Hello all,
Please note the following upcoming events honoring National Native American Heritage Month 2021 (all listings are Eastern Time):
Nov 10 @ 7:00 pm and 9:00 pm: Two showings of the world premiere of the new Upstander Project film, BOUNTY* regarding bounties for the scalps of Penobscot people, provided by government decree. Watch this short trailer to learn more about the film: bountyfilm.org. Join Penobscot Nation Tribal Ambassador Maulian Dana, film participant Dawn Neptune Adams (Penobscot), and filmmaker and Upstander Project director Adam Mazo for a conversation after each showing.
Nov 11 @ 7:00 pm: Saint Anselm College presents Indigenous Peoples and the Merrimack River. Sherry Gould, Tribal Genealogist in the Nulhegan Band of Coosuk Abenaki will speak about what rivers and wetlands meant to Abenaki people historically and their cultural importance today. Dr. Robert Goodby, Professor of Anthropology at Franklin Pierce University, archaeologist with over 30 years of experience excavating Native American sites in New England, and author of A Deep Presence: 13,000 Years of Native American History (2021) will speak about what the archaeological record tells us about the importance of rivers to Native Americans. Location: Saint Anselm College, Jean Student Center and by Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88387129865 Passcode: 195398. No registration required.
Nov 13 from 10:00 am - 6:00 pm: New Hampshire's annual indigenous storytelling festival, Dawnland StoryFest: https://www.strawberybanke.org/events/dawnland-storyfest.cfm Participants attending this virtual event listen to a keynote address by Louise Profeit-LeBlanc, co-founder of the Yukon International Storytelling Festival, and hear traditional Indigenous storytellers from New England and Canada.
It’s been more than 400 years since the first Thanksgiving, and there is a lot we are still learning about that time. Just prior to the Pilgrims’ arrival, a plague decimated New England’s coastal Native American population, altering the course of colonialism. This is the story of the Great Dying and of how tribal leaders are learning from the past as they deal with the effects of today’s pandemic. After the half-hour screening, NH History teacher and host of the long-running NH PBS high school quiz show Granite State Challenge will moderate a conversation with documentary producers Phil Vaughn and Jim Smith.
Nov 18 and 20 (Maine Public TV) and Nov 29 (Rhode Island PBS): Various screenings of another Upstander Project film, Dawnland, regarding the Maine Truth and Reconciliation process for the removal of Wabanaki children from their homes, to "save them from being Indian".
* Notes regarding BOUNTY: "Here is the synopsis of the film, by Dawn Neptune Adams, Maulian Dana, Adam Mazo, Ben Pender-Cudlip, and Tracy Rector: We are citizens of the Penobscot Nation. For this film, we bring our families to Boston to read our ancestors’ death warrant. This abhorrent proclamation, made in 1755 by the colonial government, paid settlers handsomely to murder Penobscot people. It declared our people enemies and offered different prices for the scalps of children, women, and men. Bounty proclamations like this, some even paid in stolen land, persisted for more than two centuries across what is now the United States. The memory of being hunted is in our blood. We know this to be true, and the science now affirms that trauma can be passed down from generation to generation. In BOUNTY we step into the future together with our children into the colonizer’s hall of injustice, to read their hateful words and tell the truth about what was done to our ancestors. We exercise our power by sharing the horrors of this hard history as an act of resistance, remembrance, and a step toward justice."
The timeline includes 69 State proclamations (mostly Massachusetts and New Hampshire) that provided government bounties for Indigenous scalps in the Dawnland. The timeline also includes a basic outline of the century of invasion by the settlers into Abenaki territory, and it provides examples of claims made by settlers for the scalps of the Indigenous men, women, and children that had been presented to the State for compensation. In particular, there is more history here regarding the Pemijoasik massacre, which adds and changes a lot regarding what i have understood so far, along with a little bit of history regarding Winnipesaukee, too. A lot is also here regarding the Pequawket and some regarding the Pennacook. (These are the larger groups most directly relevant to the White Mountain history and ecosystem. The Pequawket were along the Saco and traveled west to and through the Whites. The Pennacook were largely along the Merrimack and traveled north.)"
Thank you.
Hazel WestneyAssistant, Long-term Ecological Research Projects
Administrator, Campus Housing Program
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
PO Box AB / 2801 Sharon Turnpike
Millbrook NY 12545
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I live along the Mahicannituck, the waters that are never
still, on ancestral land of the indigenous Muhheconneok and Munsee people.