Embedded Files
Mashpee Wampanoag Powwow, 2010s
Land Acknowledgement
“We want to acknowledge that we are standing on, and benefiting from land that has been seized, expropriated, and taken from Indigenous peoples, often through deceit, falsified deeds, or violence.
“For thousands of years this has been [Native] land. These are still the homelands of the [Natives] peoples.
“These Native peoples and their descendants are still living here among us. They have not gone. Every time we gather here we must acknowledge and respect that fact.” - Adapted with the permission of the Nolumbeka Project.
While no collection of people of Pawtucket heritage have reformed a viable community today, many Native Americans live in eastern Massachusetts. While Massachusetts has only two federally-recognized Indian tribes - the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) - several unrecognized tribes exist in the state, including the Massachusett and Nipmuc.30 Other Native Americans from across the county have moved to eastern Massachusetts and Winchester in recent decades, in part for its schools, just as the other domestic and international migrants that populate this town.
Native Americans used fishweirs to catch fish. The Ancient Fishweir Project builds annually a fishweir on the Boston Common to demonstrate this tradition.
Native American tribes burning a traditional mishoon (canoe) in Charlestown (Boston), MA late 2022
For those interested in learning more about the Native Americans of New England and beyond, you can visit the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnography at Harvard University in Cambridge, the Plimoth Patuxet Museums in Plymouth, and the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Mashantucket, CT or contact/get involved with the Harvard University Native American Program, the Institute for New England Native American Studies, the Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness, and the North American Indian Center of Boston, among others.
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