As we approach Thanksgiving, a season whose origins hold significant, generational pain for many of our Indigenous neighbors, our church community is extending invitations to listen to – and hear – Native voices. We have compiled a list of four different event in the coming weeks. Please read through the events and find ones that speak to you; all are welcome.
Faith and Boundaries
On December 3rd, after the Thanksgiving season has passed, author David Silverman (featured in the above MV Museum event) will offer a discussion on his book, Faith and Boundaries. He examines how the Wampanoag peoples’ adoption of Christianity, and other selective borrowing from English culture, contributed to Indian/English coexistence and the long-term survival of Wampanoag communities on the island of Martha's Vineyard, even as the racial barrier between peoples grew more rigid. The event is Thursday, December 3rd, at 12:00 PM. Click here to attend the talk or enter Meeting ID: 658 531 6212 and password: 123456. To call in, dial +1 253-215-8782 and enter Meeting ID, if prompted. Please contact Jackie@mvnonprofits.org with any questions.
Previous events
This Land is Their Land
On Tuesday, November 17, at 5:30 PM, the MV Museum hosts a virtual event titled This Land is Their Land: A Conversation with David Silverman and David Vanderhoop around the Troubled History and Pervasive Myths around Thanksgiving. Click here for more information and to register.
Looking Deeply at Thanksgiving
On Thursday, November 19, at 7:00 PM, the 400 Years Project of the Beacon Hill Friends (Quakers) and the Justice & Witness Ministries of the Southern New England UCC are offering a Zoom program led by two Wampanoag leaders and two allied faith leaders. Participants will be invited to consider difficult truths about Thanksgiving, reflect in community with others, and hear messages of hope around what a new Thanksgiving built on justice and right relationship might look like. Background materials are available here. For more information and to register, click here. Admission is via donation to the Native Land Conservancy.
We Still Live Here – Âs Nutayuneân
On Monday, November 23, at 7:30 PM, the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding will offer an online screening and discussion of the documentary We Still Live Here – Âs Nutayuneân. At this time of year, millions of Americans will be reenacting a Thanksgiving myth of peaceful European settlement in the Northeast. This film tells a powerful Wampanoag story about restoring a language decimated by colonization – and the hope that this cultural restoration brings for the future. The film's story begins in 1994, when a Wampanoag social worker named Jessie Little Doe began having recurring dreams about familiar-looking people from another time, who were addressing her in a language she did not understand. This began an odyssey that would lead her to receive a Master’s Degree in Algonquian Linguistics from MIT and to found the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project. Today, members of the Wampanoag nation are successfully bringing a language back to life that had not been spoken aloud in more than a century. Click here to register for the virtual screening and live Question & Answer session with Anne Makepeace, the filmmaker, and Jennifer Weston, Director of the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project.