Ancient Stories, New Neighbors: Decolonizing Indigenous Homelands and 17th-Century New England

FAIN: ES-281302-21

Plimoth Patuxet Museums, Inc. (Plymouth, MA 02360-2429)
Hilary Goodnow (Project Director: March 2021 to January 2026)
Charlotte Carrington-Farmer (Co Project Director: September 2021 to January 2026)
Cedric Woods (Co Project Director: September 2021 to January 2026)

A two-week, residential institute for 25 K-12 teachers on the history of Indigenous peoples in southern New England.

Ancient Stories, New Neighbors is a Level I, two-week, in-person summer institute for 25 elementary, middle, and high school teachers hosted by Plimoth Patuxet Museums (PPM) and offered 7/24-8/6/2022 on PPM’s campus in Plymouth, MA. It brings together innovative thought leaders from the nation’s classrooms, dig sites, archives, and museums in the place Mayflower’s arrival accelerated a series of events that permanently changed an already-existing, complex network of Indigenous communities, each with its own rich cultural traditions, politics and aspirations. The Institute will use Mourt’s Relation, a 1622 English pamphlet, as a case study in decolonizing historical narratives and recentering Indigenous voices by employing a range of related primary sources including archaeology, landscape, material culture, oral history, and written documents. The Institute will reveal how an Indigenous-colonial regional landscape was built and evolved through collaboration and conflict in the 1600s.