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Indigenous Peoples Day - MA Indigenous Legislative Agenda

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Bill Name: An Act Establishing An Indigenous Peoples Day House Number: HD.2422 Senate Number: HD.664 Please contact your State Senator and State Representative https://malegislature.gov/Search/FindMyLegislator and ask them to support this bill! Bill Description: This bill replaces Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day in the Massachusetts General Laws.

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We need your help to get an Indigenous Peoples Day bill passed in MA! Urge the MA Joint Committee on State Admin. & Regulatory Oversight to move this important bill out of committee: "H.3191/S.2027 An Act establishing an Indigenous Peoples Day"

Dear Friends and Supporters of Indigenous Peoples Day:

For decades, Christopher Columbus has been celebrated as a "hero" who "discovered America." Indigenous people have made it clear that in truth he and his men were responsible for the enslavement, rape and murder of countless Indigenous peoples in the Caribbean, and that the lands where he arrived were invaded, not "discovered." Since the 1970s, Indigenous people have asked that Indigenous Peoples Day should instead be celebrated on the second Monday in October as a positive day to learn about and honor Indigenous history and peoples. States such as Maine and Vermont already celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day, as do an increasing number of cities and towns in Massachusetts, from Holyoke to Northampton to Provincetown, Somerville and Cambridge. The time has come for the entire state of Massachusetts to stop celebrating Columbus and instead honor Indigenous Peoples Day. An Act establishing an Indigenous Peoples Day will make that happen.

Please take a moment today to contact your legislators and the Joint Committee on State Administration & Regulatory Oversight asking them to vote the bills out favorably (H.3191 and S.2027). The text of the bill reads as follows: "Chapter 6 of the General Laws is hereby amended by striking out section 12V and inserting in place thereof the following section:- Section 12V. The governor shall annually issue a proclamation setting apart the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples Day and recommending that it be observed by the people, with appropriate exercises in the schools and otherwise, to acknowledge the history of genocide and discrimination against Indigenous peoples, and to recognize and celebrate the thriving cultures and continued resistance and resilience of Indigenous peoples and their tribal nations."

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We need your help to get an Indigenous Peoples Day bill passed in Massachusetts! Urge the MA Joint Committee on State Administration & Regulatory Oversight to move this important bill out of committee: "H.3191/S.2027 An Act establishing an Indigenous Peo

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Dear Friends and Supporters of Indigenous Peoples Day: For decades, Christopher Columbus has been celebrated as a "hero" who "discovered America." Indigenous people have made it clear that in truth he and his men were responsible for the enslavement, rape and murder of countless Indigenous peoples in the Caribbean, and that the lands where he arrived were invaded, not "discovered."

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Mayor Janey signed an executive order declaring the second Monday of October to be Indigenous Peoples Day in the City of Boston.
Mayor Kim Janey today signed an executive order establishing Monday, October 11, 2021 and every second Monday of October as Indigenous Peoples Day in Boston. As part of this effort, the City of Boston is committed to recognizing the Indigenous history, celebrating cultures, strengthening relationships, denouncing colonial past, and increasing dialogue with local tribes to foster reconciliation and support for the rights of Indigenous people.

Indigenous Peoples Day recognizes the history of the land where Boston sits, the traditional homeland of the Massachusett Tribe and the home of neighboring Wampanoag and Nipmuc tribes. Mayor Janey encourages local businesses, organizations, and public institutions to use this day as a moment of reflection of historic policies that actively suppressed Indigenous cultures.

"Indigenous Peoples Day celebrates the rich cultural legacies of our Indigenous communities while also declaring Boston is ready to work with our neighbors to create a more just future," said Mayor Kim Janey. "With Boston's long history comes an opportunity and obligation to acknowledge the difficult parts of our past and dedicate ourselves to fostering a more equitable City. Observing Indigenous Peoples Day is about replacing the colonial myths passed down from generation to generation with the true history of the land upon which our nation was founded."

Wednesday's signing at Boston City Hall is a result of collaboration with the United American Indians of New England (UAINE), the North American Indian Center of Boston (NAICOB), and members of the Massachusett Tribe - all a key part of increasing the City's engagement with Indigenous communities in Boston.

"The people of the Massachusett Tribe have been a part of what is now called Boston for over 10,000 years," said Elizabeth Solomon of the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag. "For far too long, the indigenous history of this place has been obscured, and frequently erased, by the histories, myths, and priorities of the dominant culture. We are happy to see the City of

Boston take the important step of recognizing and celebrating Indigenous peoples in Boston, the Americas, and around the world. Many thanks to Mayor Janey and the many members of her administration who worked with the indigenous community to make this happen."

"As someone who was born in Boston but never felt that Indigenous people were welcomed by the city government, I am very happy about Mayor Janey's actions today," said Kimimilasha James, an Aquinnah Wampanoag youth leader with United American Indians of New England. "Indigenous Peoples Day brings a positive message about Indigenous survival and resilience in the face of genocidal actions directed against Indigenous peoples since 1492. It's a day to learn about and celebrate Indigenous history and contemporary Indigenous peoples and cultures. And it is just a first step for the city to begin to build relationships with Indigenous people and begin to address the many injustices faced by Indigenous people here in Boston and elsewhere. It is time for us to stop being largely ignored and erased."

"As a First Nation Migmaw mother, I am pleased that the city of Boston is honoring Indigenous Peoples Day," said Gloria Colon, Outreach Coordinator for the North American Indian Center of Boston (NAICOB). "Growing up in Dorchester I experienced racism, I was targeted just for being Indigenous. While our city still has work to do to make all people safe, it is important that Indigenous children are appreciated and included."

"We have been working for several years to get Boston to properly acknowledge and be in relationship with Indigenous nations and people here," said Mahtowin Munro (Lakota) from United American Indians of New England and the statewide Indigenous Peoples Day campaign. "We wish to thank Mayor Janey and her staff for listening to the concerns of Indigenous people in the city and for her expressed commitment to Indigenous sovereignty and racial justice for Indigenous peoples in the Boston area. She and her staff have set an example as well by thoughtfully consulting and considering future steps that need to be taken by the city. We are elated that she has declared October 11, 2021 to be Indigenous Peoples Day in the City of Boston."

"I'm so proud to have a Mayor who listens to community and works to make Boston an inclusive city," said Raquel Halsey, member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation and Executive Director of NAICOB. "As a service provider, we have heard countless stories of Indigenous people feeling unwelcome in Boston, and they have felt the lasting consequences of genocide and colonialism everyday. Recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day is an important step towards addressing the lived experiences of many residents and building trust between municipalities and Indigenous nations."

"We must commend the tribal leaders, Indigenous activists, and the City of Boston's internal working group for their dedication towards the action steps to enable the health and wellness of our community members," said Jean-Luc Pierite, member of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe, president of NAICOB, and member of the executive committee of the Black Mass. Coalition. "NAICOB, following our over 50 year tradition and commitment to the New England Native American community, looks forward to being a partner in ensuring improved government-to-government relationships."

Boston joins over two dozen Massachusetts cities and towns in recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day, a movement that has garnered allies within the Italian American community.

"The membership of Italian Americans for Indigenous Peoples Day is thrilled that Boston Mayor Kim Janey has listened to the voices of Indigenous people and taken this important step toward truth and justice," said Heather Leavell, one of five co-founders of the Italian Americans for Indigenous Peoples Day. "By establishing Indigenous Peoples Day, Boston will honor the histories, cultures, and resilience of the First Peoples of this land - those who were here long before our ancestors arrived on these shores and are still here today. We welcome the opportunities this holiday will bring us to move forward together in healing and reconciliation."

"We also call on the MA Legislature to pass bill H.3191/S.2027, 'An Act Establishing Indigenous Peoples Day'," Leavell continued, "to officially designate the second Monday of October as Indigenous Peoples Day across the Commonwealth. Italian Americans for Indigenous Peoples Day believes that a holiday that celebrates the resilience of Indigenous peoples is far more truthful and uplifting than one that honors a man whose legacy is characterized by conquest, slavery, and genocide. Any association with Christopher Columbus diminishes our culture and does not honor the struggles and contributions of our ancestors or the long tradition of human rights activism in the Italian American community."

As a way to turn this new day of recognition into action, an internal working group of City employees has developed a series of proposals as the beginning of a long-term healing process, in collaboration with Indigenous community leadership. Those proposals include recognition of Indigenous Peoples Day; land acknowledgement; expanded capacity within the City to engage the Indigenous community and to support Indigenous youth and families; increased public representation of Indigenous peoples in the City; and an increased focus on housing, economic and workforce development for tribal members.

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Mayor Janey establishes Indigenous Peoples Day in Boston

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Mayor Janey signed an executive order declaring the second Monday of October to be Indigenous Peoples Day in the City of Boston. Mayor Kim Janey today signed an executive order establishing Monday, October 11, 2021 and every second Monday of October as Indigenous Peoples Day in Boston.

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While Massachusetts lawmakers and advocates push for a statewide change to establish Indigenous Peoples Day in lieu of Columbus Day, at least 20 towns have already changed the name of the holiday, citing the genocide of native people that followed Columbus' travels and a desire to honor those whose lands and lives were taken.

"Columbus was, and is, a terrorist," Faries Gray, sagamore of the Ponkapoag tribe, told the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight. "That we celebrate these acts of terrorism says a lot about us as a culture. We are not responsible for actions that happened 500 years ago. We are responsible for what we do today. We need to get rid of Columbus Day. We're teaching our children that it's acceptable to do this to indigenous people. This is acceptable to the commonwealth and acceptable to the United States. We need to change this."

Below is a list of Massachusetts towns that have officially changed the name of the holiday to Indigenous People's Day, according to Indigenous Peoples Day Massachusetts.

Nearly two dozen states, including Hawaii, Nevada, Minnesota, Alaska, and Maine and the District of Columbia have either recognized Indigenous Peoples Day or celebrate it with Columbus Day.

In Massachusetts, there are two bills under consideration, H.3191 and S.2027 to follow suit.

State Rep. Brandy Fluker Oakley, a legislator in favor of the change said the desire to keep Columbus Day as the name is similar to efforts to "cling to racist monuments commemorating the Confederacy."

"Massachusetts should celebrate the indigenous people on whose land we sit ... not [commemorate] their suppressor," she said. "Massachusetts should publicly recognize the thriving indigenous communities throughout the commonwealth. This change would .. shift focus from the romanticized false narrative to recognize this true original sin in American history."
Related Content:

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These Massachusetts towns officially celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day

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While Massachusetts lawmakers and advocates push for a statewide change to establish Indigenous Peoples Day in lieu of Columbus Day, at least 20 towns have already changed the name of the holiday, citing the genocide of native people that followed Columbus' travels and a desire to honor those whose lands and lives were taken.

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Bill Title: An Act Prohibiting the Use of Native American Mascots by Public Schools in the Commonwealth

Bill Numbers: SD417/HD646

Overview

This bill would prohibit the use of Native American mascots in Massachusetts public schools. About 25-30 schools in the Commonwealth currently use such mascots. As proposed, the legislation includes the following mandate: "The board of elementary and secondary education shall promulgate regulations prohibiting public schools from using an athletic team name, logo, or mascot which names, refers to, represents, or is associated with Native Americans, including aspects of Native American cultures and specific Native American tribes. The board shall establish a date by which any school in violation of said regulations shall choose a new team name, logo, or mascot." Sen. Joanne Comerford, Democrat for Hampshire, Franklin and Worcester is Senate sponsor. House sponsors are Rep. Tami Gouveia for 14th Middlesex District and Rep. Nika Elugardo for 15th Suffolk District.

Harm to Native Students

Decades of social science research have shown that Native American mascots (i.e., nicknames & logos) have serious psychological and social consequences for Native Americans ( see this article) As stereotypes, these mascots do not accurately represent Native Americans, nor do they honor them. They reinforce one-dimensional stereotypes that overshadow the contributions, perspectives and struggles of contemporary Native American people. For many Native Americans, these racial stereotypes are painful reminders of historical trauma and of the limited ways that others see them. Native American youth are particularly vulnerable to the dehumanizing effects of these mascots. Exposure to Native American mascots has been shown to cause stress, negative feelings, lowered self-esteem, and less future aspiration among Native American students.

Harm to Non-Native Students

Studies have shown that when non-Native people are exposed to Native American mascots, this triggers negative and stereotypical views of Native Americans. These mascots normalize culturally insensitive behaviors and teach an inaccurate understanding of Native American people. These problems are compounded by limited media coverage, and insufficient curricula at all grade levels on the histories and contemporary lives of Native peoples (including colonial U.S. policies of removal and extermination, and facts about contemporary Native tribal nations) that would give students a more accurate frame of reference with which to understand problems with these mascots and other Native American stereotypes.

Statewide Issue

According to 2019 data from the Census Bureau, there are more than 50,000 Native American people living in Massachusetts, many of whom attend Massachusetts public schools. Native American mascots are likely a violation of state and federal anti-discrimination laws, including the Massachusetts Anti-Bullying Law. Often school districts fear community backlash and so fail to fulfill their legal responsibility to protect all students from this discrimination. Civil rights issues should never be decided in the court of public opinion. Municipalities must not be allowed to violate civil rights laws because of community resistance to change.

Civil Rights

It is likely that Native American mascots violate anti-discrimination laws because they "establish an unwelcome and often hostile learning environment for American Indian students" (American Psychological Association Resolution, 2005). The presence of Native American mascots is a civil rights issue.

Inclusive Process for Drafting Final Language of Bill

Many tribal representatives, Native individuals residing in the Commonwealth, and organizations that work with and advocate for Native Americans have provided feedback on the language in the proposed bill. The language in this bill should not be modified without consultation with these tribal representatives and organizations.

Advocacy

The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), the country's largest and most representative Native American advocacy organization, has been fighting to end Native mascots since the 1960s. Currently over 145 tribal nations, as well as government, education, professional, civil rights, and religious organizations in the United States have recognized the negative health impacts of Native American mascots and called for elimination of these mascots. In Massachusetts, this includes the Chappaquiddick Tribe of the Wampanoag Nation, Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe, Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag, and Nipmuc Nation. Organizations in Massachusetts include Cultural Survival, Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness, Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs, Massachusetts Teachers Association, National Association of Social Workers-Massachusetts Chapter, New England Area Conference of the NAACP, North American Indian Center of Boston, Progressive Mass, United American Indians of New England, the Upstander Project, and UU Mass Action. In addition to NCAI, national organizations include the National Education Association, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the American Psychological Association, American Anthropological Association, American Sociological Association, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

State Measures to Ban Mascots

There are laws that prohibit (in various ways) Native American mascots in the public schools in the states of Maine, Oregon, California, and Wisconsin.

State Boards of Education with resolutions against Native American mascots are: Minnesota, 1988; Washington, 1993 (reaffirmed in 2012); New York, 2001; New Hampshire, 2002; Michigan, 2003 (reaffirmed in 2010).

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

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Native Mascots - MA Indigenous Legislative Agenda

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Action Alert! The 2021-2022 Indigenous Legislative Agenda includes 5 priorities: Remove Racist Mascots, Honor Indigenous People's Day, Celebrate and Teach Native American Culture & History, Protect Native American Heritage, and Support the Education and Futures of Native Youth. Please urge your state legislators to co-sponsor these 5 important bills today!

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Not Your Mascot: Native Americans and Team Mascots

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Rally Demands Gov. Baker Establish Indigenous Peoples Day In Massachusetts

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Bill would ban use of Native American mascots by public schools in Mass.

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The Joint Committee on Education heard testimony Thursday on a bill that would ban the use of Native American mascots by public schools in the Commonwealth.

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WAKEFIELD, Massachusetts - Residents of a Boston suburb have voted to keep the high school's Native American mascot and logo.

Wakefield voters on Tuesday supported keeping the school's Warrior mascot and the accompanying image of a man wearing a feathered headdress by a 2,911 to 2,337 vote, according to the town's unofficial results.

The nonbinding ballot question had sharply divided the town of some 27,000 residents north of Boston.

Some viewed the mascot as a source of pride while others deemed it racist and derogatory, The Boston Globe reported. Native American groups also urged the town to retire the mascot, as other Massachusetts communities have done.

Supporters of making a change say they still hope the school committee pursues eliminating the logo. The panel voted last month to eliminate the offending image but to preserve the Warrior moniker.

"THIS is why we [must] ban Native American mascots at the state level," tweeted state Sen. Jo Comerford, a Northampton Democrat who has proposed banning Native American imagery in public school team names and logos statewide. "A racial justice, civil rights issue must not be left to a local vote."

Roughly 25 Massachusetts schools still use some form of Native American mascot, according to the New England Anti-Mascot Coalition.

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Massachusetts town votes to keep school's Native American logo

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WAKEFIELD, Massachusetts - Residents of a Boston suburb have voted to keep the high school's Native American mascot and logo. Wakefield voters on Tuesday supported keeping the school's Warrior mascot and the accompanying image of a man wearing a feathered headdress by a 2,911 to 2,337 vote, according to the town's unofficial results.

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An Act to Protect Native American Heritage - MA Indigenous Legislative Agenda

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Action Alert! The 2021-2022 Indigenous Legislative Agenda includes 5 priorities: Remove Racist Mascots, Honor Indigenous People’s Day, Celebrate and Teach Native American Culture & History, Protect Native American Heritage, and Support the Education and Futures of Native Youth. Please urge your stat…

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An Act to Protect Native American Heritage

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Protection of Native cultural resources is critical to the vitality of traditional Native religions, customs, languages, and status as sovereign nations.

NCAI is deeply concerned with the repatriation of Native American human remains and funerary objects, the vigorous enforcement of the Indian Arts & Crafts Act, and the revitalization of Native languages.

American Indian and Alaska Native peoples have a substantial interest in protecting, accessing, and controlling their cultural resources. These resources may include not only land and objects but also traditions, languages, and symbols. Access to and usage of these cultural resources, as well as public awareness and understanding of Native cultural practices and traditions, are integral to the preservation of Native lifeways and the unique contribution they make to our nation. Many of these resources may be protected by tribal, state, or federal laws; however, some are not. Native peoples have a significant interest in ensuring not only that the current laws aimed at protecting tribal culture are being enforced properly, but that new laws and policies are geared toward protecting and sustaining tribal culture as well.

A handful of federal laws recognize the critical importance of protecting Native cultural resources. Perhaps the most well known of such laws is the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). NAGPRA was initially enacted in 1990 to establish the rights of Indian tribes and their lineal descendants to obtain repatriation of certain human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony from federal agencies and museums. Yet, even now, more than 20 years after its enactment, NAGPRA's policy goals have not been fully achieved.

Similarly, the Indian Arts & Crafts Act (IACA), also enacted in 1990, was intended to protect tribal cultural resources by preventing the sale of goods that are falsely represented to have been made by Indians. However, IACA has been ineffective because of inadequate enforcement and weak penalties that do not sufficiently deter potential violators. It is imperative that the federal government live up to its enforcement responsibilities under both NAGPRA and IACA, so that the legislative intent behind both laws can be fulfilled.

Protection of less tangible tribal cultural resources is also critical to preserving tribal culture. Specifically, Native languages are an irreplaceable part of Native religions, ceremonial practices, and cultural heritage-and they are in a state of emergency. Seventy of the remaining 139 spoken tribal languages could become extinct by 2015, and all of these languages need immediate support at the tribal, local, state, and national levels. NCAI supports the creation of more Native language immersion and revitalization programs and will continue to advocate for the protection of these and other critical tribal cultural resources.

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Protection of Native cultural resources is critical to the vitality of traditional Native religions, customs, languages, and status as sovereign nations. NCAI is deeply concerned with the repatriation of Native American human remains and funerary objects, the vigorous enforcement of the Indian Arts & Crafts Act, and the revitalization of Native languages.

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Celebrate and Teach Native American Culture & History - MA Indigenous Legislative Agenda

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Action Alert! The time is long overdue for Massachusetts public schools to educate all students about Native American cultures, histories and current issues, and we need your help to get this passed! Steps you can take now: Go to the Action Network link and you will find the text of the bill, an automated letter...

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Students who learn anything about Native Americans are often only offered the barest minimum: re-enacting the first Thanksgiving, building a California Spanish mission out of sugar cubes or memorizing a flashcard about the Trail of Tears just ahead of the AP U.S. History Test.

Most students across the United States don't get comprehensive, thoughtful or even accurate education in Native American history and culture. A 2015 study by researchers at Pennsylvania State University found that 87 percent of content taught about Native Americans includes only pre-1900 context. And 27 states did not name an individual Native American in their history standards. "When one looks at the larger picture painted by the quantitative data," the study's authors write, "it is easy to argue that the narrative of U.S. history is painfully one sided in its telling of the American narrative, especially with regard to Indigenous Peoples' experiences."

The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian is setting out to correct this with Native Knowledge 360 Degrees (NK360°). The museum's national education initiative, first launched in February 2018, builds on more than a decade of work at the museum. The multi-part initiative aims to improve how Native American history and culture is taught in schools across the country by introducing and elevating indigenous perspectives and voices. Just in time for the start of the 2019-2020 school year, the initiative released three new lesson plans, offering a deeper look at the innovations of the Inka Empire, investigating why some treaties between Native American tribes and the U.S. government failed, and providing an in-depth exploration into the context and history of the Cherokee removal in the 1830s.

At the core of NK360° is the "Essential Understandings," a ten-part framework to help educators think about how they teach Native history. Some of the understandings directly challenge narratives that are already perpetuated in schools through textbooks and standards, such as the idea of American Indians as a monolithic group: "There is no single American Indian culture or language. American Indians are both individuals and members of a tribal group," the curriculum asserts. Another myth the curriculum addresses is the idea that American Indians are a people of the past: "Today, Native identity is shaped by many complex social, political, historical, and cultural factors." And it highlights the work done by Native people to foster their cultural identities: "In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, many American Indian communities have sought to revitalize and reclaim their languages and cultures."

These essential understandings underpin the initiative's online lesson plans released cost-free, for teachers to use in their classrooms. Edwin Schupman, manager of NK360° and a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, says that the initiative is trying to "meet teachers where they are [and address] what their needs are."

While the initiative's staff has extensive plans for subjects they'd like to eventually cover, the lesson plans have, so far, primarily focused expanding on topics already being taught in school-Thanksgiving, treaties between the U.S. government and American Indian nations, the Trail of Tears-so that educators are more likely to use them.

Consider how American Indian Removal is often taught in schools. Students learn that President Andrew Jackson spearheaded the policy and signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830. The Act led to the forcible removal of the Cherokee Nation of the modern-day American South, including Georgia and Alabama, to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Thousands of indigenous people died on the journey, hence the name "Trail of Tears."

But that view obscures that several other tribes were also forced out of their lands around the same time period and that many indigenous people actively resisted their removal. And, for the Cherokee, the arrival in Indian Territory is "where the story usually stops, but it didn't stop for Native people once they got there," Schupman says.

NK360°'s newest lesson plan "The Trail of Tears: A Story of Cherokee Removal," created in collaboration with the Cherokee Nation, offers a more comprehensive view of this often-taught, but not well understood historical chapter. The material brings the history into the present by including Native voices and perspectives. "We have interviews with community members whose families were part of that removal, from leaders of those communities today who are still dealing with effects of nation rebuilding," says Schupman. The material also complements the previously released lesson plans "American Indian Removal: What Does It Mean to Remove a People?" and "How Did Six Different Native Nations Try to Avoid Removal?"

The NK360° lesson plans use inquiry-based teaching to foster critical thinking skills. Schupman says, "you provide questions, give students the primary and secondary sources to analyze, and some activities to do so that they can then gather evidence to answer those questions." The lessons have interactive elements, like games and text annotation tools, and multimedia elements, including animated videos and interviews with Native American youth, to which students have responded positively, according to a NK360° survey.

Jennifer Bumgarner, a seventh-grade language arts teacher in rural North Carolina, started using elements from "Northern Plains History and Cultures: How Do Native People and Nations Experience Belonging?" in her classroom last year and was excited by how seamlessly they fit into her students' exploration of community. "The materials are very engaging, very student friendly [and] very easily adapted," she says.

Sandra Garcia, who teaches social studies to seventh and eighth graders in a dual-language immersion program in Glendale, California, says, "for teachers, it's very time consuming to gather all these resources." Garcia adds that she appreciates that NK360° vets, combines and presents the materials in a ready-to-go package.

Both Bumgarner and Garcia attended NK360°'s summer institute for teachers, which is part of a larger, year-round professional development programming. The four-day institute brings about 30 educators from around the country to learn how to better teach Native American history and culture. The experience of learning from the NK360° instructors and collaborating with the other attendees gave Garcia "a lot of confidence to teach the subject matter and to teach others" how to use it and even encouraged her to learn about her family's own indigenous heritage in Mexico.

This summer Alison Martin arrived from Washington state to be the NK360° 2019 Teacher-in-Residence. Martin, an enrolled descendant of the Karuk tribe, enjoyed the chance to collaborate with the other attending educators-the majority of whom are non-Native and many of whom have little interaction with Native people-on how to better teach this history. "There are well-intentioned teachers who grew up in a system that didn't teach [about Native Americans] or taught misconceptions. These teachers grow up and have this blindspot," she says. The museum "is directly addressing this cycle of misconception rooted in decades and centuries of miseducation," she adds. "It's easy to relegate Natives as irrelevant, past-tense peoples and it can be hard for teachers who aren't connected with Native communities to understand what it means to be Native in a contemporary role."

While at the museum, Martin focused on adapting for fourth graders the high school level curriculum "We Have a Story to Tell: Native Peoples of the Chesapeake Region." Now that she's back home and starting her first year as a teacher at a Bureau of Indian Affairs school, and in her tenth year working with kids, Martin plans to test her revised lesson plan in the classroom. Her Native students already have a greater understanding of diversity among indigenous communities, but she's excited to get them thinking and curious about Native communities across the country, like the Piscataway tribe in the Washington, D.C. region. Martin wants to "make Native education fun and engaging for the kids," she says. "It should be a celebration of Native communities."

As it grows, the initiative is drawing on a network of partnerships, from state education offices to Native nations and teacher organizations, to help it develop new curriculum, recruit teachers to its professional development programs and introduce the lesson plans into schools around the country.

More than a year after its launch, Schupman is pleased with the program's reception. More generally, though, "I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about the need for more inclusiveness and more equity. That it's somehow revisionist or threatening to other groups of people," he says. At its core, NK360° is about Native Americans "telling our own story, our own collective story and doing a much better job of it."

Understanding Native American history "positions us to better deal with the issues that we face as a nation today," he says. "If we had a better understanding of other people's experience with things like immigration or activities like removing people-the impact that they have-I think then we would be less susceptible to inaccurate narratives and more capable of responding in thoughtful ways."

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Inside a New Effort to Change What Schools Teach About Native American History

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A new curriculum from the American Indian Museum brings greater depth and understanding to the long-misinterpreted history of indigenous culture

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More states move to require lessons on Native American history and culture

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The efforts, some worry, will run up against a broader backlash to teaching about racism.

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Educate Native Youth - MA Indigenous Legislative Agenda

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Action Alert! The 2021-2022 Indigenous Legislative Agenda includes 5 priorities: Remove Racist Mascots, Honor Indigenous People's Day, Celebrate and Teach Native American Culture & History, Protect Native American Heritage, and Support the Education and Futures of Native Youth. Please urge your state legislators to co-sponsor these 5 important bills today!

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Learn about the Bureau of Substance Addiction Services (BSAS) Native American Team Project.

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Some Native American children fear bullying and harassment so much, they hide their ethnicity at school, according to an education expert.

"A lot of Native students feel invisible," said Katrina Boone, an associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a national nonprofit whose mission is to change education and life outcomes for underserved children.

Boone said many students have told her they don't feel comfortable letting their teachers know they are Native American because they have "been harassed and bullied, not just by peers, but by teachers in school."

Native American students languish in schools across the country and often face worse outcomes than their white, black and Latino peers, she said. And the rates of high school and post-graduation trends are below the rates of their peers.

The suicide rate for Native youth exceeds the rate of their peers, Boone said. And national data indicate that rates for illicit drug use and tobacco use are higher for Native youth than for their peers, she said, citing the National Survey on Drug Use and Health from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

False history

Native Americans have been discriminated against "for hundreds of years," Boone said, and forced to assimilate into a Euro-centric American culture.

"A lot of people view Native people and their socio-economic challenges and think the cause is Native people themselves," she said. "But the actuality is that of course these challenges aren't inherent to Native people. These are the effects of centuries of our government being terroristic, genocidal, and just generally unfair to Native American people since European first contact."

Schools were used as a tool of assimilation, Boone said. "Very thoughtfully and very strategically by the government to destroy Native culture, to destroy Native language, to separate Native people, and to erase their cultures as they originally existed before first contact," she said.

Hundreds of thousands of Native children were sent -- often forcibly -- to Native American boarding schools where "they were punished for speaking their native language, banned from acting in any way that might be seen to represent traditional or cultural practices, stripped of traditional clothing, hair and personal belongings and behaviors reflective of their native culture," according to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.

When they returned to their families, "they were so completely Americanized that they couldn't speak the language of their families and had lost their culture and traditions," Boone said. The outcome is poverty, poor physical and mental health issues and subpar education outcomes "that we see in Indian country today."
Native schools
But Boone is quick to point out that there are pockets in the country where Native students excel.

"The schools where Native students excel acknowledge those students' culture, they acknowledge those students' Native languages, they involve communities in really rich ways, and usually those schools are controlled and run by Native people," Boone said.

She points to the Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Immersion School in northwestern Wisconsin, where students thrive in an academically rigorous environment that leverages the myriad assets of their Native culture and language.

There is also the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), a 56-hectare (140-acre) campus in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where approximately 500 students are immersed in contemporary Native American arts and culture.

Members of about 100 tribes attend the school, President Robert Martin, a member of the Cherokee Nation, said. "So that's a lot of diversity," he said, but the school's main mission he points out, "will always reflect that indigenous or Native perspective."
Dolores' story
Native American and IAIA student Dolores Scarlett Cortez studies printmaking and photography. She said using those mediums allowed her to explore her roots. Cortez said she spent this past summer photographing members of her community, and in the process, found her calling.

"With my own indigenous cultures and especially coming to the school, I do feel like there's not enough resources on reservation land that caters to indigenous people," she said. "I think it's really important to bring that representation back."
The power of film
Anthony Deiter, who graduated from IAIA 25 years ago and is now a professor of virtual gaming and simulation at the school, teaches a new concept in filmmaking: moving images viewed on a spherical screen rather than a flat one.

He said he thinks the arts -- especially film -- are a powerful platform to help students understand their history, and they provide an opportunity to correct it where they can.

"We often look at those movies and go, 'Well, that's sort of not us,' and I'm going 'Well, maybe we need to start putting that voice out there. Maybe we need to take a place, like the Institute of American Indian Arts, [which] has the platform to jump off to tell our own stories,'" Dieter said.
Political push
"What I really feel needs to happen is we need to have more Native Americans in roles that we don't necessarily see them in now, or roles that we are a vast minority in," said U.S. Congresswoman Deb Haaland, a Democrat who represents New Mexico's 1st congressional district and is one of two female Native American legislators elected to Congress.

At the University of New Mexico School of Law where Haaland graduated in 2006, she lobbied the state legislature to pass a bill giving Native Americans in-state tuition regardless of their residency. She paid out-of-state tuition at University of New Mexico School of Law because she resided in California several years before enrollment.

"I felt that I'm a Pueblo woman, and my family's been here since the 1280s, and that made me a 35th generation New Mexican. And it just seemed wrong that I had to pay out-of-state tuition," Haaland said.

She said she would like to see more Native Americans in leadership roles, especially women.

"We need more Native women CEOs. We need more Native women in public office. We need Native Americans in high military positions. We need to ensure that we are giving opportunities to not just Native Americans, but minority students all over the country," Haaland said.
Walking in two worlds
Boone, of Bellwether Education Partners, said she thinks that in order to succeed, Native Americans have to first be fully grounded in their own culture.

"New students have to understand that they live in, for better or worse, the country that we all live in today, and that there's a real need to be able to navigate that society, but with the strength within them from their first culture," she said.

"That's not different for any other kid in school," she said. "I saw in my teaching experiences that kids really need to be rooted in their families and their communities, and have some sort of cultural base."

"Those are the kids who are the most successful," Boone said

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Education for Native Youth Is a Work in Progress

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Some Native American children fear bullying and harassment so much, they hide their ethnicity at school, according to an education expert. "A lot of Native students feel invisible," said Katrina Boone, an associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a national nonprofit whose mission is to change education and life outcomes for underserved children.

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Indian nations have a tremendous stake in an improved education system. Education prepares Native children not only for active and equal participation in the global market, but also to be positive, involved members of their communities. Equally important, investments in education equip the future leaders of tribal governments. There is no more vital resource to the continued existence and integrity of Indian tribes than Native children.

NCAI is committed to ensuring that American Indian and Alaska Native students have the best educational opportunities possible, including access to a quality education system that respects and addresses their unique cultural and linguistic needs.

There are approximately 644,000 American Indian and Alaska Native students in the US K-12 system, representing 1.2 percent of public school students nationally ( r1). Ninety percent of Native students attend public schools, while eight percent attend schools administered by the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE). States where Native students comprise the largest proportions of the total student populations include Alaska (27 percent); Oklahoma (19 percent); Montana (11 percent); New Mexico (11 percent); and South Dakota (11 percent).( r2)

Native students' academic achievement and educational attainment lags far behind that of their white peers. Over the past 10 years, Native students have been the only population to have not improved in reading or math (grades four and eight).( r3) Nationwide, Native youth face some of the lowest high school graduation rates, and even fewer enroll in and graduate from college. On average, less than 50 percent of Native students graduate from high school each year in the seven states with the highest percentage of American Indian and Alaska Native students.( r4)

Providing Native children with a quality education is a central component of the federal government's trust responsibility to tribes, and this commitment must be upheld. Tribes are deeply invested in improving Indian education, and strengthening tribal control over education is key to Native students' success. Tribal governments are in the best position to address the unique educational needs of our Native students for a simple but intuitive reason: tribes know their children and communities the best.

The recently introduced Native Culture, Language, and Access for Success (CLASS) Act firmly recognizes and supports the role of tribal governments as sovereigns in directing the education of Native students. The bill provides a number of provisions that tribal leaders have long sought, including increased tribal control over the education of tribal citizens, a formula grant program for language immersion schools, and comprehensive wraparound services for Native youth. As Indian Country's education bill, the Native CLASS Act should be enacted into law to expand the educational opportunities available to Native students.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is the major federal statute governing public education in states and school districts across the country. Last authorized by Congress in 2002, ESEA is long overdue for reauthorization. While the President has made clear that education reform is a priority of his Administration, Congress has been slow to move any legislation forward.

NCAI is working closely with Congress to ensure that the Native CLASS Act is incorporated into the larger ESEA reauthorization. Download our factsheet to read more about the following tribal priorities that must be included into all ESEA reauthorization legislation:

*Strengthen tribal control of education.
*Preserve and revitalize Native languages.
*Provide tribes with access to tribal member student records.
*Encourage tribal/state partnership.

Page References

1. Status and Trends in the Education of American Indians and Alaska Natives: 2008 (NCES 2008-084). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

2. US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2005, 2007, and 2009 National Indian Education Studies.

3. These states are Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming. Faircloth, Susan, and John Tippeconnic. "The Dropout/Graduation Crisis Among American Indian and Alaska Native Students: Failure to Respond Places the Future of Native Peoples at Risk." The Civil Rights Project. January 2010.

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Indian nations have a tremendous stake in an improved education system. Education prepares Native children not only for active and equal participation in the global market, but also to be positive, involved members of their communities. Equally important, investments in education equip the future leaders of tribal governments.

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As an Italian American tyke, I was proud to celebrate Columbus Day. It didn't merit the attention that St. Patrick's Day got in my Catholic school, with the Irish dancing, shamrocks and green cupcakes. But it still mattered. One of my ancestors discovered America. How cool was that?

It's difficult to give up the myths that shaped the Italian story in the Americas. But these myths are holding us back.

Turns out the Irish had the better role model. No matter how you look at it, Columbus is not somebody we Italians should honor. And we should quit our efforts to salvage a holiday that brings us no glory while reinforcing the pain of the descendants of the people he exploited.

The historical record that has emerged over time is quite clear. Although Columbus was a skilled navigator, he mistakenly thought he could find a fast route to India and China by sailing West, and convinced the Spanish monarchs to bankroll his expedition.

Instead, he landed in the Bahamas and encountered the Taino people. When he met them, he wrote in his journal that these peaceful Indigenous people had the makings of " good servants" and put them to work mining gold - and facing amputation or death if they came up short. (Columbus was personally entitled to 10 percent of the booty; the rest went to Spain.) Later, he would ship thousands of Taino back to Spain to be sold into slavery, while the diseases the explorers brought decimated the tribe.

Even by the norms of the day, Columbus was excessive. As governor of the West Indies, he imposed such brutal punishments on anyone who got in his way - including the Spanish colonists who tried to defy or belittle him - he was sacked by his royal backers and returned to Spain.

Clinging to the need to honor Columbus goes beyond venerating one person. It also means keeping faith with a Eurocentric view of the world that exalts white male explorers who "discovered" continents that were inhabited by "uncivilized" barbarians.

Indeed, extolling Columbus helped the U.S. create an image of itself as exceptional. As his myth grew, he became the model for American daring and persistence against all odds, someone whose explorations had been blessed by Divine Providence. His voyage to America opened the door to the founding of the United States, thus was blessed by God, too.

How intertwined Columbus is with this American vision is evident in the number of monuments to him; according to researchers at the Monument Lab, he ranks third behind Lincoln and Washington. (The controversy over what to do with all those statues likely will play out for years.)

Italians weren't even the focus of America's original glorification of the explorer. It was only when Italian Americans were being lynched and the Italian government got upset that the Italian immigrants' quest to honor Columbus and associate their heritage with him dovetailed with efforts to defuse a diplomatic controversy.

In 1891, 11 Sicilian immigrants were lynched in New Orleans after a mob blamed them for killing the city's police chief, even though a jury hadn't convicted them. Sicilians were targeted for lynching in part because they worked the same jobs as African Americans and often lived in their communities, leading Southerners to consider them more Black than white.

The New Orleans lynching was roundly praised. Rising political star Teddy Roosevelt called it "a rather good thing." A New York Times headline was jubilant: "Chief Hennessy avenged. Eleven of his Italian assassins lynched by a mob."

The Italian government was not so sanguine. It broke off diplomatic relations with the U.S. and demanded (and received) reparations. To further make up for the incident, President Benjamin Harrison in 1892 proclaimed a one-time holiday to observe the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of the New World. Harrison didn't single out Italians, however, but rather extolled Columbus as "the pioneer of progress and enlightenment."

Nevertheless, that proclamation ultimately set the stage for a federal Columbus Day holiday, created in 1934. The holiday "was central to the process through which Italian-Americans were fully ratified as white during the 20th century," observed New York Times editorial writer Brent Staples.

So why should we keep referring to Columbus as an Italian hero? History already is moving us to a better place. Indigenous Peoples' Day now replaces Columbus Day in 14 states, the District of Columbia and more than 130 communities.

I'm not the only Italian American on board with ditching the holiday. Last month, Italians for Indigenous Peoples' Day testified before Massachusetts state legislators and urged them to replace the Columbus Day holiday.

Tellingly, the holiday's defenders don't even appear to acknowledge Columbus' record of atrocities. Ignoring all the historical documents that show otherwise, Basil Russo, head of the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations, continues to portray Columbus as a "good Christian" who treated Indigenous peoples "with respect and compassion."

It's difficult to give up the myths that shaped the Italian story in the Americas. But these myths are holding us back. They're preventing us from creating a more honest Italian narrative, one that shines a light on the lives of our immigrant parents and grandparents and their heroism, and gives us better ways to celebrate our heritage.

If I were to nominate a new role model for Italians, it would be Mother Frances Cabrini, an Italian immigrant who in 1946 became the first U.S. citizen to be named a saint. Cabrini, like many immigrants, faced many obstacles and a lack of resources when she arrived, but persevered to help immigrants across the country. It was her work in the American West that prompted Colorado to designate the first Monday in October as Cabrini Day, replacing the state observance of the Columbus Day holiday.

For decades, the leaders of the American Indian Movement of Colorado had tried, unsuccessfully, to secure a state Indigenous Peoples Day. But they were gracious about the Cabrini holiday. They praised the saint as "the opposite of Columbus."

Why can't we Italians see how much richer our history is than the story of one directionally challenged explorer who spent most of his life outside Italy? Columbus never found the route to China and India he was seeking. We shouldn't make our own wrong turn by continuing to honor his memory.
Related:

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Opinion | Why do we keep referring to Christopher Columbus as an Italian hero?

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As an Italian American tyke, I was proud to celebrate Columbus Day. It didn't merit the attention that St. Patrick's Day got in my Catholic school, with the Irish dancing, shamrocks and green cupcakes. But it still mattered. One of my ancestors discovered America. How cool was that?

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A small Massachusetts museum is returning around 150 items, some connected to the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, to the Lakota Sioux peoples. The sacred artifacts have been in the collection of the Founders Museum in Barre, Massachusetts, for over a century.

On Saturday, members of the Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux Tribes traveled there to attend a repatriation ceremony; the official handoff of the items will take place privately at a later date.

"Ever since that Wounded Knee massacre happened, genocides have been instilled in our blood," said Surrounded Bear, 20, who traveled from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota to attend the ceremony, per the Boston Globe's John Hilliard. "And for us to bring back these artifacts, that's a step towards healing. That's a step in the right direction."

The Wounded Knee Massacre took place in 1890, when United States Army troops slaughtered some 300 Native American men, women and children in South Dakota. Congress formally apologized for the massacre in 1990.

Also in 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act passed, imposing repatriation regulations on institutions that receive federal funding. Private institutions that don't receive federal support-like the Founders Museum-aren't covered by the law, but many are still taking steps toward returning cultural artifacts.

Ann Meilus, president of the Barre Museum Association, tells the Globe that Saturday's ceremony was a long time coming-the culmination of roughly three decades of grappling with the artifacts' future and "trying to come to a positive conclusion."

"It was always important to me to give them back," she says. "I think the museum will be remembered for being on the right side of history for returning these items."

The Founders Museum acquired the items from a 19th-century traveling showman, according to Philip Marcelo of the Associated Press. The collection includes moccasins, necklaces, clothing, ceremonial pipes, tools and other objects.

"In the past 135 years, the public's use and perception of museums have changed significantly," wrote the Barre Museum Association and the Barre Library Association, which manage the Founders Museum, in a statement earlier this summer.

Repatriation processes often move slowly. In this case, the museum said that determining which objects truly came from Wounded Knee was challenging. Each item also needed to be identified, photographed and cataloged before its return.

"This is real personal," Leola One Feather, of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, told the AP in July as she observed the cataloging process. "It may be sad for them to lose these items, but it's even sadder for us because we've been looking for them for so long."

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Massachusetts Museum Returns Wounded Knee Artifacts to Sioux Tribes

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A ceremony on Saturday marked the conclusion of a long repatriation process

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Wampanoag Statement on Repatriation/ NAGPRA 

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Wampanoag Statement on Repatriation/ NAGPRA 

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Repatriation — Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah)

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In 1972 the “Wampanoag Tribal Council of Gay Head, Inc.” was formed to promote self-determination, to ensure preservation and continuation of Wampanoag history and culture, to achieve federal recognition for the tribe, and to seek the return of tribal lands to the Wampanoag people. The Wampanoag…

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Even with a 12-foot ladder, boxes containing human remains were stacked so high inside what Kenneth Alves calls "the bone room," at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology at Harvard University, he couldn't reach the top.

"When I was in that room, I got a headache like I've never had in all my life. I said to myself, 'I gotta get out of here. I can't stand it,'" he said. "I don't plan on ever going back into that room again."

Thousands of skeletal remains wait inside the bone room, said Alves - human remains that were collected over time by the museum from tribal territories all over the world.

As a repatriation officer, and a member of the Assonet band of the Wampanoag Nation, Alves works within the Wampanoag Confederation to repatriate indigenous human remains back to Native American tribes of origin.

The group, which was established in 1996, has repatriated 334 indigenous skeletal remains from Massachusetts museums like Harvard's Peabody Museum to tribal nations, where they were ceremonially reburied at undisclosed locations.

Wampanoag repatriation officers found 39 additional tribal skeletons in Massachusetts museums.

According to Alves, 313 more indigenous individuals await repatriation from a host of regional museums, also within the state. Although the federal process under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation or NAGPRA Act was completed in January 2023 for those individuals, said Alves, the remains haven't yet been returned to tribal territories.

The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe announced the completion of the federal process for the 313 individual remains in January on its website.

The hold up with returning individuals is rooted in museum policies that pre-date NAGPRA, said Alves. Before NAGPRA became law in 1990, human remains, articles of cultural patrimony and sacred objects were freely ferried between museums and institutions. Many of those items became displaced. Because the Wampanoag Confederation hopes to bury human remains along with funerary objects, repatriation officers began tracking items down.

In addition to the 313 individuals, there is a recent finding of 39 more tribal skeletons at museums throughout Massachusetts, according to Alves in a recent interview.

"When we are finally done with this round of repatriation, the number of 313 people will jump to 352," Alves said.

Repatriated remains are only a fraction of the thousands of people lying in Massachusetts museums.

And that number will continue to rise, said Alves, as museums uncover remains from the depths of bone rooms across the state.

Harvard's Peabody Museum alone holds human remains of at least 19 individuals who were likely enslaved, and almost 7,000 Native Americans. That's according to The Harvard Crimson, Harvard University's student newspaper, which in June 2022 said it was in possession of a draft report, dated April 19, written by Harvard's Steering Committee on Human Remains in Harvard Museum Collections.
Indigenous remains at Harvard University Harvard Crimson: Draft report details thousands of Indigenous remains owned by Harvard
Harvard's Peabody Museum wouldn't confirm the number of individual remains that have been repatriated from its museum. Rachael Dane, a press official for Harvard, said the museum doesn't speak to media about the consultation process.

"We want to respect Tribal confidentiality," said Dane.

John "Jim" Peters, a member of the Wampanoag Confederation and the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, said repatriation officers are preparing for remains to be released by working to find resting places for each individual.

In an emailed statement, published on the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe's website, Harvard University said it also plans to start consultations on remains from other parts of the state.

Other museums including the Berkshire Museum, and Worcester Historical Museum have either begun or plan to begin the process of repatriation, said the statement.

Tension once simmered. Now museum and tribal officials work together.

The repatriation process is certainly arduous, said Alves, who works in concert with public institutions, including the Peabody museums of Harvard, Essex, and Andover. The relationship between Wampanoag tribal members and museum officials has been rocky at times. Just after NAGPRA passed, Wampanoag Confederation members stopped speaking to Harvard Peabody museum officials for about two years, said Alves.
More:'Wampanoag Pilgrim Disney'?: Wampanoag Tribe severs ties with Plimoth Patuxet Museums
"We felt like we were doing a disservice to the ancestors by not communicating with them," he said. "We went back and everything has been great since."

The past 30 years has been a learning curve for museums and tribal nations, said Peters, and everyone is doing their best.

"It's quite a process to receive ancestors and re-enter them," he said. "It's taken a lot of time and we appreciate the law that has opened the doors for us to do this. In some respects, it's also been a burden for everyone."

Traumas uncovered: Skeleton shows 13-year-old girl cut in half, skull used as Halloween decoration
More:'Land, heritage and culture protected.' U.S. court sides with Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe
One saving grace, said Peters, is the cultural and historical information that's been gained through repatriation, including traumas endured during times of colonization.

"They (European settlers) did various unthinkable things to our people - and still today we are dealing with those efforts from the past," Peters said.

Alves recalls the skeletal remains of a 13-year-old indigenous girl from West Bridgewater, that was located at a museum Alves didn't name. Medical evidence, said Alves, determined that she had been cut in half by a sword. On another occasion, the Confederation was contacted by a family who wished to turn over skeletal remains. Alves was dismayed to learn that the skeleton was placed on the family's mantel every Halloween with candles placed in its eye sockets.

"When we learn these horror stories, it's an emotional experience," he said.
More: Mashpee Wampanoag to receive restitution after bribery conviction. Here's the latest.
Peabody Museum officials helped dig graves in reburial.

Part of the pain of repatriation is relieved through ceremony and reburial, said Alves.

"We don't bundle them all up and bury them all together," he said. "The ceremonies take hours and we individually address each person the best we can."

At one particular day of ceremony, Alves said tribal members invited Peabody Museum officials, and asked them to dig the graves.

"Of course our people were in tears, but all the Harvard people were in tears too," he said. "It helped bring us together."

Many institutions, nationally and internationally, have yet to return tribal remains and funerary items.

Although Massachusetts museums have largely complied with NAGPRA, many institutions aren't following the law, said Alves.
Contact Rachael Devaney at rdevaney@capecodonline.com. Follow her on Twitter: @RachaelDevaney. Get the Cape Cod news that matters delivered to your inbox. Sign up for our free newsletters.
"NAGPRA needs to be revisited and tightening up a bit," he said.

Because NAGPRA is a federal law, museums are not required to return remains or funerary items to non-federally recognized tribes like Abenaki and Nipmuc communities. The Wampanoag Tribe sponsors repatriation for state-recognized tribes, but Alves feels any tribal community should be able to reclaim their own people.

Tribal remains and objects have also been taken to countries like France, Germany, and Holland, said Alves, and they remain outside U.S. jurisdiction.

"Doctors from around the world did medical research on our people. They are from nations that don't need to comply by our laws," he said. "It just goes on and on and on."

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At least 313 indigenous remains in Massachusetts will be returned to tribes. Federal inquiry ends for now.

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Wampanoag repatriation officers continue to find tribal skeletal remains and sacred objects, after deep research at museums across Massachusetts.

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When the Mayflower landed in Massachusetts in 1620, one of the first native leaders the Pilgrims met was Massasoit, the intertribal chief of the Wampanoag Nation. The Wampanoag, whose people still live in New England today, once had tribal lands that stretched from Cape Code to Rhode Island.

At first, for the most part, the relationship between the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims was friendly and cooperative. In fact, they signed a treaty in 1621 and the reign of Massasoit, also called Ousamequin, marked a 40-year-period of peaceful relations.

For almost two centuries, the chief's final resting place in an area now known as Burr's Hill Park was also peaceful. Then a railroad was routed through the area in 1851, and Massasoit's remains and burial goods, as well as those from other native people buried in the area, were dug up by collectors and museums. Now, after 20 years of tracking down the materials, Massasoit and dozens of Wampanoag ancestors will return to their original burial site in mid-May, reports Cape Cod Today.

Ramona Peters the repatriation coordinator of the Wampanoag Confederation who led the project tells Smithsonian.com that some of the materials recovered from museums show that the burial area at Burr's Hill was used by the Wampanoag and their ancestors for 2,500 years. After the railroad came through, locals continued to chip away at the burial ground through nearby sand mining, looting and archaeological digs.

It wasn't until the passage of the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which allows tribes to request the return of remains and grave goods held by Federal agencies and institutions that receive Federal funding, that the Wampanoag began to get a handle on the materials removed from the burial ground and realized that some of Massasoit's remains and possessions were still around. That led to the decades-long effort to get the burial objects back from various museums.

Cape Cod Today reports that the museums cooperating with the repatriation include the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of the City of New York and several other institutions in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In fact, the Wampanoag Nation have been able to recover 658 objects from 42 burials that were originally in the burial ground, which overlooks the Narragansett Bay in the present-day town of Warren, Rhode Island.

"Ousamequin is a significant figure in our shared history," Peters tells Sam Houghton of the Mashpee Enterprise. "He stands at the crossroad between the indigenous people of this land and the origins of what would eventually become the United States of America. In the 17th century, when the Wampanoag first encountered the early settlers, Ousamequin had a vision of how we could all live together. There was 50 years of peace between the English and Wampanoag until he died in 1665. That was 10 years before the King's Phillips War, which changed the whole course of history in this country."

King Philip's War was a brutal, 14-month battle between the expanding English colonists and a confederation of local Indian nations led by Massasoit's son Metacom.

Peters tells Smithsonian.com that the re-burial site will be temporarily marked by a boulder etched with Massasoit's signature pictograph though the tribe and town of Warren hope to build a more substantial monument down the line. Having their ancestors back in their burial place and acknowledged is a big deal for the Wampanoag. "This is huge for us emotionally and spiritually and is having a major impact on us already," Peters says. "We're hoping to put it on the National Register of Historic places and in that regard hope there be international interest. I would hope Americans would be interested too. Massasoit made it possible for the colonization of this continent."

According to Jennifer McDermott at the Associated Press, the repatriated objects associated with Massasoit include a pipe, a knife, beads and arrowheads. All of the materials from the 42 graves will be re-buried in the park during a private ceremony.

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Massasoit, Chief Who Signed Treaty With the Pilgrims, To Be Reburied

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After a 20-year search, members of the Wampanoag Nation have collected his remains from museums

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Cultural Based Programs for Positive Academic Development

It's the mission of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Education Department to provide and support programs that nurture the positive social and academic development of the youth in our community. It's through our work, programs, presentations and exhibitions that we are able to promote a more complete understanding of the Mashpee Wampanoag in our youth, while deepening their understanding of tribal history, culture and the natural environment we are entrusted to.

We maintain our mission by working with schools, colleges and other educational cultural and social institutions to meet our common objectives by exploring avenues and approaches to provide holistic, creative community based education programs.

The education programs currently offered to our neighboring educational institutions include cultural presentations, after school support, Native films, performances, and traditional gardens.

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Indian Education - Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe

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It's the mission of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Education Department to provide and support programs that nurture the positive social and academic development of the youth in our community. It's through our work, programs, presentations and exhibitions that we are able to promote a more complete understanding of the Mashpee Wampanoag in our youth, while deepening their understanding of tribal history, culture and the natural environment we are entrusted to.

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When I first started as interim director of the Institute for New England Native American Studies (INENAS) based at the University of Massachusetts Boston, I was given three studies that broadly identified specific needs and disparities of Native people in the region. These studies looked at demographic data provided by the U.S. Census, tribes and surveys of regional tribes and Native American nonprofits. The findings were clear, and, for me-a Native American from the Eastern seaboard-no surprise. With a few exceptions, most Native communities and individuals lagged behind the general population in terms of educational attainment, economic status and health. In plain language, self-identified Native people in New England are less likely to have college degrees and more likely to hold lower-paying jobs, live shorter lives and suffer from more chronic diseases such as diabetes than their non-Native neighbors.

Given that I was at an institution of higher education, my immediate thought was to do what I could to build collaborations with tribes to help our Native college students. However, when I looked at what resources are most robust at UMass Boston, and at some of the greatest needs among the Native population, focusing on pre-college students made more sense. Although no study existed specifically looking at the educational needs of Native youth in Massachusetts, the data available from public sources confirmed the need for a pre-collegiate program designed to meet the needs of Native students. Some of these statistics for 2005 through 2008:

The percentage of Native adults with bachelor's degrees or higher is extremely low-21% compared of adults age 25 or older in Barnstable County, compared with 34% of all county residents in that age group, and 18% for adults age 25 or older in Suffolk County, compared with 32% of all adults in that age group countywide.

Nearly a quarter (22.5%) of Barnstable County and a third (31%) of Suffolk County Native Americans have less than a 12th grade education, according to Census 2000 data, the most recent available by county.

Over the past three years, more than a quarter of Native students (28%) in the Mashpee (Mass.) Public School District failed to graduate from high school on time; of these, 14.7% dropped out, compared with 9.9% of Mashpee students generally who did not complete high school, according to the Massachusetts Department of Education.

Fully half (50.2%) of Native students did not graduate with their ninth-grade cohort in Boston Public Schools (BPS), andf over a quarter (27.8%) dropped out of school, compared with 41% of BPS students generally who did not graduate with their ninth-grade cohort and 20.4% who dropped out.

Additionally, many Native students lack academic role models, access to support that address their specific needs and culturally relevant coursework.

After we identified what we thought we could do (and a potential funding source), I reached out to the local Native communities whom I thought would be most interested and also had access to the largest numbers of Native students in Massachusetts. These communities, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe (MWT) and the urban Indian community in the Greater Boston area, represented by the North American Indian Center of Boston (NAICOB), became formal partners with Academic Support Services at UMass Boston and INENAS in developing the proposal. Submitted by the MWT in 2010, the eligible entity in our partnership, Native Tribal Scholars (NTS) was funded for approximately $1.2 million over four years by the Office of Indian Education in the U.S. Department of Education. Then, the real work began.

Working as a collaboration has benefits-and challenges. Developing job descriptions, forming search committees, conducting interviews and then hiring requires more flexibility and commitment when multiple organizational cultures, geography and deadlines are in play. However, the bonus is that there is greater buy-in from the partners if they are engaged in all major aspects of making the project work. Together, MWT, NAICOB and UMass Boston selected administrative, instructional and residential staff, recruited kids and directly engaged with the program.

Given the serious need for the program, our goals are ambitious. Through the residential and academic year components, the Native Scholars Program will significantly improve the achievement levels of Native students participating in the program. Our goal is to serve 60 students annually (counting both academic year and residential programs). We expect that at least 90% of participants will successfully complete a rigorous high school program of study and at least 95% will graduate with their ninth-grade cohort-a significantly higher rate than of Native students in Mashpee (72%) and in the BPS (50%). We also expect that 80% of NSP graduates will enroll in postsecondary education after high school, and 80% of them will attain a bachelor's degree; targets which, again, are significantly higher than the rates currently attained by Native students-only 63% of Native Americans in Massachusetts planned to go to college. While data on the college graduation rates of Native students are not available, the rate for BPS students is 35.5%

As we close out our first year, we served 40 students through our summer residential program, surpassing our plan to serve 30 in the summer. The 40 residential program students participated in a six-week intensive residential program with Native-focused classes and workshops in language arts, math, science, public speaking, tribal sovereignty, media/film and Native culture. The youths took part also in a weekly college and career planning workshop designed for Native American students. Our program participants range from grades 8 to 11 and were from the Mohawk, MicMac, Cherokee, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag tribes. Our staff included Snohomish, Innuit, Wampanoag, Nipmuc, Chickasaw and Lumbee teachers, tutors, residential advisors and film production consultants. The students engaged in various field trips designed to connect them to their cultural heritage, including a walking tour of Plymouth and kayaking on Lake Cochituate. The program culminated in a Family Day event to showcase the students' learning and to encourage their parents and the community to actively support the young people's academic goals.

Due to the federal and academic calendar conflicts (school year starts in September, award notifications in October, with no ability to access funds until November) and challenges in recruiting staff, we were not able to start our academic year program planned for October/November 2010. Now, with our first summer and all its lessons behind us, we are well-poised to begin our first academic year. We are recruiting tutors, additional students, and will be holding monthly academic and cultural workshops and trips, and provide participants with tutoring and academic advising services. Additionally, we will provide training for personnel at the students' schools on how best to meet the unique academic and social needs of Native youth. Our academic year began with our students participating in the construction of a fish weir on Thompson Island.

Achieving our ambitious goals of increasing the students' preparation for college will be measurable upon their high school graduation, most specifically, whether they attend and successfully graduate from baccalaureate programs. We already know some short-term goals were met. Youth from varied tribal backgrounds met and significantly interacted with one another in both academic and cultural contexts. Some of our youth had Native teachers and other academic role models for the first time. Many, according to their parents, demonstrated increased maturity as a result of the residential experience. Many developed new friendships and connection with other Native youth, which in some cases, was their first experience taking classes with other Native students.

Stronger connections between university programs and the Native community were clearly formed. UMass Boston staff served as class and workshop instructors. Native community members played an active role in opening and closing ceremonies, cultural workshops and presentations.

At the Georges Island Native Heritage Festival, where the Native Tribal Scholars served as hosts, dancers and drummers, as well as part of the clean-up detail, family and community members came out from the tribes to support their youth (made possible by the National Parks Service and Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation). Many of the adult Native performers at the festival referenced the importance of the positive youth engagement in this event and in this type of program. It was clear that Native Tribal Scholars is now viewed as an important community resource by many Massachusetts Native people and they are invested in its success. We look forward to continuing this relationship for many years to come.
J. Cedric Woods is director of the Institute for New England Native American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Related: A Different Path Forward by J. Cedric Woods and The Dark Ages of Education and a New Hope by Donna Loring.

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Native Tribal Scholars: Building an Academic Community | New England Board of Higher Education

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When I first started as interim director of the Institute for New England Native American Studies (INENAS) based at the University of Massachusetts Boston, I was given three studies that... Read more "

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Illinois public schools will be required to teach students about Native American history in the state beginning with the 2024-25 school year. The legislation, which was signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Aug. 4, requires that schools teach about the contributions of Native Americans in government, arts, humanities, sciences, and economic, cultural, social and political development. The law also mandates that students learn about the experiences of contemporary Native Americans living in Illinois; and, for middle school and high school students, tribal sovereignty, discrimination against and the genocide of Native Americans, and the circumstances around their forced relocation. Rosalyn LaPier is a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign history professor whose teaching and research focuses on environmental issues within Indigenous communities and who is a member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and Métis. She spoke with News Bureau arts and humanities editor Jodi Heckel about the Native American history law.
In your experience, what is the current state of teaching about Native American history in schools?
My students tell me that public schools in Illinois currently do little to no teaching of Native American history, which is why this legislation is timely and necessary. It was brought about by the advocacy of Native American educators and community members from across the state in collaboration with state leaders.
Each school district can determine the amount of time it will devote to teaching Native American history. How much will this law help in educating young people about that history in Illinois?
Most of the students in my Native American History course this last spring came from the Illinois public school system. They came from schools across the state, from southern and central Illinois to the Chicago metropolitan area. Many of them shared that they were embarrassed by how little they knew about Native Americans and they believed their school districts could have done better to educate them.

I had these students read the then-pending legislation in class. They were very excited to learn that future students would know more than they did and would be able to learn about the history of Illinois Indigenous peoples, including events such as genocide, and contemporary Indigenous issues. Their number one suggestion to teachers was to teach more, not less, about Indigenous peoples.
What resources are available to teachers to include Native American history in their classes?
The timing of this new legislation could not be any better. There are significant resources available to Illinois teachers and educators at the University of Illinois, in addition to the resources available through the Illinois State Board of Education.

The history department at the U. of I. has five professors with expertise in Native American history, including two who are Native American, and more than a dozen courses that focus on some aspect of Native American history from the ancient past to the contemporary Chicago urban Indian community. Illinois public school teachers and educators can take courses at the U. of I. from these nationally recognized scholars that will strengthen their knowledge and skills.

Together, we have numerous publications and websites for both academic and general audiences. These can serve as resources for Illinois teachers and educators, such as professor Bob Morrissey's new book "People of the Ecotone: Environment and Indigenous Power at the Center of Early America," professor David Beck's book "Unfair Labor? American Indians and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago," and our co-authored book "City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893 to 1934," as well as Yuri Ramírez's forthcoming book "Indigeneity on the Move." The university also has our first Associate Vice Chancellor for Native Affairs Jacki Rand as an amazing resource.

Plus, the U. of I. has one of the best public libraries in the country that teachers can utilize.
What subject matter do you think is important to cover in teaching Native American history?
The most important thing that students should learn is that no matter where they are in Illinois or the U.S., they are on Indigenous land. And that place has a long history before the U.S. existed and a people who still call it home. Illinois as a state is relatively new, while Indigenous peoples of what is now Illinois have been here for thousands of years.
How many Native Americans are living in Illinois today?
Native Americans have always lived in Illinois, from the ancient past to the present. However, there are no tribal communities or reservations in Illinois. Unfortunately, in the 1830s, many of the Indigenous peoples of Illinois were deported out of the state to other nearby states. Those Native Americans, such as the Peoria or Miami of Oklahoma or the Prairie Band Potawatomi in Kansas, still call Illinois home and they maintain close ties to its land and landscape. The contemporary Native American population in Illinois is around 35,000, according to the U.S. census, and they come from hundreds of different tribes from across the U.S., Canada and Mexico and live mostly in large urban areas such as the Chicago metro area.

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How will a new Illinois law help with teaching the history of Native Americans in the state?

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A new law requiring Illinois public schools to teach Native American history will help students learn about the Indigenous people who originally occupied the land, as well as the contemporary Native American community in the state, says University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign history professor Rosalyn LaPier.

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The 23 schools in Massachusetts that use an image of an indigenous person as their school mascot would have to start looking for new names and logos under a bill that advocates are hoping will get passed this session.

After years of contentious debate over Native American mascots in school districts, some indigenous activists say it's time to take the decision out of local hands.

"Unfortunately, today, the remaining schools with native mascots are stubbornly attached to controlling our native identities, which they're using against our permission," said Rhonda Anderson, a Iñupiaq - Athabascan Native American and western Massachusetts representative on the state Commission on Indian Affairs.

The Rep. Brandy Fluker Oakley and Sen. Joanne Comerford bill (H 477 / S 245) would require that the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education bar Massachusetts public schools from using an athletic team or school mascot name that represents or is associated with Native Americans, or denigrates any racial, ethnic, gender or religious group. It includes a carve-out to allow indigenous tribes to use a Native-related name or logo, as well as for tribes to give explicit consent for a school to use their name.

When Anderson began advocating to remove these mascots from schools 25 years ago, there were over 90 districts in Massachusetts that used a Native American on their logo, she said.

Today there are 23 Bay State schools that continue to use indigenous mascots, nicknames or logos, according to the New England Anti-Mascot Coalition, including the Billerica Memorial High School Indians, The High School of Commerce in Springfield's Red Raiders, and the Middleborough High School Sachems.

Foxborough is the latest town to wade into the controversial debate over using an image of a Native American, which looked similar to the now-defunct Washington Redskins logo.

Local

In-depth news coverage of the Greater Boston Area.

The Foxborough School Committee voted in October to change the image of the indigenous person, but to keep the name "Warriors."

"Most of the indigenous mascots classify us as warriors and things of that nature," said Faries Gray, a Massachusett Native American. "Classifying us as a warrior class society -- which we were not, if we were, there would be no colonists here because we would have went to war against all of them ... My tribe, we were primarily fishermen and farmers. I don't see one school within this commonwealth calling themselves the farmers or the fisherman."

During an Education Committee hearing on the bill on Monday, Kelly Pease, a Westfield Republican, questioned Gray and Anderson.

"This is, for a long time having mascots, and you think it should be a state law not decided at the community level? And you think it's racism?" Pease began.

Anderson jumped in, "It is a racial group that's being identified, yes."

Pease continued, "And you don't think it's a time to highlight your heritage and make it educational because the school is looking at it?"

"Those mascots are not of our choosing. They're not who we are, we are over 576 different -- vastly different -- communities and cultures, and what's being used is a stereotype," Anderson replied.

Sen. Jason Lewis, who co-chairs the Education Committee, said he was proud of his daughter for being part of an effort at Winchester High School to retire a "Sachems" mascot.

Lewis said students and teachers who start these movements often face bullying from other students, school committee members and parents. He thanked the indigenous advocates who came to testify before the committee.

Similar bills have been filed every session since 2017.

"Mascots are typically assigned to animals or mythical creatures, but we're living people," Gray said. "We're not somebody of the past. We're living people -- we're not mythical creatures and we're not animals."

Copyright State House News Service

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Bill would ban Native American mascots at Mass. public schools

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The 23 schools in Massachusetts that use an image of an indigenous person as their school mascot would have to start looking for new names and logos under a bill that advocates are hoping will get passed this session. After years of contentious debate over Native American mascots in school districts, some indigenous activists say it's time to take the...

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Nearly two dozen Massachusetts schools currently use Native American-themed mascots, nicknames and logos, According to the New England Anti-Mascot Coalition. Now, lawmakers have proposed companion House and Senate bills that would bar Massachusetts public schools from using such symbolism that references Native Americans.

At a State House hearing Monday, supporters argued that the symbols cause demonstrable harm, that they're dehumanizing and racist, and that the activism on a case-by-case basis has exhausted local advocates who face fierce pushback.

State Rep. Brandy Fluker Oakley, who filed the House version of the bill, cited research into the psychological impacts that such symbols can have on Indigenous children.

"Native American mascots reinforce negative stereotypes and generate a hostile climate for students," Fluker Oakley said. "Researchers have found that Native American mascots resulted in lower self esteem, lower perceptions of ... community worth and lower achievement."

Rhonda Anderson, the Western Mass. Commissioner on Indian Affairs, said that while some schools have jettisoned Native American mascots in recent years, others have refused to do so.

When she and other people of Indigenous ancestry have urged the holdouts to change course, Anderson added, the response has been vitriolic.

"The remaining schools with Native mascots are stubbornly attached to controlling our Native identities, which they are using against our wishes," Anderson said. "Native Americans including myself have faced racial slurs, threats of violence and harassment from communities when we challenge the use of these mascots."

State Sen. Jason Lewis echoed that point, saying that while his daughter was part of a successful push to retire Winchester High School's old "Sachems" mascot, that activism took a toll on students and others in town.

"When they stand up, they do often face bullying," Lewis said. "The same is true for staff members who try to do the right thing, or school committee members, or parents."

The legislation would also ban logos, mascots and team names that "denigrate ... any racial, ethnic, gender, or religious group."

If the proposal becomes law, the state's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education would set a deadline by which any schools currently using such symbolism would need to adopt new names and iconography. Those schools would be allowed to temporarily continue using old uniforms and signs.

Lewis also said that banning Native American mascots at public schools would dovetail with the ongoing push to reimagine Massachusetts' state seal, which contains symbolism that many find offensive.

"If we can do that work at the state level on our state symbols, like our seal and our flag, then I certainly believe we can be doing the same thing [with] local communities," he said.

The push to eliminate the use of Native American mascots and nicknames at all levels of sport has been underway for decades at all levels of sport. Supporters consistently make the same central argument that using Native Americans and Native American identity as a branding mechanism is fundamentally racist and dehumanizing.

At a virtual teach-in conducted by the Massachusetts Indigenous Legislative Agenda last year, Shawna Newcomb - a schoolteacher, activist and member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe - elaborated on that theme.

"A mascot is an object," Newcomb said. "We are not, as Native people, just objects. We have a whole culture. We have stories; we have traditions. We are just as special as any other race or culture that exists.

"We don't want to be made a fictitious character," Newcomb added. "We're more than that.

The pending legislation would not apply to Native American tribes, which would be free to use such symbolism for tribal schools. It would also allow a public school to use a particular tribe's name if that tribe provided explicit consent for that use.

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Mass. lawmakers weigh ban on Native American mascots in public schools

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If the proposal becomes law, schools in violation would have a grace period to adopt new symbols.

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Native American advocates, legislators, and supporters called for the Massachusetts Legislature to pass legislation important to Native Americans at a press conference held on the steps of the State House on Thursday, July 16 at 11 AM.

The 3 bills are:
1. Resolve Providing for the Creation of a Special Commission Relative to the
Seal and Motto of the Commonwealth (S.1877/H.2776)
2. An Act to Ban the Use of Native American Mascots by Public Schools in the
Commonwealth (S.247 / H.443)
3. An Act to Protect Native American Heritage (S.1811/H.2948)

Speakers included tribal and native leaders, state senators and representatives, high school students, and local activists. While racist counter-protesters chanting 'all lives matter' tried to down out BIPOC voices, the message was heard loud and clear: change the flag and seal, and ban native mascots.

Now that Mississippi has decided to retire its confederate state flag, Massachusetts is the last US state whose flag includes representations of white supremacy. It features a Colonial broadsword held in a white hand over the head of a composite "Ideal Native American," and its Latin motto begins, "By the sword we seek peace..."

Hartman Deetz (Mashpee Wampanoag) made remarks about why the Massachusetts flag and seal need to be changed. "The English cut off the head of Metacom (King Philip) and displayed it on the top of a pike in Plymouth. That's what that sword is above the head of the Native man on the state flag. That sword continues to hang over the head of Native people in Massachusetts. It's not just symbolism. That's literally what happened to the leader of our people. He was beheaded.... and we continue to live under that threat today, from continued genocide, from continued dispossessions, from continued oppression, here in Massachusetts and all across the country. This is a symbol of white supremacy."

Anaelisa Jacobsen of Manos Unidas Multicultural Educational Cooperative in Pittsfield said that, "Manos Unidas has been working to get rid of the racist flag and seal that depict a Native American with a sword over his head. Bill S.1887 / H.2776 seeks to change that abominable message and symbol into something that our dear Native brothers and sisters and everyone in Massachusetts can be proud of. In these times, we must deeply ask ourselves, what symbols do we want to uphold and which do we want to abolish in order to promote the values of a forward-thinking, multicultural state? We must seek symbols that instill pride, not shame and prejudice, symbols that unite, not separate."

Commenting on the bill to ban the use of Native American mascots, the Sagamore of the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag, Faries Gray, said: "My tribe is not in support of any Indigenous mascots. We don't feel like we are being honored by any mascots. We feel like a trophy. 'We conquered you and this is our trophy.' It's insane we have to deal with it. We're still here. We're a living people."

Other tribal nations in Massachusetts have supported the call for a prohibition on all Native American sport team mascots/nicknames/logos in Massachusetts public schools. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe wrote: "A state law to address the problem of these nicknames/logos is necessary because many communities in Massachusetts resist calls to eliminate the Native American nicknames/logos used by their schools. The Tribe/Nation urges you to listen to our voices, and the voices of other Native American tribal nations and organizations that represent Native American people who reside in the state of Massachusetts. And, we urge you to consider the research, which clearly demonstrates that Native American mascots in sport are not educationally sound for Native American and non-Indigenous youth."

Brittney Peauwe Wunnepog (Little Leaf) Walley of the Nipmuc Nation added that "Using Indigenous Peoples as mascots is dehumanizing. This is not a new or novel idea at this point; it's an obvious fact. My sincerest belief is that the concept of using Indigenous Peoples as mascots should already be a non-issue. It is frustrating to know that countless tribal members before me have already made it abundantly clear that it is unacceptable, and yet the issue has not been resolved."

Rhonda Anderson, Iñupiaq-Athabaskan, a member of the MA Commission on Indian Affairs, explained that, ?Mascots erase the identity of Native people, generate stereotypes, and portray us as people in the past." The mascot issue needs to be taken up at the statewide level since it relates to civil rights.

Native American advocates and allies also seeking passage of "An Act to Protect Native American Heritage". This bill would refine Native Americans Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) enforcement to include all publicly funded entities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. If passed into law, this would further ensure the repatriation of sacred and funerary objects to the tribal communities of origin as well as deter auction houses from being able to obtain such items. As Chairwoman Cheryl Andrews-Malthais of Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) testified in 2016, "Tribal cultural heritage belongs to the tribal community of its origin as a whole. And by tribal custom, cannot be alienated from that community by any individual or group without the expressed free, prior, and informed consent of that tribe."

Putting the need for the legislation into a broader context, Jean-Luc Pierite, president of the board of the North American Indian Center of Boston, a statewide Native American community organization based in Jamaica Plain, noted that "What COVID-19 and #BlackLivesMatter demonstrate in plain terms is that our current social systems need structural and foundational change. Symbols from flags, mascots, and names on public places on to the design of infrastructure like roads and pipelines are the branding of the extraction of resources, wealth, and labor from BIPOC peoples. To change the system is to change the branding. These are not mutually exclusive, unless we are simply appeasing the electorate or window dressing."

According to Mahtowin Munro from United American Indians of New England and the Massachusetts Indigenous Legislative Agenda, "Four hundred years after the arrival of the Pilgrims from Europe, all too many Indigenous concerns remain unaddressed. Any authentic efforts to address racial injustice need to include and respect the voices of Indigenous people and ensure that Native American concerns are addressed. Supporting this legislation should be a bipartisan effort to begin to redress longstanding grievances. The current session of the Massachusetts legislature has a historic opportunity to begin to listen to Indigenous voices statewide and take first steps toward repairing relationships with Native Americans by passing this meaningful legislation."

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It's Time to Address Racial Justice for Native Americans: Change the MA State Flag-Seal and Ban the Use of Native American Sports Mascots

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Native American advocates, legislators, and supporters called for the Massachusetts Legislature to pass legislation important to Native Americans at a press conference held on the steps of the State House on Thursday, July 16 at 11 AM. The 3 bills are: 1.

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Native American advocates, legislators, and supporters called for the Massachusetts Legislature to pass legislation important to Native Americans at a press conference held on the steps of the State House on Thursday, July 16 at 11 AM.

The 3 bills are:
1. Resolve Providing for the Creation of a Special Commission Relative to the
Seal and Motto of the Commonwealth (S.1877/H.2776)
2. An Act to Ban the Use of Native American Mascots by Public Schools in the
Commonwealth (S.247 / H.443)
3. An Act to Protect Native American Heritage (S.1811/H.2948)

Speakers included tribal and native leaders, state senators and representatives, high school students, and local activists. While racist counter-protesters chanting 'all lives matter' tried to down out BIPOC voices, the message was heard loud and clear: change the flag and seal, and ban native mascots.

Now that Mississippi has decided to retire its confederate state flag, Massachusetts is the last US state whose flag includes representations of white supremacy. It features a Colonial broadsword held in a white hand over the head of a composite "Ideal Native American," and its Latin motto begins, "By the sword we seek peace..."

Hartman Deetz (Mashpee Wampanoag) made remarks about why the Massachusetts flag and seal need to be changed. "The English cut off the head of Metacom (King Philip) and displayed it on the top of a pike in Plymouth. That's what that sword is above the head of the Native man on the state flag. That sword continues to hang over the head of Native people in Massachusetts. It's not just symbolism. That's literally what happened to the leader of our people. He was beheaded.... and we continue to live under that threat today, from continued genocide, from continued dispossessions, from continued oppression, here in Massachusetts and all across the country. This is a symbol of white supremacy."

Anaelisa Jacobsen of Manos Unidas Multicultural Educational Cooperative in Pittsfield said that, "Manos Unidas has been working to get rid of the racist flag and seal that depict a Native American with a sword over his head. Bill S.1887 / H.2776 seeks to change that abominable message and symbol into something that our dear Native brothers and sisters and everyone in Massachusetts can be proud of. In these times, we must deeply ask ourselves, what symbols do we want to uphold and which do we want to abolish in order to promote the values of a forward-thinking, multicultural state? We must seek symbols that instill pride, not shame and prejudice, symbols that unite, not separate."

Commenting on the bill to ban the use of Native American mascots, the Sagamore of the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag, Faries Gray, said: "My tribe is not in support of any Indigenous mascots. We don't feel like we are being honored by any mascots. We feel like a trophy. 'We conquered you and this is our trophy.' It's insane we have to deal with it. We're still here. We're a living people."

Other tribal nations in Massachusetts have supported the call for a prohibition on all Native American sport team mascots/nicknames/logos in Massachusetts public schools. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe wrote: "A state law to address the problem of these nicknames/logos is necessary because many communities in Massachusetts resist calls to eliminate the Native American nicknames/logos used by their schools. The Tribe/Nation urges you to listen to our voices, and the voices of other Native American tribal nations and organizations that represent Native American people who reside in the state of Massachusetts. And, we urge you to consider the research, which clearly demonstrates that Native American mascots in sport are not educationally sound for Native American and non-Indigenous youth."

Brittney Peauwe Wunnepog (Little Leaf) Walley of the Nipmuc Nation added that "Using Indigenous Peoples as mascots is dehumanizing. This is not a new or novel idea at this point; it's an obvious fact. My sincerest belief is that the concept of using Indigenous Peoples as mascots should already be a non-issue. It is frustrating to know that countless tribal members before me have already made it abundantly clear that it is unacceptable, and yet the issue has not been resolved."

Rhonda Anderson, Iñupiaq-Athabaskan, a member of the MA Commission on Indian Affairs, explained that, ?Mascots erase the identity of Native people, generate stereotypes, and portray us as people in the past." The mascot issue needs to be taken up at the statewide level since it relates to civil rights.

Native American advocates and allies also seeking passage of "An Act to Protect Native American Heritage". This bill would refine Native Americans Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) enforcement to include all publicly funded entities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. If passed into law, this would further ensure the repatriation of sacred and funerary objects to the tribal communities of origin as well as deter auction houses from being able to obtain such items. As Chairwoman Cheryl Andrews-Malthais of Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) testified in 2016, "Tribal cultural heritage belongs to the tribal community of its origin as a whole. And by tribal custom, cannot be alienated from that community by any individual or group without the expressed free, prior, and informed consent of that tribe."

Putting the need for the legislation into a broader context, Jean-Luc Pierite, president of the board of the North American Indian Center of Boston, a statewide Native American community organization based in Jamaica Plain, noted that "What COVID-19 and #BlackLivesMatter demonstrate in plain terms is that our current social systems need structural and foundational change. Symbols from flags, mascots, and names on public places on to the design of infrastructure like roads and pipelines are the branding of the extraction of resources, wealth, and labor from BIPOC peoples. To change the system is to change the branding. These are not mutually exclusive, unless we are simply appeasing the electorate or window dressing."

According to Mahtowin Munro from United American Indians of New England and the Massachusetts Indigenous Legislative Agenda, "Four hundred years after the arrival of the Pilgrims from Europe, all too many Indigenous concerns remain unaddressed. Any authentic efforts to address racial injustice need to include and respect the voices of Indigenous people and ensure that Native American concerns are addressed. Supporting this legislation should be a bipartisan effort to begin to redress longstanding grievances. The current session of the Massachusetts legislature has a historic opportunity to begin to listen to Indigenous voices statewide and take first steps toward repairing relationships with Native Americans by passing this meaningful legislation."

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It's Time to Address Racial Justice for Native Americans: Change the MA State Flag-Seal and Ban the Use of Native American Sports Mascots

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Native American advocates, legislators, and supporters called for the Massachusetts Legislature to pass legislation important to Native Americans at a press conference held on the steps of the State House on Thursday, July 16 at 11 AM. The 3 bills are: 1.

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J ust north of Harvard Yard sits the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, a red-brick building that houses thousands of cultural objects from around the world. But the artifacts on the Museum's shelves represent less than a quarter of one percent of its holdings.

In addition to the Mayan ceramics and Penobscot canoes on display, the Museum currently holds the remains of 15,000 individuals, more than 5,000 which come from North America. The vast majority are Indigenous remains, and at least 19 are enslaved individuals. The Museum acquired many of these remains through archaeological expeditions. Others were "'collected' to support racist science," according to last year's report on the University museums' collections, and still others came from other universities and institutions.

The Museum is obligated to return many of these remains to their tribes of origin under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which requires institutions that receive federal funding to return human remains, funerary belongings, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony to federally recognized tribes.

Three decades later, the Museum has repatriated less than half of its total holdings. For Native American tribes, the process can be frustrating, confusing, and often painful.

About a decade ago, Elizabeth Solomon '79, a member of the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag and a director of administration at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, requested to see burial objects in the Peabody Museum herself.

Solomon recalls arriving at a "huge warehouse" between the biological laboratories and the Divinity School. Metal scaffolding holding the artifacts climbed towards the ceiling, multiple stories above where she stood. As Solomon walked through each row of artifacts, the lights flickered on above her.

"There were just thousands and thousands and thousands of creations," Solomon says. "If you think about how we see our creations is that they have life and spirit, that to be locked away where they're not even seen or interacted with in a way that would nourish them, to see that - I wanted to cry."

Tribes learn of ancestors and belongings in institutional collections through communications from the institutions themselves, the National Park Service database, and notices in the Federal Register, a daily journal published by the U.S. government.

Notices published in the Federal Register trace the history of how particular ancestors or funerary belongings - like brass beads, bone awls, or animal sculptures - came to be in Harvard's collection. A 1996 notice cites the purchase of "a large collection of objects and human remains" taken in part from a Mohegan sachem's grave in 1910. A 2002 notice documents the 1875 donation of human remains from Kagamil Island, Alaska by the captain of the region's grocery company.

In November 2022, a notice written in consultation with representatives from the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, Narragansett Indian Tribe, Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), and the Assonnet Band of the Wampanoag Nation, was published in the register. "The original inventory of the human remains describes the burial location as full of small shells and notes that many of the bodies in the burial place were interred in an erect posture surrounded by shells. The human remains are the nearly complete cranium belonging to an adult female."

The Peabody Museum has published 222 notices to date.

For tribal leaders awaiting repatriations, receiving inventory notices in the Federal Register and on the NAGPRA website can be complexly layered and painful - reminding of past and present injustices, while offering an opportunity for ancestors and sacred belongings to be traditionally reburied. Paul W. Pouliot, the Principal Male Speaker of the Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook-Abenaki People, recalls reading an inventory notice from the Museum.

"I looked at it and I was shocked. It was multiple, multiple pages," he says. "It was shocking," he adds. "I had no idea there were so many items in it."

Grief over the magnitude and fact of the Peabody Museum's collections echoes among Indigenous people trying to arrange their ancestors and belongings' repatriation. While many tribal leaders spend years navigating bureaucratic obstacles, the leaders of non-federally recognized tribes face unique challenges to repatriation, because institutions are not required to consult with them.

Although the Museum has reinvigorated identification and repatriation in recent years, decades of inaction have left many tribal leaders frustrated and skeptical of the institution.

N AGPRA was initially enacted in 1990 after centuries of continued Native dispossession in the United States. One key activist for NAGPRA's passage, Maria Pearson, a member of the Yankton Sioux tribe, was galvanized to advocate for the protection of Indigenous ancestors after witnessing an archeologist disrespect the bodies of a Native woman and her baby at a graveyard discovered in Iowa. NAGPRA emerged as part of a larger movement in the 1970s and 1980s to try and address injustices committed by the U.S. against Native people and advocate for Native rights.

More than 30 years after the passage of NAGPRA, many local Indigenous leaders continue to criticize the Museum's pace of identifying and repatriating ancestral remains and their belongings. But though repatriation may drag for individual tribes, the Museum's work is well-underway, says Jane Pickering, director of the Peabody Museum.

According to an update released last month, the Museum has repatriated 4,439 ancestors as of Feb. 1 and 10,209 funerary belongings as of Dec. 31, 2023. At the time of NAGPRA's passage in 1990, the Museum held 10,118 ancestors from the United States, The Crimson recently reported.

But other Museum data show that about a quarter of those repatriated ancestors were returned to tribes in the last three years. After returning over 2,000 ancestors in 1998 alone, the total number of repatriations increased sparingly for two decades. Between 2005 and 2018, the Museum repatriated just 125 ancestors. Some years the Museum repatriated only one or two ancestors, and for three years, it returned none.

Since 2021, the Museum has returned 1,001 ancestors. The significant increase in repatriations follows an overhaul of NAGPRA leadership.

In 2019, Claudine Gay, then dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, appointed Pickering to the Museum's directorship.

The next year, Gay and Pickering formed the NAGPRA Advisory Committee, on which sit curators, faculty from the history and archaeology departments, and the executive director of the Harvard University Native American Program. In 2021, Pickering issued a formal apology for "practices that led to the Peabody's large collection of Native American ancestors and funerary belongings." And in 2022, the University released a report on human remains in the collections.

As director, Pickering seeks to reframe the work of an archaeological museum. "I think of it as stewardship rather than ownership," she says. "If you think about it as stewarding and caring for instead of owning - the way you own a painting or something like that - that was really the vision moving forward."

Pickering partially attributes long delays in repatriation to the wishes of the tribes themselves. Due to inadequate funding and limited staff, tribes sometimes request to receive ancestors at a later date.

"We take our lead from the tribes," Pickering says.

In addition, Pickering says that delays may be attributed to the distribution of information by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Institutions that hold Indigenous remains and funerary belongings must notify the Department of their holdings and of relevant cultural affiliations. If a federally-recognized tribe is found to be kin or culturally affiliated with an ancestor or belonging in an institution's collection, they are notified directly. Tribal representatives can also search the Department's website for their ancestors and belongings.

Pickering notes that information on institutions' holdings, including the precise counties where ancestors were found, has been publicly available on the National Park Service website for more than 20 years. "I think it's just that a government website that you have to search and old databases aren't the easiest way to find out information," she says.

In Jan. 2021, then-Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow published a letter announcing the creation of a steering committee on human remains in the University's museum collections in which he apologized for "practices that placed the academic enterprise above respect for the dead and human decency."

In response, that February, the Association on American Indian Affairs sent a letter to Bacow calling on Harvard to comply with NAGPRA. Signed by Shannon O'Loughlin, AAIA's Chief Executive and Attorney and a citizen of the Choctaw Nation, the letter states that AAIA believes Harvard "has been out of compliance with federal law, has done so willingly, and as a result, has caused continuing physical, emotional and spiritual trauma to Native Nations and their citizens." AAIA's demands included the hiring of a Native American NAGPRA expert, assurance that repatriated ancestors would be returned with the funerary belongings, and the issuance of a research moratorium on all Native American items across the university.

Pickering and Peabody Museum NAGPRA Advisory Committee Chair Philip J. Deloria, a history professor of Dakota descent, wrote a letter in response to AAIA's letter, denying that the Peabody Museum was in violation of NAGPRA, but apologizing for some of the University's collecting practices.

Pickering and Deloria announced that they would share updates to the University's repatriation policies in coming months.

Under Pickering's leadership, the Museum has made progress. Since 2021, the Peabody Museum has more than doubled the size of its NAGPRA office. The Peabody's current policy regarding research on NAGPRA collections is not to authorize any studies or sampling on Native American ancestors or funerary belongings without permission from tribal representatives.

Last year, it announced the completion of the legal process to repatriate 313 ancestors to the Wampanoag Aquinnah and Mashpee tribes. In January, the Peabody announced that they would pay the travel expenses of tribal representatives coming to the museum for physical repatriation.

But as federally-recognized tribes around the country accept ancestors and funerary belongings held for decades, if not centuries, in institutional collections, tribes without federal recognition face extra hurdles to receiving their ancestors.

T he Cowasuck Band's ancestral land spans from around Concord, N.H., to north-central Massachusetts. Although Pouliot's tribe has yet to receive federal recognition since filing in the 1990s, he says the tribe functions as if it had. Federal officials, he says, are "like family."

But when it comes to NAGPRA, federal agencies are less helpful. NAGPRA only requires institutions to repatriate ancestors and belongings to federally-recognized tribes. If an institution does not reach out directly to notify the Cowasuck Band of an identified ancestor or belonging, the tribe must rely on federally-recognized tribes like the Aquinnah Wampanoag to pass on repatriations.

In regulations to NAGPRA effective as of January, the Department of the Interior explicitly clarified that "the NAGPRA definition only applies to federally recognized Indian Tribes."

"As is the current practice, Indian groups without Federal recognition can work with federally recognized Indian Tribes as part of a joint claim for disposition or joint request for repatriation," the new regulations said, noting that "Indian groups without Federal recognition" are "not completely excluded from the disposition or repatriation processes."

For a Native American tribe to receive federal recognition, they must demonstrate to the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs a "substantially continuous tribal existence" and that they have "functioned as autonomous entities throughout history until the present." The complex documentation necessary and costly process act as a barrier to prevent many tribes across the country from petitioning for federal recognition.

The Wampanoag Repatriation Confederation was founded in 1996 to help the tribes of the Wampanoag Nation address repatriation issues. Through the Confederation, non-federally recognized tribes work together with federally recognized tribes to receive repatriated ancestors and belongings.

The Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe, located around Plymouth, Mass., which is not federally recognized, often works with the nearby, federally-recognized Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe on repatriations.

Melissa Ferretti, Chairwoman of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe, explains that her tribe is not notified of repatriations directly, but rather receives them from a "sister tribe," in Mashpee or Aquinnah. "We're hopeful, knowing our sister tribes, that any funerary remains that belonged in Plymouth would come home," she says

For some non-federally recognized tribes, these partnerships are successful. But for others, working through another tribe creates extra hurdles to receiving their ancestors.

"We have not received nor do I expect that we will receive our ancestors," says Solomon. "And as of now, we have not heard from those tribes about collaborating with us about repatriating our remains of our ancestors."

For Pouliot, not knowing where his tribe's ancestors and belongings will go, and whether they will receive them at all, is frustrating.

"It's my ancestors and I don't know where they're going to go. I don't know how they're going to handle this. The sheer volume scares me. The process scares me," Pouliot says.

F or John "Jim" Peters, Jr., the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs and a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the labor of repatriation is not limited to legal and bureaucratic processes; it extends to a heavy emotional burden as well.

"The first time I got bone dust in my skin, it left an indelible imprint in my head," Peters says. "It's kind of horrific when you go and see your ancestors, their remains. I've seen women with child, different skulls with holes in them, crushed."

"It's a burden to assume those responsibilities, knowing that a lot of those remains were gifted to the University because they dug them up and they put something else there," Peters says. "It stays with you."

Non-federally recognized tribes in particular face further frustration and emotional burden "Why would NAGPRA give our remains to anybody but Herring Pond?" Ferretti asks. "Especially Peabody, when they know Herring Pond and Harvard had a good relationship." Harvard's Williams Fund supported Native American churches in Massachusetts, including at Herring Pond, into the second half of the 20th century.

"I grew up surrounded by my tribe, with a herring shed in my backyard. And you're constantly having to justify your identity, simply because of federal recognition," Ferretti says. "Herring Pond Indians, we were here before the federal government was ever formed. Our people are written in history since that time, and that is a fact."

Ferretti voiced further frustration that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has no legislative process to recognize Native American tribes on the state level. "We talk about this pilgrim story, this romanticized Thanksgiving story, and the tribe that literally was under the boots of the pilgrims is not even recognized in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts officially," she says.

When Tobias J. Vanderhoop, a former Chairman of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe, was a student in the Harvard Kennedy School's mid-career master's in public administration program, he felt acutely aware of the fact that Harvard was in possession of Native American ancestors and belongings. "It is not still harping on something, it's addressing a hurt that still exists," he says. "Anyone who would know that their relative was sitting on a shelf would want that individual to be shown respect."

"Our beloved institution has not always seen its way through to upholding what I see as every institution's responsibility to implement the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act," Vanderhoop says.

"They always get it wrong because they're working in a silo," O'Loughlin, of the AAIA, says. "They're not listening. They're not even inviting a conversation."

In one instance of Harvard "getting it wrong," O'Loughlin cites Harvard's announcement of their intention to repatriate hundreds of hair clippings collected by anthropologist George Edward Woodbury between 1930-1933 from Native American children in government-run boarding schools. They initially declared that "this wasn't a NAGPRA issue, but they were going to repatriate out of the kindness of their hearts," O'Loughlin says.

"We let them know, no, this is a NAGPRA issue," she says. "These are human remains, because they were taken without consent, just like the plain language of the law." In November 2022, after a review, the Department of the Interior notified the Peabody Museum that the hair clippings are, in fact, subject to NAGPRA. "If they would have simply worked with the tribes, they could have done this and taken care of it so easily and beautifully," O'Loughlin says. "But they seem to want to always make press statements about things, always put a webpage up for it and have all of this done without any external input."

O'Loughlin still feels that there is a disconnect between Harvard's professed priorities and its actions. "I don't think the institution understands this at all," she says. "That the collections that are in their possession, they do not own, they don't have any legal title to."

O n a Sunday in November, Samantha Maltais, the first Wampanoag student to attend Harvard Law School, sat down at a project room table in the Law School's Wasserstein Hall.

"The Peabody Museum is just a couple of streets that way," says Maltais, pointing north from the Law School. "I think that having that as a reminder - a very haunted reminder of the history of Harvard University's relationship to tribes - is really disheartening."

"And it's a very difficult thing to be reminded of as we're struggling to get the same education as our peers," she adds.

Maltais's relationship with the Peabody Museum started long before she set foot on the Law School campus. In one of the museum exhibitions, eight-year-old Maltais is pictured alongside her mother, Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, at the excavation of the Indian College in Harvard's Old Yard.

Before Andrews-Maltais became the chairwoman of the Wampanoag tribe at Aquinnah, Maltais watched her mother, then tribal historic preservation officer, communicate with the Peabody Museum for the return of Wampanoag remains under NAGPRA, which Maltais's grandmother helped establish at the state level as a tribal councilwoman.

"This is a long-standing history and relationship that the school has had with my community, and I'm intimately aware of it. Over time you hear the same excuses. 'Oh, we're gonna start a working group. Oh, we're gonna do a policy paper,'" Maltais says.

"There's just no room for excuses anymore," she adds. "This is the third generation of person in my family to be experiencing the failures of Harvard when it comes to NAGPRA."

Despite the Museum's recent efforts to comply with NAGPRA, the knowledge that ancestors and their funerary belongings sit on warehouse shelves can be taxing for Indigenous people at Harvard.

"The actual physical ancestors are one thing," says Solomon, who has been affiliated with Harvard for almost 50 years since she enrolled as an undergraduate. "It's probably more important than any of the other things. But the fact that things with life and spirit are being locked away in a warehouse, just because Harvard has them, is really horrible."

After decades of inaction on repatriation, many express wariness of the Peabody Museum and the University at large. When Indigenous people organize programming on campus, like the Responsibility and Repair conference, the University's support without quick, meaningful action on their demands can ring hollow to many.

"I want to put out there that Harvard has been complicit and continues to be complicit in the harms of colonization," Solomon says in her opening remarks at the conference. "There's - and this is hard to say - but Harvard has a history of both being complicit in and facilitating the harms that happen in between indigenous communities, and will often take the road that is expedient instead of the road that is right."

"So we're not ready for that repair - I don't think we're ready for that repair."

R epatriation under NAGPRA is often frustrating and complicated - both for the staff working to identify and return thousands of ancestors and belongings collected over centuries, as well as the tribal representatives left to wait for email replies and phone calls back about their own ancestors.

But for many Indigenous people, the decades-long process and missed opportunities also add to the pain of knowing their ancestors' remains and funeral belongings were taken from their graves on native lands and held in museum collections for years.

As the Museum now increases repatriations, both Indigenous people and university administrators are considering what it will take to build productive, respectful relationships.

"It needs to start with Harvard internally. It needs to continue with building relationship - reciprocal, meaningful relationships - with indigenous communities, and then and only then can we talk about repair," Solomon says at the conference.

As the staff and leadership of the Peabody Museum continue repatriations, the breadth of the Museum's collections is becoming another difficult reality.

"It's not a simple process, but I think it's fair to say - as has been said nationally - that nobody thought that it was going to be 30 years," Pickering says.

When asked about the Museum's future after NAGPRA repatriation concludes, Pickering is quick to correct us.

"Repatriation will never be complete," she says. "It is part of the work that we always do."

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Philip J. Deloria is a member of of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. In fact, he is of Dakota descent.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Jane Pickering issued a formal apology in 2019. In fact, Pickering issued the apology in 2021.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that former President Lawrence S. Bacow apologized for the University's handling of Native American human remains in response to a letter from the Association on American Indian Affairs. In fact, Bacow first apologized and then the Association on American Indian Affairs sent the University a letter urging compliance with NAGPRA.

- Associate Magazine Editor Jade Lozada can be reached at jade.lozada@thecrimson.com.

- Associate Magazine Editor Ellie S. Klibaner-Schiff can be reached at ellie.klibaner-schiff@thecrimson.com.

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The Painful Progress of Native American Repatriation | Magazine | The Harvard Crimson

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Over three decades after the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was passed, the Peabody Museum has repatriated less than half of its holdings. For tribes who are waiting to receive their ancestors and funerary belongings, this slow progress has taken a heavy toll.

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Our schools must reject stereotypes’: Comerford, local residents continue push to end Indigenous mascots

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Our schools must reject stereotypes’: Comerford, local residents continue push to end Indigenous mascots

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‘Our schools must reject stereotypes’: Comerford, local residents continue push to end Indigenous mascots - Greenfield Recorder

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Franklin County residents had their voices heard on Beacon Hill this week, telling legislators that Indigenous-themed mascots should not be allowed in Massachusetts public schools.

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Harvard Returns the Remains of 7 Ancestors to the Oneida Indian Nation

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Harvard Returns the Remains of 7 Ancestors to the Oneida Indian Nation

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Harvard Returns the Remains of 7 Ancestors to the Oneida Indian Nation | News | The Harvard Crimson

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Harvard has repatriated the remains of seven Oneida Indian Nation ancestors and associated funerary objects that were held in the collection of the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, the Oneida Nation announced Wednesday.

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Push on to protect Native heritage: Indigenous leaders gather with legislators to support five-bill agenda - Greenfield Recorder

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Indigenous leaders took the podium in the State House this week to voice united support for five pieces of legislation filed on behalf on their communities, including bills that would say goodbye to Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples Day and bar the use of Indigenous-themed mascots in public schools.

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Push on to protect Native heritage: Indigenous leaders gather with legislators to support five-bill agenda - Greenfield Recorder

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Indigenous leaders took the podium in the State House this week to voice united support for five pieces of legislation filed on behalf on their communities, including bills that would say goodbye to Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples Day and bar the use of Indigenous-themed mascots in public schools.

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Push on to protect Native heritage: Indigenous leaders gather with legislators to support five-bill agenda - Greenfield Recorder

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Indigenous leaders took the podium in the State House this week to voice united support for five pieces of legislation filed on behalf on their communities, including bills that would say goodbye to Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples Day and bar the use of Indigenous-themed mascots in public schools.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Push on to protect Native heritage: Indigenous leaders gather with legislators to support five-bill agenda - Greenfield Recorder

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Indigenous leaders took the podium in the State House this week to voice united support for five pieces of legislation filed on behalf on their communities, including bills that would say goodbye to Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples Day and bar the use of Indigenous-themed mascots in public schools.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Push on to protect Native heritage: Indigenous leaders gather with legislators to support five-bill agenda - Greenfield Recorder

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Indigenous leaders took the podium in the State House this week to voice united support for five pieces of legislation filed on behalf on their communities, including bills that would say goodbye to Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples Day and bar the use of Indigenous-themed mascots in public schools.

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US Schools (including Arlington and Boston) Look to Expand Teachings of Thanksgiving History

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US Schools (including Arlington and Boston) Look to Expand Teachings of Thanksgiving History

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More American schools are rethinking the ways they teach the history of Thanksgiving.

Students often learn that the holiday dates back to 1621, when English settlers in the present-day United States shared a thanksgiving meal with Native Americans.

But in some schools, teachings about the history of this major U.S. holiday have become more complex. Lessons now include issues of conflict and injustice. They also include greater attention to the people who lived on the land long before European settlers arrived and named it "New England."

Schools in New England and other places are beginning to hear more about what some experts call "hard history" - shameful events of the past.

The students may still learn about the meal that is said to have taken place in 1621. But they also learn that relations between white settlers and Native Americans were uneasy. And they learn about the resulting years of conflict.

Language arts teacher Susannah Remillard had noticed that her sixth-grade students had been taught much more about the English settlers than the Wampanoag people, the Native Americans who sat down with them to eat. She said she now tries to add more balance to her lessons.

"We carry this Colonial view of how we teach, and now we have a moment to step outside that and think about whether that is harmful for kids, and if there isn't a better way," said Remillard, who teaches at Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School in East Harwich, Massachusetts. "I think we are at a point where people are now ready to listen."

Arlington Public Schools near Boston, Massachusetts is working to expand its lessons on Native Americans. This includes pointing out what educators and other experts call Thanksgiving "myths" -- untrue stories and ideas.

Students as young as 5 years old learn that harvest feasts and thanksgiving were part of Wampanoag life long before 1621. They are also taught that the early settlers - known as Pilgrims -- and the Wampanoag were not friends.

School officials believe it is important to, in their words, "unlearn" false ideas about the Thanksgiving holiday feast.

"We don't want the coloring books of the Pilgrims and the Native Americans," said Crystal Power, a social studies teacher with Arlington Public Schools. "We want students to engage with what really happened, with who lived here first, and to understand that there was no such thing as the New World."

Groups that support Native American education welcome the recent wave of action at schools in Massachusetts and other states. But they also say that progress has been slow and uneven. Schools in many places, they say, still teach insensitive, outdated lessons.

"Progress seems to be gaining momentum, but there's still a lot of work to do," said Ed Schupman. He oversees Native Knowledge 360, the national education effort at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. He is also a citizen of the Muscogee Creek Nation of Oklahoma.

Schupman and the museum have worked with states as they create new lessons on Native American cultures. Some states now require schools to teach such histories. Even in states where such lessons are not required, however, classrooms are becoming more inclusive.

School officials say they are not changing history, but adding parts that have been left out. Usual social studies school books have included little about Native Americans. And, classroom materials that included more about Native Americans were hard to find. Teachers say that is changing, thanks to native experts who have written children's books, lesson plans and other materials.

In Massachusetts this year, every public school is getting copies of a new state history book that a Wampanoag writer and historian helped create. The book was published in time for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Mayflower -- the ship that carried a group of European settlers to North America. But the book tells about the history of the Wampanoag people, and includes information from thousands of years before the Pilgrims' arrival.

Before the coronavirus crisis, schools around Boston organized yearly visits from Annawon Weeden, a performing artist and member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.

Weeden chooses to arrive in classrooms wearing modern clothes. He aims to push back against false ideas about Indigenous people today. After taking questions from students, he changes into traditional clothing and demonstrates tribal dances.

"A lot of the kids think we're only in the past. A lot of the kids think we live in a longhouse or a teepee or whatever," Weeden said. "Stereotypes like those are very hard to defeat."

I'm Caty Weaver.
The Associated Press reported this story. Ashley Thompson adapted it for VOA Learning English. Bryan Lynn was the editor.
Words in This Story

feast - n. a special meal with large amounts of food and drink

engage - v. to get and keep (someone's attention, interest, etc.)

momentum - n. the strength or force that allows something to continue or to grow stronger or faster as time passes

insensitive - adj. showing that you do not know or care about the feelings of other people

longhouse - n. the traditional homes of the Iroquois and some other North American groups

tepee - n. a tent that is shaped like a cone and that was used in the past by some Native Americans as a house

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US Schools Look to Expand Teachings of Thanksgiving History

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Students often learn that Thanksgiving dates back to 1621, when English settlers in the present-day United States shared a thanksgiving meal with Native Americans. But in some schools, teachings about the history of this major U.S. holiday have become more complex.

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Education for Native Youth is a Work in Progress 

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Education for Native Youth is a Work in Progress 

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Some Native American children fear bullying and harassment so much, they hide their ethnicity at school, according to an education expert.

"A lot of Native students feel invisible," said Katrina Boone, an associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a national nonprofit whose mission is to change education and life outcomes for underserved children.

Boone said many students have told her they don't feel comfortable letting their teachers know they are Native American because they have "been harassed and bullied, not just by peers, but by teachers in school."

Native American students languish in schools across the country and often face worse outcomes than their white, black and Latino peers, she said. And the rates of high school and post-graduation trends are below the rates of their peers.

The suicide rate for Native youth exceeds the rate of their peers, Boone said. And national data indicate that rates for illicit drug use and tobacco use are higher for Native youth than for their peers, she said, citing the National Survey on Drug Use and Health from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

False history

Native Americans have been discriminated against "for hundreds of years," Boone said, and forced to assimilate into a Euro-centric American culture.

"A lot of people view Native people and their socio-economic challenges and think the cause is Native people themselves," she said. "But the actuality is that of course these challenges aren't inherent to Native people. These are the effects of centuries of our government being terroristic, genocidal, and just generally unfair to Native American people since European first contact."

Schools were used as a tool of assimilation, Boone said. "Very thoughtfully and very strategically by the government to destroy Native culture, to destroy Native language, to separate Native people, and to erase their cultures as they originally existed before first contact," she said.

Hundreds of thousands of Native children were sent -- often forcibly -- to Native American boarding schools where "they were punished for speaking their native language, banned from acting in any way that might be seen to represent traditional or cultural practices, stripped of traditional clothing, hair and personal belongings and behaviors reflective of their native culture," according to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.

When they returned to their families, "they were so completely Americanized that they couldn't speak the language of their families and had lost their culture and traditions," Boone said. The outcome is poverty, poor physical and mental health issues and subpar education outcomes "that we see in Indian country today."
Native schools
But Boone is quick to point out that there are pockets in the country where Native students excel.

"The schools where Native students excel acknowledge those students' culture, they acknowledge those students' Native languages, they involve communities in really rich ways, and usually those schools are controlled and run by Native people," Boone said.

She points to the Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Immersion School in northwestern Wisconsin, where students thrive in an academically rigorous environment that leverages the myriad assets of their Native culture and language.

There is also the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), a 56-hectare (140-acre) campus in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where approximately 500 students are immersed in contemporary Native American arts and culture.

Members of about 100 tribes attend the school, President Robert Martin, a member of the Cherokee Nation, said. "So that's a lot of diversity," he said, but the school's main mission he points out, "will always reflect that indigenous or Native perspective."
Dolores' story
Native American and IAIA student Dolores Scarlett Cortez studies printmaking and photography. She said using those mediums allowed her to explore her roots. Cortez said she spent this past summer photographing members of her community, and in the process, found her calling.

"With my own indigenous cultures and especially coming to the school, I do feel like there's not enough resources on reservation land that caters to indigenous people," she said. "I think it's really important to bring that representation back."
The power of film
Anthony Deiter, who graduated from IAIA 25 years ago and is now a professor of virtual gaming and simulation at the school, teaches a new concept in filmmaking: moving images viewed on a spherical screen rather than a flat one.

He said he thinks the arts -- especially film -- are a powerful platform to help students understand their history, and they provide an opportunity to correct it where they can.

"We often look at those movies and go, 'Well, that's sort of not us,' and I'm going 'Well, maybe we need to start putting that voice out there. Maybe we need to take a place, like the Institute of American Indian Arts, [which] has the platform to jump off to tell our own stories,'" Dieter said.
Political push
"What I really feel needs to happen is we need to have more Native Americans in roles that we don't necessarily see them in now, or roles that we are a vast minority in," said U.S. Congresswoman Deb Haaland, a Democrat who represents New Mexico's 1st congressional district and is one of two female Native American legislators elected to Congress.

At the University of New Mexico School of Law where Haaland graduated in 2006, she lobbied the state legislature to pass a bill giving Native Americans in-state tuition regardless of their residency. She paid out-of-state tuition at University of New Mexico School of Law because she resided in California several years before enrollment.

"I felt that I'm a Pueblo woman, and my family's been here since the 1280s, and that made me a 35th generation New Mexican. And it just seemed wrong that I had to pay out-of-state tuition," Haaland said.

She said she would like to see more Native Americans in leadership roles, especially women.

"We need more Native women CEOs. We need more Native women in public office. We need Native Americans in high military positions. We need to ensure that we are giving opportunities to not just Native Americans, but minority students all over the country," Haaland said.
Walking in two worlds
Boone, of Bellwether Education Partners, said she thinks that in order to succeed, Native Americans have to first be fully grounded in their own culture.

"New students have to understand that they live in, for better or worse, the country that we all live in today, and that there's a real need to be able to navigate that society, but with the strength within them from their first culture," she said.

"That's not different for any other kid in school," she said. "I saw in my teaching experiences that kids really need to be rooted in their families and their communities, and have some sort of cultural base."

"Those are the kids who are the most successful," Boone said

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Education for Native Youth Is a Work in Progress

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Some Native American children fear bullying and harassment so much, they hide their ethnicity at school, according to an education expert. "A lot of Native students feel invisible," said Katrina Boone, an associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a national nonprofit whose mission is to change education and life outcomes for underserved children.