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Indigenous Learning Forum

Still Here: Native American Resilience in New England

2026 marks a milestone in America’s history – 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Our founding document put forward aspirations that have shaped America and inspired the world. But the Declaration may surprise you. It calls the Native peoples of America “merciless Indian Savages.”

For generations, stories of Native America have been kept separate and apart from the American story.

Take a fresh look at the history of our region — and hear today’s Indigenous voices. It’s part of Still Here: Native American Resilience in New England — a special series from Connecticut Public, featuring radio storytelling, in-depth videos, digital stories, pictures and a community conversation.

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VIDEO:  https://www.ctpublic.org/still-here-native-american-resilience-in-new-england 

Chapter 1: An enduring spiritual connection to the land

Mark Mirko / Connecticut Public

In the several hundred years since the arrival of Europeans to New England, known as "Dawnland" to its original inhabitants, Native peoples have been forced to live on a small fraction of their ancestral homelands.

For more than 10,000 years before Europeans arrived, the Northeast was home to many tribes with organized leadership and governance; it was among the most prosperous parts of North America. A connection with the land endures – and you care for it like it’s a member of the family.

Watch, listen and read the story

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Chapter 2: The hidden history of Indigenous slavery

Sir John Henry Lefroy / Cornell University Library

This image — a portrait of Jacob Minors of St. David's Island — helped reconnect Indigenous peoples in Bermuda and New England. Its caption contained a clue: "Reputed to be of Indian descent, and probably descended from one of the Pequod captives."

It's a surprising and overlooked story, a blind spot in the narrative of early America: the hidden history of Indigenous slavery. As colonial powers took over Native land, white settlers were enslaving Native people. Some worked in New England. Others were kidnapped and shipped to an isolated tropical island. For generations, a lost tribe in Bermuda wondered about its past. Centuries later, they’ve reconnected with family – in New England.

Watch, listen and read the story

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Chapter 3: ‘An unsung hero:’ A runner puts his tribe on the map

Courtesy of the Boston Public Library / Leslie Jones Collection

Ellison "Tarzan" Brown's victory at the 1939 Boston Marathon is seen as a turning point in the visibility and recognition of New England's Native people.

In the 1930s, runner Tarzan Brown twice won the Boston Marathon – and carried the Narragansett tribe’s name out of obscurity and onto a global stage. “He was like an unsung hero for a long time,” his granddaughter says. “It’s just good to see him get the recognition he deserves.”

Watch, listen and read the story

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Chapter 4: A reverence for water, celebrated with music

Katie Lenhart / Dartmouth University

Jeremy Dutcher and Yo-Yo Ma greet the dawn with a song and music from We Are Water at the bank of Kwenitekw (the Connecticut River).

A Connecticut singer is taking Native art and culture to new places. He invited Indigenous musicians – as well as one of the world’s most famous cello players – to perform at sunrise on the banks of the Connecticut River. The performance highlights Native peoples’ deep connection to nature and water.

Watch, listen and read the story

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Chapter 5: The cultural power of a powwow

Mark Mirko/Connecticut Public

Visitors to the 2025 Schemitzun, one of the largest powwows in the Northeast and hosted by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation

As Native communities face continued challenges to their overall well-being, many find strength in cultural heritage and tradition. Powwow gatherings are a chance to reconnect with family, culture and values.

Watch, listen and read the story

 

Listen to the Stories

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My friend John

John and I worked together at the Pequot Times. His health is not good right now. Please help if you can:

Narragansett author John Christian Hopkins is in need of financial help!

Check out:  

https://gofund.me/3f67a8d6ahttps://gofund.me/a776cb85fhttps://gofund.me/a776cb85f

https://gofund.me/a776cb85f 

Indigenous heritage is an ongoing story

November 12, 2025  By Vanessa Lillie

The author at the Great Swamp Massacre memorial in South Kingston, RI, 2025. (Courtesy Vanessa Lillie)

Five years ago, from the dark of my living room in Providence, I was surprised to see the action of HBO’s “Watchmen” open in a familiar but unexpected place: Tulsa, Oklahoma, about an hour from where I grew up.  It wasn’t superheroes and aliens, not yet, but instead a violent and harrowing recreation of real history: the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.  In the span of just 18 hours, 35 blocks of the affluent “Black Wall Street” community were leveled, killing as many as 300.  Even today, the search for mass graves continues.

My heart sank at my own ignorance.  I was shocked that these horrors happened just down the road from where I went to school, that the education I received did not include any mention of one the worst incidents of racial violence in the history of America.  Instead I was relying on an HBO adaptation of a dystopian graphic novel.

Being a citizen of the Cherokee Nation has long shaped how I see history.  My earliest memory of being Native is associated with my family cemetery, in Oklahoma.  Our ancestor, George Washington Walker, was on the Trail of Tears as a boy and built a new life in the northeast corner of the state.  I remember thinking, as I stood staring at his grave and the historical marker, how the reason we were in Oklahoma was because the government went back on their word. President Andrew Jackson ignored the Supreme Court and stole our land, while trying to erase our existence.  Even if some version of that was taught to me in school, I don’t remember any meaningful discussions about what was stolen or how the impact continues in communities today.

The author with Lorén Spears, executive director of the Tomaquag Museum, at the 350th August meeting and pow wow, in Charlestown, RI, 2025. (Courtesy Vanessa Lillie)

As I grew up, I sought to understand my family’s heritage and found it to be a reflection of the resiliency of the Cherokee Nation.  And as a writer, I realized how I could use story to share history and explore questions of colonization, both past and present. I’ve written seven novels, but it was only in the most recent that I learned how little I knew about the land and tribes in the smallest state I now call home.

Toward the end of King Phillip’s War (or, if you’d like to decolonialize the term, The War for New England), in December, 1675, English colonists attacked the winter homes of the Narragansett tribe. In what’s now known as the Great Swamp Massacre, at least 650 men, women and children were killed, and at least 300 were taken captive. It’s an echo of what President Jackson would later do to my own tribe: genocide perpetrated at the hands of men in power.

It wasn’t until recently, 2021, that the land was officially returned to the Narragansett tribe, having belonged to the Rhode Island Historical Society since 1906.  The grounds are open to the public, with small rocks, shells and feathers placed around the obelisk that stands sentry at the memorial where tribal members gather every year to remember.

While as Cherokee, we were forced out of our homelands, the Narragansett remained. One of my first summers in Rhode Island, I attended the Narragansett August Meeting and Pow Wow in Charlestown.  During the Grand Entry, I watched as many citizens of the tribe, dressed in regalia passed down generation to generation, entered to the sounds of drums and voices, often with the refrain, “we are still here.”  The Narragansett have been gathering there for over 350 years; it’s the oldest recorded pow wow in North America.

And yet, I’ve also spoken to young citizens of the tribe who were told in school that the Narragansett no longer exist, as if they’re extinct like the dinosaurs.  It’s a sentiment supported by hundreds of years of treating Indigenous remains and cultural items as trophies or objects to exploit.  When it comes to preserving and amplifying Indigenous culture, it’s not enough to understand history.  We must also ask: who’s doing the telling?

These are questions I often ask myself when I’m researching a plot or just enjoying a museum with my family.  Who’s creating the narrative on those small plaques near the objects in the museums we shuffle through? Or fund?  I know there are thousands of Indigenous remains on shelves across the country, from museums to academic institutions, despite federal laws meant to mandate their return.  They’re questions I explored in my research for my new book, “The Bone Thief,” using real examples from history: from Yale’s Skull & Bones club allegedly stealing, and hiding, the skull of Geronimo to the history of grave robbers in colonial America.

Even the language I used changed.  Thanks to guidance from the Tomaquag Museum, an Indigenous led museum telling first person histories, and leaders like Executive Director Lorén M. Spears, I’ve decolonized my language from “artifacts” to “belongings.”  Because these objects belong somewhere — to a place, a people — and they should be returned and shared by the people from which they originated.

While on book tour this month, I’ve been speaking at stores and events across New England, and I like to ask people to raise their hands if they’ve heard of the Great Swamp Massacre. Some crowds have more hands up than others, but it’s rarely more than half, and often a lot fewer.

Native American Heritage Month puts a well-deserved spotlight on books by Native American authors (including some of my own “must-reads”), and that’s a good thing. But it’s hardly something that can be highlighted, even honored, one month out of the year.

As for me, I hope by taking the real history of a place, and wrapping it in the page-turning plot of a thriller, I’m able to give people that same experience I had with “Watchmen”: not only shock, or even embarrassment, but a charge to go out and find the hidden truths of our homelands. Our heritage is an ongoing story. Our people are still telling it.

On Wednesday, Nov. 12, Vanessa Lillie spoke & signed copies of "The Bone Thief" at Authors on Stage at Wellesley College . and Brookline Booksmith 

SOURCE:  

 

Child Welfare League of America CEO on the Future of Indian Child Welfare

By Nancy Marie Spears (4-22-2025)

Linda Spears (Narragansett) is the president and CEO of the Child Welfare League of America. Provided photo.

One day, long before she became head of the Child Welfare League of America, Linda Spears sat in her office in tears, surrounded by archival records pulled from an old cardboard box.

The dry documents told a disturbing story. 

Between 1958 and 1967, the League partnered with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to enact the Indian Adoption Project, a federal initiative across 16 western states promoting the systematic separation of Indigenous families. Some children didn’t have families. Others were removed by social workers who went into tribal homes and arbitrarily deem families unfit — if they talked to the adults at all. Then tribal children were sent to live with white families, in an attempt to assimilate them through adoption.

Newspapers at the time colloquially called the effort the “Papoose Project.’’ A 1964 Miami Herald article stated, “Frequently the illegitimate children run wild and uncared for on reservations and help must be found among the white population.’’

It was an effort Spears’ organization once called “one of the League’s most satisfying activities.”

For Spears, that pivotal moment in her office offered a glimpse of her purpose within the League.  As the first Indigenous woman to lead the Washington D.C.-based advocacy nonprofit, she said that along with looking out for all the nation’s children, she feels it’s also her responsibility to help right the course of an organization that has historically caused harm to tribal children and families. 

KEEP READING👇