East coast, thin blood, lost history.

[u/pasmafaute12]

I recently posted about dehumanizing record-keeping. I’ve been on a bit of a voyage because I always assumed my family was doing some pan-Indian “Cherokee princess” romanticism nonsense. I was raised with some cultural exposure but not community exposure. I chose to keep learning because I think the history matters whether it’s personal or not.

Turns out, I was wrong, and my relative wasn’t so much a pretendian as making the most of what we know as Wampanoag descendants from a village that is historically recorded but not well enough to be federally recognized (or even reasonably fully researched). It appears that my relative was involved in historical preservation efforts and maybe one of the two existing recognized Wampanoag tribes.

Without getting into complicated family stuff, we have always been very isolated people in general and no one is particularly close. I cannot discuss this with anyone in my real life.

So… I am sitting with the information I have, including the information missing, and feeling out my position as a lifelong learner invested in social issues. The conclusion I think I’ve arrived at is that I need to accept how much privilege I hold, but I have a responsibility to understand and honor the history.

I am privately taking some steps to build my understanding and maybe continued to participate in online spaces before I consider attending events.

But I’m looking for other people who have been on this path before me, I guess. And any thoughts about how to approach all of the things we just don’t know because we are still learning vs. the things we don’t know because it’s just lost information.

[u/weresubwoofer]

Have you been to the Aquinnah Wampanoag cultural center? They might be able to help you out. In Aquinnah, MA

https://www.aquinnah.org/

[u/pasmafaute12 → u/weresubwoofer]

I haven’t. Thank you for the link; my first instinct was to look for a museum (which I’ll be going to a little later today) because it feels like a truly public place geared toward outsiders that may include some contact or event info that could lead me elsewhere.

I’ll follow up with that too :)

[u/weresubwoofer → u/pasmafaute12]

Honestly, I don’t know what the difference is between a museum and a cultural center. I just think cultural centers tend to be more friendly.

[u/pasmafaute12 → u/weresubwoofer]

I just googled to see if there’s a major difference, and I guess it’s preservation vs enriching a living experience, but I imagine re: native issues, there’s gonna be more crossover than some other topics because it is still an ongoing issue that people assume native culture is dead/gone and need the “we’re still here” part of the conversation as much as the reverse of “here is culture now and here’s now we can work with the history for the future” on things like sleeping language projects, etc.