It’s a big leap going from no previous knowledge on indigenous peoples of the Americas, to English and History curriculum covering nations like the Cherokee, Sioux, Wampanoag and more. When choosing to write this article, I wondered, how could I deliver a message about this awareness month when I don’t identify as Native American. Suddenly, I thought of the perfect person who could help provide a realistic representation of the culture. That’s when I emailed Dean Harris.
Q: For someone reading this article not having a lot of knowledge on the Wampanoag tribe, can you describe what it is?
A: I’m a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, specifically. There are multiple tribes within the Wampanoag Confederation, but only 2 federally recognized which are Mashpee and Aquinnah. The Wampanoag people are from modern day Eastern Massachusetts, Cape Cod, as well as proportions of what we now call Rhode Island. We are what you describe as “Eastern Woodland people” which is that we live in the eastern woodlands but it means that our culture is very connected to the terrain of both the woodlands of what is now New England and the Coast. So, we’re also really water focused people. Our indigenous food includes everything from deer to clams, and local plants like cranberries (those are some major parts of food). Wampanoag means people of the first light and that’s because we’re from the east and the sun rises in the east and that’s where it greets people first in the morning. Many people are familiar with us without necessarily knowing our name through stories of Thanksgiving and Plymouth rock, and there’s that Disney movie on Squanto. All those are part of our culture but oftentimes our name is not mentioned in those stories.
Q: How did you grow up with the tribe?
A: For me, most of my childhood we spent summer on Cape Cod having a house not too far from tribal land. Every summer we would go to pow wows and tribal events throughout the year. We tried to go to tribal socials and gatherings. I didn’t grow up in a way you would describe as traditional so all the hunting and fishing practices and some of the spiritual practices are not part of my daily life. I grew up 5 miles from Boston so my life was more urban. But let’s just say I grew up in a household that kind of visited with our culture but wasn’t a part of our daily lives. When I was in middle school my mother started taking weekly lessons on the Wampanoag language and she will always attend monthly tribal council settings. So I stay most connected through her, and this past winter I started taking my own language lessons. And that’s been a great way to reconnect.
Q: Can you say something in your native language?
A: I’m actually not sure that I have permission to have the Wôpanâôt8âôk (Wampanoag language) words put into published text. But, you can definitely put the full name of the language in there if you’d like and say that this is the way that I learned to introduce myself in my language class that I’m grateful to have been able to start last winter over Zoom.
***(in Wampanoag, Ms. Harris said the following: “I’m Stephanie Harris. I live in New York and live in the land of the Linape and I’m from Mashpee.”
Q: How do you feel about the state of the tribe as it still exists today? Do you feel anger about where they have ended up due to English colonizers and how the population of tribal members has decreased?
A: I think in some ways I’ve come to terms with the reality with the history..right..there’s a lot of pain and sorrow that I feel knowing how hard it is for members of my community to hold onto our traditional ways. But I feel a lot of pride more than anything. I’m really proud to be part of a group of people who have survived genocide, that have survived so much systemic racism and that fight everythday to hold onto what they can of our culture. I think more than anything it’s kind of hard to continue to be mad at the people from the 1600s but I do sometimes get mad at people from the twenty-first century. To this day, like I said, we are people who are kind of mentioned without mentioning through those stories that we hear throughout Thanksgiving and things like that. Most recently we were in a debate with the federal government in a battle to hold our land, so what’s most frustrating is that it’s painful and mind boggling that those things have happened in the past; but it’s even more so that those things continue today.
Q: Emphasizing the distinction between tribes is a crucial part of dismantling the stereotype that all Native American tribes are one, so how does the Wampanoag tribe stand out from the other tribes?
A: It’s in a few different ways; it depends on kind of how we’re thinning. A lot of our imagery in Hollywood is around Westerns. When we do see indigenous folks, often it’s in the past and when there’s westerns and cowboys and all that stuff. You have to imagine that before colonization we didn’t have horses, so we didn’t have that cowboy shootout or that kind of culture. We did not have teepees, we had wetus. When we think about modern times, we have to consider that Wampanoag people came in contact with colonizers very early on and our interactions go back centuries. Because of this, people indigenous to the northeast don’t all look the same. A lot of them look like me. They look a lot of kinds of ways: blonde hair, blue eyes, tall and brown skin, high cheekbones, no cheekbones. No people who can claim 100 percent Wampanoag heritage, so any image in their mind of a native person certainly is a homogenization of hundreds of years and native nations. But certainly like groups for Wampanoags, there’s such a vast diversity within the ways they look. And in my point earlier, a lot of people look like me. They grow up in neighborhoods and suburbs and cities, or like myself, an hour away from my tribe. Or they grew up here in New York, hours away and are not representative of this stereotype. What’s different from us is some of the tribes have larger reservations. We don’t have that kind of geography. Our community is more porous and is more flexible because we don’t have that same kind of geographical link…Maybe I’ll just say our geography is more flexible.
Q: Do you have a favorite song from your tribe?
A:There’s a group that changed their name…it confuses me…it used to be called Tribe Called Red now they call themselves Halluci Nation and they have cool music. It’s kinda like a mix between hip hop and more traditional Native American music. There are some eastern drum groups that have youtube channels and CDs that I like to listen to sometimes.
Q: Is there anything else you want to say about Native American Awareness month?
A: I’ll say that if folks have Hulu, there’s a new special with the show: Taste the Nation. And there’s an episode all about Wampanoag food, people should watch it. It just came out this week. I’m really excited about people learning about Native American groups in this region and trying to connect by looking for pow wow places. This is often available in winter or summer, and also look for history of boarding schools, history of genocide, the Survival Act, and the strength of people who are still here! And then the only other thing I’d say is that there’s a lot of more indigenous people on this campus that are here, like Miss Keli O’Neill or Miss Lorena Rodas-Ramírez. But we often think of people as indigenous to the United States, but they’re also indigenous people to other parts outside of the US, like Mrs. Rodas-Ramírez. But a lot of people are indigenous in many ways, or more ways that we knew before. I’m so glad that students at Fieldston are learning about Wampanoag people. I would like to know more about what our whole community can and should know about the Lenape people who are indigenous to the land this school sits on.
