Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas! Also, Year-End-Greetings and Happy New Year When I was a young adult, I did not understand my parents’ lack of enthusiasm regarding the holiday season that, back in those days, stretched from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. Now that I am the grandmother of a half dozen young adults, I get it. Maybe my parents were on to something. Is it time to re-think the holiday season? The expectations coming […]
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Who Are the Wampanoag?
The Wampanoag, originally a confederacy of 69 tribes inhabiting what is now southeastern Massachusetts, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and Rhode Island, played a crucial role in the earliest days of contact between Native and European cultures on Turtle Island. Today, out of six Wampanoag communities, the Mashpee Wampanoag (People of the First Light), and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), are federally recognized sovereign tribes living in Massachusetts, Eastern Rhode Island, and Martha’s Vineyard, respectively. […]
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Teach the Whole Truth
In August of 1619 a ship carrying enslaved Africans sailed into Point Comfort in the British colony of Virginia. Next year marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the British ship, the Mayflower. It’s time to teach the whole truth about the impact the English and other Europeans had on this continent. Sixteenth Century Reformer Martin Luther describes Christians as “simultaneously saint and sinner.” This both/and approach is the Lutheran bedrock for understanding human […]
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Massasoit Ousamequin – Leader of the Pokanokets
Massasoit Ousamequin. Ever heard of him? He was a famous leader among the Pokanoket people – the people who had lived on the land we call New England, for thousands of years before the Mayflower showed up in 1620 The history of what happened following that famous voyage nearly four-hundred years ago, assigns only a minor part to Massasoit Ousamequin. However, without his leadership and intervention, more famous people such as William Bradford, Myles Standish, […]
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Two Quad-Centennial Anniversaries – Two Very Different Outcomes
This year and next the United States observes two quad-centennial anniversaries of significant historical events, with two quite different outcomes. This year, 2019, marks 400 years since the first Africans arrived in Hampton, Virginia. In late August 1619 two English ships, the White Lion and the Treasurer, attacked the Spanish San Juan Bautista. The crews hoped to find a hold filled with gold. Instead they found hundreds of enslaved Africans. The White Lion crew took […]
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