Writing of Indigenous New England: Building Partnerships for the Preservation of Regional Native American Literature

The project will convene a group of regional Native American knowledge keepers, humanities scholars, and digitization and intellectual property experts for project and planning activities associated with the online portal, "Writing of Indigenous New England." At present our growing collaboration includes scholars, librarians, web developers and tribal historians from New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. We seek NEH funding to accomplish three initial goals: (1) convene a 2-day editorial board meeting and planning session, from which we will (2) write up our editorial guidelines and priorities, agree on culturally-sensitive intellectual property protocols, and establish technical specifications for the website; and (3) run three pilot projects at the Tomaquag Museum (RI), Indigenous Resource Collaborative (MA), and Passmaquoddy Heritage Center (ME), to help us establish workflow, clarify budget and staffing expectations, and begin drafting some larger funding proposals

Sovereignty and Sustainability in Mohegan Ethnobotanical Literature

This commentary contends that sustainability can be most useful if understood not as an endpoint or condition, but as an epistemology that attends to continually evolving interactions among ecological and human systems. My case study is a carefully delimited Native American literary tradition: the writing of medicine people from the Mohegan tribal nation, located in what is now Connecticut. I present this body of work neither to romanticize “ecological Indians,” nor to explicate the texts’ ethnobotanical content. Rather, I observe that Mohegan medicine people have used, extended and subverted the conventions of post-Enlightenment ethnobotany. They have used writing to preserve their traditional ecological knowledge, but not in ways that simply document that knowledge, which would render it vulnerable to theft and misuse. Instead, these texts emphasize relations of reciprocity—between text and orality, between Mohegans and non-Mohegans, between humans and plants

Honoring the Mother of All People; Contemporary Indigenous Leadership in Revitalizing Environmental and Cultural Sustainability

This series of events brings Indigenous perspectives from 22 Indigenous speakers across the U.S. and Arctic regions to discussions of sustainable futures within the New Hampshire community. There is growing movement in the academic community to understand how Indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage can deepen our thinking about sustainable futures. While most researchers recognize that anthropogenic climate change and other sustainability challenges require humanistic as well as scientific approaches, many have yet to thoroughly understand the colonial legacies that initiated many of these sustainability problems and continue to impede our study and solutions. The 2020-2021 Sidore Series was designed to increase awareness about Indigenous perspectives on climate change and cultural resilience; showcase examples of how Indigenous groups are engaged in regional, national, and international dialogues on climate and sustainability; explore how the University of New Hampshire can bring these ideas into teaching, research, and scholarship; and initiate relationships with Indigenous communities to pursue collaborative capacity-building for the co-production of knowledge

Dawnland Voices

Dawnland Voices calls attention to the little-known but extraordinarily rich literary traditions of New England’s Native Americans. This pathbreaking anthology includes both classic and contemporary literary works from ten New England indigenous nations: the Abenaki, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Mohegan, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Schaghticoke, and Wampanoag. Through literary collaboration and recovery, Siobhan Senier and Native tribal historians and scholars have crafted a unique volume covering a variety of genres and historical periods. From the earliest petroglyphs and petitions to contemporary stories and hip-hop poetry, this volume highlights the diversity and strength of New England Native literary traditions. Dawnland Voices introduces readers to the compelling and unique literary heritage in New England, banishing the misconception that “real” Indians and their traditions vanished from that region centuries ago

Traditionally, Disability Was Not Seen as Such’: Writing and Healing in the Work of Mohegan Medicine People

The article traces representations of illness and disability in the writing of Mohegan medicine people from the eighteenth century to the present—from the missionary Samson Occom\u27s herbal, which recorded indigenous remedies for imported diseases, to medicine woman Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel\u27s speculative fiction, which portrays indigenous cultures accepting disability matter-of-factly. Mohegan writers have understood illness and disability as products of settler colonialism, both materially and discursively. In their writings about traditional ethnobotanical knowledge, they represent shifting indigenous responses to the colonial project of pathologizing indigenous bodies and nations. These responses include complicated strategies of disidentification with disability, as captured in Zobel\u27s statement that traditionally, disability was not seen as such