Contributors:

Annawon Weeden is an enrolled member of his mother's Mashpee Wampanoag tribal community located on Cape Cod. He currently works in the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center Cultural Resource Dept. as the Eastern Woodland song/dance instructor for his father's Mashantucket Pequot Tribal community located on their reservation in southeastern CT. Growing up on the Narragansett reservation in south coastal RI, Annawon was instructed on the traditional dances & customs of New England natives throughout his entire life. As an adult, traveling abroad visiting many other tribes across the U.S., Annawon has developed a comprehensive understanding of the vast diversity among many native customs. Annawon looks forward to any opportunity to share his cultural knowledge with public audiences while engaging others in cultural preservation for future generations of better understanding.

Dr. Margaret Newell is a professor in the history department at The Ohio State University. She received her A.B. in History and Spanish from Brown University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Early American History from the University of Virginia. Her research and teaching interests include colonial and Revolutionary America, Native American History, economic history, material culture, and comparative colonial American/Latin American History. Her most recent book, Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery won the 2016 James A. Rawley prize for the best book on the history of race relations in the U.S., awarded by the Organization of American Historians and also received the Peter J. Gomes Memorial Prize for 2016 from the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Dr. Emerson “Tad” Baker is a professor of history at Salem State University. His principal area of interest is seventeenth-century New England. Most of his archaeological fieldwork and research has centered on Maine, a place where English, French and Native American cultures collided. He also has a particular interest in Essex County, MA seventeenth-century history. He has worked with many educators and public historians in his more than 25 years at the university and is currently serving as vice-provost for academic affairs.

Elizabeth Solomon is an enrolled member and officer of the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag. Ms. Solomon advocates on local Indigenous issues and has a long-standing commitment to human rights, diversity, inclusion, and community building that she brings to both her paid and volunteer work. She serves on multiple advisory and management boards including those for the Boston Harbor Islands National Park and the Stone Living Lab. Ms. Solomon holds a master’s degree in museum studies and regularly consults with museums, historical societies, municipalities, and educators to bring the voices, histories, and perspectives of native peoples and other underrepresented communities to the forefront. Ms. Solomon currently works as the Director of Administration in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She has more than three decades of public health experience working in both university and community-based settings. (Due to a medical issue, Elizabeth will be unable to join as a panelist, but assisted in guiding the themes to be discussed.)

Project Coordinator:

Brian Sheehy

Brian Sheehy is the History Department Coordinator at North Andover High School in North Andover, MA, where he teaches AP European History, AP United States History, Sports of the Past, and Sports in American Culture. He is the Organization of American Historians: Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau Teacher of the Year Award 2020 winner and Williams College: Olmstead Secondary Teacher of the Year Award 2020 winner. In 2018 he created the North Andover High History Learning Lab, which focuses on enriching and enhancing the history curriculum through object based learning. Brian is also a sports historian who has traveled all over the country giving presentations at conferences, symposiums, historical societies, and museums. He has designed and created professional development for other teachers so that they can incorporate sports-related themes and topics into their everyday history classrooms. Brian is the president of the Essex Base Ball Organization, a nonprofit group that plays base ball as it was played in the 19^th century.

Moderator:

Dr. Brad Austin

Brad Austin is an Associate Professor of History at Salem State University, where he teaches modern U.S. history, sports history, the history of New England and slavery, and history education courses. He has served as the chairperson of American Historical Association’s Teaching Prize Committee. He is the author of Democratic Sports: Men’s and Women’s College Sports During the Great Depression (University of Arkansas Press, 2015) and the co-editor of Understanding and Teaching the Vietnam War (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013). He is also co-editor for the University of Wisconsin Press’s Harvey Goldberg Series for Understanding and Teaching History. In 2012, he won the Graduate Studies Teaching Award from the Northeastern Council of Graduate Studies, an organization representing more than 200 universities in the eastern United States and Canada.

Contact:

Beth Beringer

Director of Education Programs, Essex Heritage, can be reached at bethb@essexheritage.org