus was purposely introduced and firmly embedded in our country's founding myths, long before Italians came on the scene. So we talk about how, you know, place names like District of Columbia and Columbia River and Columbia University, those were all named in the 18th century. And so why are we still attaching Italian Americans to this? And Washington Irving wrote that biography of Columbus, mythologizing him in 1828. So we, you know, we say that it's time for all of us who are part of this country's dominant culture to, and that's Italian Americans included, to listen to Indigenous people and believe the truth they are telling us. And it's our collective responsibility to acknowledge these truths and repair the harm we've caused by lifting Columbus up as a hero for so long. So ultimately, our message is that we need to keep the focus on Indigenous people, not Italian Americans. And we talk a lot about what we all gain by choosing to celebrate Indigenous people and that this is a gift that is being offered to us and all of us. But really, Italian Americans have a special opportunity here to lead and in doing the right thing and help take us, help us take a step forward towards healing and reconciliation. And that's just an opportunity that we all should take. So that's kind of how we go about making the case to our community. And all of our calls to action, like I said, we were formed solely to support Indigenous people, say, from Massachusetts and Indigenous people say, Massachusetts in all of our calls to action are based on input and advice from our Indigenous advisors. Thank you for sharing, Heather. I think that's a very important aspect of this work that's being done. So thank you. Claudia, I know that you want to talk about an anti-racism statement. Could you please share? Yes, I wanted to, I want to say a couple of things from what the, responding to some things that the speakers have said. First of all, I want to just firmly support doing a tribal land acknowledgement before every event. I love the idea of doing it at the same time you do the Pledge of Allegiance. We spent the last year as one of our initiatives. I've been working with seventh graders in my own building, helping them understand genocide, the history of Indigenous people so that when they became eighth graders, we were a K-8 system, they would be ready to lead every single event with a tribal land acknowledgement, not a PAT statement. That might be what we write on the wall, but something that would live and change as current events change, as current research and knowledge changes. So this is, you know, just think about, when do you say your pronouns? That's when you should be doing a tribal land acknowledgement. And there's two pieces to that. One is the formal statement before the event starts. And the second is your own personal acknowledgement as you travel, as you introduce yourself. So that's one thing I wanted to say. The other thing I want to say is that there is, there's a lot of conversation about race, racism, and anti-racism, especially in this country in the past year. And I am all for it. And I've spent 30 years working for an organization that they, that calls itself an anti-racist organization. It is an anti-racist organization. There's nothing wrong with anti-racism. It's just not enough when you are including indigenous people. And I want to specify that because indigenous people have the experiences of people from multiple racial groups. Our tribal identities, our tribal sovereignty, our citizenship as tribal people is one thing. And the racial group that we look like or are defined by others by and how we were treated is another thing. So if we are really going to include indigenous voices in this conversation, it cannot be just labeled as anti-racism. I don't have the right other word. I tend to use decolonization or anti-colonialism, but there has to be some other piece to really include the voices. And one of the most apparent places where you can understand this is boarding schools continued in the United States officially until 1978 when the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed. It was until 1996 in Canada. So it's much more recent. And it is being challenged in the United States as an unfair racial policy. You cannot tell us which racial group is allowed to adopt indigenous children. And while race is involved, this is really a sovereignty issue. This is indigenous people saying, no, actually, you cannot tell a nation who they can let their children be adopted by. So this is why it needs to be really clear when you're having a race conversation and when you're having a conversation about indigenous sovereignty. We're not going to go into Germany and say, we think other nations should be able to adopt your children or foster care or whatever the current way to steal children from families is. So I just want to be clear about that language and about how we also need to get out of the colonized structure of that it is a black-white race dialogue because it is way bigger than that or more inclusive than that. Absolutely. Thank you very much for sharing. Did you have any more comments? I wanted to swing back to CK George briefly. Since, as we said in the beginning, it's that premise, that beginning, that massive stage of meeting. And by the way, I've known Jorge for many, many years and we're both a lot younger and had less gray hair going way, way back. And so I was curious to wonder, what would you envision for the Taino people? And two, how could folks find out more information? As you know, time's limited and there's so much story to share about any of our people. So what do you envision and how could folks find out more information? Well, the definitive book on Taino, or I haven't written it yet, that's coming. But my vision is to get people back home to acknowledge that this is a reality because when you speak about colonization, I mean, we were the first colony, you know. And so the process is a lot longer for us. Puerto Rico is still a colony. So that colonial mindset is very well hammered into us. So the first thing for me is starting is by teaching our own people what is indigeneity, what is not, what is present, what is not. And a lot of people from the Caribbean are surprised to find out that, you know, that like Dardin was saying that this is indigenous, this is, you know, and that's amazing. A lot of our people like to to tread along those trails of recognition. And I think that's important. But for me, recognition from other native people is more important to me than recognition by any government, you know. So my vision for the Taino people is just to be part of the discussion and be, you know, part of everything that goes on and be acknowledged and move forward into the future. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that. And he's greater than I am. I think I need a hat too. So I wanted to move forward now to talk about our list of resources. But before I do that, I just want to swing back around to any of our panelists that want to have any last thoughts or comments about celebrating Indigenous People's Day. Make sure we're good. Go ahead, Melissa. I just want to say, I just want, you know, people to take a minute and look for those indigenous, those brilliant indigenous authors and read the books like Claudia had spoke of. You know, I have all these, this, my pile is growing really, really vastly here. And, you know, Robin, Robin Wall, Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, Professor Denoudin has some really awesome books, Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Ken. Take the time to read some of these, these authors and just learn and reach out as Brittany had so brilliantly said to your local tribe and get to know them. You know, the only way to learn is to meet people. So thanks so much. That's it. Okay, thank you. So I wanted to reiterate, like we do, we did work on this list as a panel. We had a document up and running. And this resource document will kind of help towns, cities, businesses, schools kind of navigate on how to properly celebrate Indigenous People's Day. One of the first things, if you haven't figured it out by now, is identify whose land you live on, right? And Claudia Fox tree added to read what is a tribal land acknowledgement and why do we need them? Claudia, do you want to, do you want to add a comment about that? I get that I get the question a lot. And I get invited to do tribal land acknowledgements. And I have even been invited for national organizations to write their tribal land acknowledgement. And I don't do that. I don't write it for other people. I really feel like you need to do your own work. You need to acknowledge, you need to think about what you would say, I'm happy to do it, if it makes sense for me to do it. And certainly, if you have an Indigenous person who wants to do it in your organization, open the floor. You know, don't be like some other places that are like, no, we have two white people ready to do it, be ready to yield the floor. And don't expect Indigenous people to do it. You know, they might say where they're from, but if they're on their own land, it's unlikely that they're going to say, by the way, this is my land, although they might. But don't expect that. So just like be aware. And since I got the question a lot, and I'm speaking at a conference that hosted this particular blog, I wrote about what you need to do where you can find information, what you should think about. And I feel like plenty of people have talked about this and brought in their expertise. So I cite those people and I make links to who you can read more about it. And it's not done. It is evolving and you're not done. We're still fighting about land boundaries, frankly, here in Massachusetts, you know, though it's wishy-washy. So you need to keep doing research and updating that way anyway. And you know, what year are you looking at the map? You know, what was the name? Are you going to go with the traditional name or the ancestral name, which wasn't written? And so what lettering are you going to use? I think there's a lot of things to think about. And acknowledging that this is a process and you're on that step is an important part of the tribal land acknowledgement. And the final step is reaching out to your local community and getting accurate information about Indigenous people and life ways from this area past, present and future. Exactly. Thank you. And that ties in with items number two and three on our list are what happened to that community or tribal nation? And where are they today? Three is lift and amplify current Indigenous voices. Four, support Indigenous artists and cultural centers through donations, through sharing their work. Five, remunerate Indigenous speakers generously for their time and sharing with your community. It's a very important piece because as Indigenous people we're always asked to educate, always asked to undo colonialism, racism for free. I don't know how many times I've gone into my daughter's school every year because I was expected to. I'll do it, you know, because I want to be there for my daughter's class. Yeah, I just wanted to jump in on what Claudia was saying as well as a couple of things about land acknowledgments. So first of all, I want everybody who's listening wherever you are that when you think about a land acknowledgement, I think it's important for people to realize this is something that we've always done as Indigenous people. Since I was a kid, wherever we would travel to another tribe's land, we would acknowledge that this is an ancient practice of acknowledging that land. It's nothing new. I think that needs to be very underscored. And so when you are doing that, you are taking part in an ancient practice of how to respect and share in that land. Secondly, Oki Tail is an organization and myself personally get tons of emails from people, towns and organizations and schools saying a quick email, can you please give me a land acknowledgement? And so that's what we call transactional. It's really important to make it an intentional relationship because that's how we got into this problem in the first place. We can't just pop out a land acknowledgement for you. And so really work and get to know the people you are on. And I understand you're going to need help. You're going to need help. But this allies work, it uncovers a lot and it's always a learning curve. Allies make mistakes, they say things they shouldn't. People get uncomfortable and we've all, I certainly have. And there's space for forgiveness, but there's space that needs to be for learning. So you're going to essentially need help on that because you just don't know. And it was on purpose that you don't know. So it's important to make those intentional relationships with the land acknowledgement. Yeah, by all means. I just returned from a trip to the Dominican Republic. And I was up in this area that's called Samana. And it's a very pristine area. The whole time that I was there, I was upset because the people that lived there were not Taíno. These are people that were called the Siguayo people. And I was just amazed that even in the Dominican Republic that you have a lot of this iconography all over the place dealing with Taíno. The Taíno fight, that whole peninsula, when in fact it's not a Taíno place it was. And before I left, I had to say a prayer, I had to say something because, like Larry said, it's what we do. At our house whenever we have ceremony, we start by always acknowledging the people that live in the land. It's just the right thing to do. It's really not a stretch of the imagination. It is the way it's supposed to be. So I just wanted to add that because I was really upset being there and not seeing anything that dealt, not even their name was anywhere. And that was pretty sad. That is pretty sad. And that's also gentrification and colonization, usurping the lands and moving Indigenous people out of the way. So I'm sorry you had to go through that. But thank you for your prayers. Thank you. Where was I? Oh, support legislation to change to Indigenous People's Day. Also, like our five bills, they kind of work hand in hand. I went over them and they landed acknowledgement in the beginning. But we kind of have to have, we have one, we can't change mascots without having education, right? So they all kind of work together. So supporting legislation for Indigenous People's Day, supporting legislation to remove Native American mascots from public schools, to support the legislation to ensure accurate Indigenous curricula in Massachusetts, to all the schoolchildren in the state that needs to happen. And of course, as I said before, recognizing that dominant narrative that glorifies colonization and make those changes. It's not so hard. A lot of different organizations change from Pioneer Valley, something, something to the Valley something or Connecticut River Valley. I mean, there's lots of options. We don't have to rely on on glorification like that. It's a microaggression that we deal with every day. 10, I love this one. I'm super excited about this one. Watch or have a showing of Indigenous documentaries and films. Vision Maker has several films to watch. But there's also on Hulu coming up next week, there's Reservation Dogs, which is to my knowledge one of the first Indigenous written, Indigenous acted and mainstreamed show that's going to be premiered on Hulu, August 6th. That is for me like, yeah, right? Amazing. Because as Indigenous people, we are less than 2% in our own country. We are less than 0.4% in Massachusetts. We don't have representation in mainstream society. I mean, most of the audience, you might struggle to remember the last TV show you saw with a primary character that was Indigenous that wasn't relegated to the past or wasn't stereotypified. So this for us is like really amazing to see. Oh, okay. Let's see, 11. Oh, now this one I really like. Create meals that reflect traditional cultural foods of tribal nations here on Turtle Island. Oh, yeah, I could get down with that one. But also discussing which foods are Indigenous and how they contribute to the cuisines around the world, as well as industrial revolutions, right? Because we fed industrial revolutions in Europe. Connect beyond food to historical and contemporary agricultural systems. The agricultural systems and land management systems that were here were very complex and we need to understand traditional environmental knowledge to move forward in today's world of climate change. We also need to recognize Indigenous versus invasive species. Read books. As Melissa was saying, one of the best things you can do is just read. And we have incredible, amazing Indigenous authors out here. And so American Indians in Children's Literature by Deborah Reese is an amazing top-notch blog. That's my go-to resource when people ask for appropriate books. Support land-back initiatives in your area. And that would include tribal nations that are also getting their own corporations together to take land holdings back again to support their own burial grounds, which are, they need to be in their own holdings. There's a couple of different Massachusetts or local land-back initiatives, Native Land Conservancy, NITMA Cultural Preservation, and Eastern Woodlands Rematriation Collective. Engage in active learning with other groups using a tool like the 21-day Indigenous Challenge. That sounds like fun. I'm up for the challenge. And Fighting Racism since 1492. Illuminative is a great website. I love Illuminative. They have an incredible resource page for Indigenous People's Day toolkits, lessons, plans, ally resources. I adore their website. They have a toolkit for everything. If you're in community is considering a campaign to rename a holiday, seek guidance from Indigenous People's Day MA, Indigenous People's Day Massachusetts. They've been working on this legislature for years. And of course, if you are of Italian American descent, become a member of the Italian Americans for Indigenous People's Day and sign their statement, become a good ally in that way, and become more than an ally, I guess, start looking towards becoming an accomplice, make that an actionable thing. There's also a number of other reading resources on Taino People, which Darlene has put into our toolkit. That will be part of the post show kind of email, and it will be also on the Okateo website soon. Soon after we do this, we'll probably add a few more things. We always do, right? So I want to go back through. I want to circle back. Does any panelists have anything they want to say? Brittany. Sabatne, thank you. I popped my hand up. I think you were on number nine speaking about the legislation and that brought a few thoughts together for me. One of them is, of course, to support it, of course, and mention that apart these pieces of legislation, they are valuable and they are important, and I wouldn't put my energy behind any one piece if I didn't think so, but also to kind of step back and really look at the impact that these pieces of legislation can have when they're comprehensive, because that's when you're really going to see a lot of positive change, and that kind of brings together this maybe a little cheesy, but interwoven, an interwoven kind of thought, right? These things really can come together and hold a lot of this when they're woven together, and that was a little bit of where I wanted to jump from, you know, look at what's going on locally. Support this legislation. I think it would be amiss not to mention two things that are going on nationally, just to keep an eye even, get involved, but even just keep an eye on things like line three, a pipeline that goes through over 20 ways, bodies of water, and also to pay attention to what Deb Holland is doing with the legislation on all of the whether you want to say boarding school or a residential school or industrial school, depending on where you're looking on North America, you might use a different term, but to pay attention to these things, and lastly to remind folks that yes, they are involved with Native culture, of course they are, but something like our water, water is not innately an Indigenous thing. I think we all need it. We're all made up of it. So really the push to not just be allies, but yes, to be accomplices, to put action behind your thoughts. It does affect all of us in the same way that Native mascots, they hurt Native people, but they hurt non-Native people too. You know, our water is something that I think we all need. So to remember that yes, it is involved with Native people and to not take that away from us, but in a sense, if you join in, the future is going to be with all of us, right? And so we want to work towards a better future together, whether it is our local legislation or whether it is paying attention to Line 3 right now, if we really want to get somewhere together, pay attention now and become an accomplice now, that's what I wanted to say. Thank you so much for saying that, Brittany. I just wanted to piggyback on that by saying, we all need to support each other as Indigenous people because our soverities are under attack. And all of these extractive industries are, you know, attacking our land, our resources, our water, our food. And we are all stronger when we stand together in that way. Like, so my village is Coktawek in Area 10-02, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and we are fighting extractive industry that's happening there now. I know I see Anthony here and his own tribal nation has not had clean drinking water in decades. These are issues that affect all of us. I mean, the Navajo Nation hasn't had potable water since the 40s. So we talk about Flint, right? Well, what about Indigenous people? So I think that supporting each other is super important. We need to show up for each other. And yes, we have issues here in our own homelands, wherever we may be as Indigenous people, but we also need to have the backs of each other. So thank you so much for bringing that up, Brittany. And I know, Melissa, you had your hand raised, too. Hello. So I have three quick things. First, I wanted to trickle back to Heather. And, you know, Indigenous people, we always say that, you know, we, we always look at people as people, right? It's the character and the person that you admire, regardless of their race or identity. And I love an Italian American. My husband comes from a long family of Italian Americans. He is his given tribal name, an honorary name. He was given a silent bear. He's a US veteran. And I just wanted to thank you for, you know, understanding that he's one of my biggest supporters. So I didn't want to add that. And then I was just going to go back real quick to what Brittany was saying about the water and the land. And it brought me to just a real quick quote that I shared from our Jennifer Harding. She's one of our tribal counselors, but one of the best gifts and the greatest gift she gives our community is she's one of the very few fluent Wampanoag speakers. And she said to us one day, she just said, in the Wampanoag language, there is a final marker that is called an inalienable M. You can add this onto a certain word or in the language. And that word will take on an entirely different meaning. Take the word Aki, land, for example. When Wampanoag people say Nathakim, it does not just mean my land, as we would say in the English language. When Wampanoag people say Nathakim or Nathapim, my water, we mean that this land or this water is literally a part of our bodies, our DNA, our soul, our energy. We are made of the same stuff. We are one with the land and the water. And that was healing waters, Jennifer Harding. And then I just have real quickly, as I was doing some research, Paul Chart Smith, he's a Comanche, he said, the most American thing about America is American Indians. Thank you. That was it. Thank you, Melissa. Thank you for sharing. Does anybody else have any last comments here? Because then we can move to some Q&A. Larry, did you have something I say? No? I always do, but I'll hold off. Well, now's the time, right? No, I was just reflecting on, so yeah, and actually, this is a good point because for those who are watching and thinking about getting involved and just kind of if you kind of zoom out and see what's happening here, like my younger cousin Brittany and Darlene and many other folks who are working on whether it's anti-mask God or Indigenous People's Day, it's kind of a town by town thing. And so we're encouraging folks on the federal and state level to see the wisdom in having that. So my point is you see these very talented, creative, artistic people taking their energy fighting just to say that they exist, not pursuing their intellectual curiosities, not pursuing the things they love to do, like my love of surfing. So I can't surf because I got to tell people I'm here. So that's taking time away from my enjoyment. So we're spending energies and time and resources just telling people we're here. And so I remember one ally told me before he said it's an embarrassment that you guys have to do that. It's shameful on my part as a white person. And I humbly listened to him and I thought about that in so many various ways and just let him share it. But that was his take on it. And he was like, you folks here, you shouldn't have to plead for your existence. But yet we are. And if we don't, we will die. And so this is where allyship and accomplishments come in. So I just wanted to kind of reflect on that, how this work is very important on the national level that it's important. And quickly about Mr. C.C., the implicit bias that he discovered anything. It's just saying it's implicit racism that there was nobody else here until white people showed up. So it's just really beyond the standard reasons to just kind of accept these things as okay. So yeah, I was going to say that. I'm glad you did. Thank you. I think we have a question from our audience online. Okay. She could tell everyone what was the name of the act that was passed in the U.S. in 1978? Oh, that, well, yeah, that was the Native American Freedom of Religion Act. Is that, is that what we were talking about, Claudia? Indian Child Welfare Act. They were both right here. There was a lot that happened in 1978. Both of those, for example. Yeah. So there were two things. So our religion was outlawed until 1978, fun fact. And our children could be taken away from us until 1978. Fun fact. And that wasn't strengthened until the 80s. Fun fact. Any other questions from the audience here? No? Oh my goodness. Are we actually going to be kind of on time today? I'll just have you have our folks from Wellesley here show up. Okay. Thank you. So we have other towns who are coming in really, really interested. So this is this is an important issue for a lot of towns and folks and who are working on this. So we're really glad you're here to, you know, and I hope it was very informative for you. And I appreciate you coming physically. So thank you. Yes, thank you. I want to like let's give a round of applause for all of our panelists today. I think it's amazing that they're able to be on more Zoom calls and more panels on such a gorgeous day. We've been having a lot of rain. So thank you so much. Larry, do you want to give us some final just real quick? I really want to thank the panel for sharing their time with us. It's so such an important issues that we've had this opportunity. And I want to thank all of you for sharing this time. And all those who are out there listening could the bottom mission. Thank you very much. And it's, you know, the story continues and find out how you can get engaged. That's the most important thing, get engaged. This is not, you know, a spectator activity. There's a place for everybody to get involved in one way or the other. And we're seeing that that's why Okitae was here today. So again, could the bottom ish. Thank you. I also want to say thank you to everyone that's here and for having invited me. And I think you're amazing, Rhonda, because when we spoke yesterday, you were still trying to put this together and to do it like this and for it to end exactly when it's opposed to like that is art. All the kudos goes to the panelists because they're amazing. And I knew that they were going to do exactly what needed to get done. So thank you. Okitae.org. Yes. Thank you. All right. Thank you. I think we're done. Peace, ganache.