CT Explored/Inbox
Welcome to your bi-weekly newsletter from Connecticut Explored with the latest stories, the newest Grating the Nutmeg podcast, programs and exhibitions from our partners to see/watch this month, and more!
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Tuesday, November 8, is election day. Don’t forget to vote. Voter Registration Lookup and Polling Place Locator
Oliver Wolcott Library’s Premiere Holiday Auction Begins 11/26/2022
Our online auction offers fabulous experiences and exclusive items all available for online bidding. Register now!
Link: https://owlauction2022.ggo.bid/bidding/package-browse
Re-Indigenizing Connecticut History for Students
Connecticut Explored has always had an interest in helping teachers bring history into their classrooms. In the Fall issue, we teamed up with Chris Newell, the Director of Education and co-founder of Akomawt Educational Initiative (with endawnis Spears and Connecticut Humanities’ Executive Director Dr. Jason Mancini). Newell is a visiting professor and Tribal Community Member-in-Residence at the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program at the University of Connecticut. He was born and raised in Motahkmikuhk (Indian Township, ME) and is a proud citizen of the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Indian Township.
In his article, Newell explores what Connecticut residents can expect from the mandate to include Native Studies in our public school curriculum (included in the budget implementation bill Public Act 21-2, passed June 2021).
The new mandate that goes into effect in Fall 2023 does not require classroom teachers to meet a specific standard in their knowledge of Native studies. As Newell says, the law is “the first step in a much larger process.”
“The idea is a fundamental change for the long term. In that regard, teachers become active learners as they explore the local Indigenous landscape. Rather than overburdening educators with mastering unfamiliar material, the beginning of the process of implementing the mandate will be an active learning process for students and their teachers alike,” writes Newell.
The Akomawt Educational Initiative will help the state draft guidelines, best practices, and standards that address pragmatic questions such as how to talk about Native cultures and histories through the linguistic worldview of the English language. Newell envisions classroom experiences in which students grapple with the complexities of Algonquin-speaking woodland cultures. They will explore differences in perspective such as stewarding the land vs. owning the land ownership; understanding and challenging settler-colonial ideas of “civilization,” “improvement,” and “development;” and Native peoples’ intricate landscape with multiple economies.
Newell says it best: “Fall 2023 is the beginning of a new journey for the education experience of the Connecticut student, both for my children and yours. It’s a fascinating time. The hunger educators have for new sources will ultimately be filled by our most outstanding experts on Native cultures in Connecticut today, the tribes themselves. Embrace it, and you will see the benefits go far beyond the classroom.”
Find all our teacher resources on our TEACH page and all of our stories about the Native American experience in Connecticut on our TOPICS page.
Game Changer
To mark our 20th anniversary, the Board and staff of Connecticut Explored decided that instead of looking back (though you’ll find a story about how we came to be on page 14), we would look forward and explore the future of Connecticut history. We launched an initiative, supported by a CTHumanities planning grant, to find 20 people who, and projects that, are advancing the way we study, interpret, and disseminate Connecticut history. The Eastern Pequot Archaeological Field School is a game changer!
(l) Tjamel Hamlin II and (r) Derrick Strong, both Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation members, and (center) Lan-Huong Nguyen, an undergraduate student at Connecticut College, screen for artifacts during excavations on the Eastern Pequot reservation as part of the Eastern Pequot Archaeological Field School, offered by the University of Massachusetts Boston, July 2018. Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation.
The Eastern Pequot Archaeological Field School formed in 2003 as a collaborative venture between the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation and the department of anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. This community-engaged archaeology project developed to advance Eastern Pequot initiatives in cultural and historic preservation, land management, education, community development, and heritage activities. The project takes place on the Eastern Pequot’s historic reservation in North Stonington, one of the oldest in the U.S., which has been continuously occupied by the Eastern Pequot since before the reservation was established in 1683.
Over the last 20 years Eastern Pequot community members (including elders, youth, and tribal government officials), archaeology professors, and more than 120 university students have conducted extensive archaeological surveys and excavations on the reservation, documenting Native life both during the reservation period and for thousands of years prior. Contrary to exploitative archaeological practices of the 20th century, this 21st-century Indigenous archaeology project has centered on and respected Eastern Pequot land, culture, voices, needs, and sovereignty. Results of this research—which has appeared in scholarly articles, books, master’s theses, exhibits, and video (see youtube.com/watch?v=CsJ2znR-Wq8)—have demonstrated this Indigenous community’s cultural persistence and its often under-appreciated role in Connecticut history from the 17th century to today.
152. Hartford and Puerto Rico: A Conversation with Elena Rosario and Pablo Delano (CTE Game Changer Series)
In this episode, recorded at the Park Street Library@the Lyric on Sept. 21, 2022 to a full house, two of our Connecticut History Game Changer Honorees discuss their work. The conversation was hosted by Jasmin Agosto, Community Outreach Coordinator for the Hartford History Center at the Hartford Public Library.
Now that you have listened, click here to take our survey!
Programs and Exhibitions to Enjoy This Month
From October 1, 2022 through May 14, 2023 the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme presents the exhibition Dreams and Memories, an exploration of historic and contemporary art from the museum’s permanent collection that considers these themes as drivers of artistic creativity and expressions of powerful forces in American society. Dreams and memories both manifest and generate ideas, perhaps no more powerfully than in art. Through works by such artists as Edmund Greacen, Mary Knollenberg, Willard Metcalf, Charles Ethan Porter, Winfred Rembert, and Bessie Potter Vonnoh, the exhibition explores these ideas through themes such as reverie, surrealism, identity formation, religion, social action, historical memory, and the American dream.
Florence Griswold Museum, florencegriswoldmuseum.org
You’re invited to the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Awards Dinner on November 4 to celebrate this year’s awardee. During an elegant dinner, you’ll hear addresses by the award winner, the prize benefactor, international bestselling author David Baldacci, and one or more other leading literary figures. First presented in 2016, the award is a juried literary competition with a $25,000 cash prize. The award is given to the author of a work of fiction from the previous year that speaks with a uniquely American voice about American experiences, such as Twain created in his masterpiece, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Awards Dinner is presented by Bank of America, with support from Webster Bank, The Hartford, and Talcott Resolution Life Insurance Company. Visit MarkTwainHouse.org or contact dawn.vdiana@marktwainhouse.org for sponsorship and table information.
The Mark Twain House & Museum, MarkTwainHouse.org
From October 15, 2022 through February 23, 2024, Mystic Seaport Museum invites you to Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano, the first comprehensive survey of American engagement with the art world of late 19th-century Venice. Featuring more than 150 objects, this exhibition, organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, will present exquisitely crafted glass vessels among paintings, watercolors, and prints by the many talented American artists who found inspiration in Venice.
Together these works show the impact of Italian glass on American art, literature, design theory, and science education, as well as period ideologies of gender, labor, and class relations. For Sargent, Whistler, and their patrons, these glass vessels were both works of art and symbols of collective esteem for history, beauty, and craftsmanship—a combination of connoisseurship and visual pleasure that continues to gratify today’s visitors to this enchanting island city.
Mystic Seaport Museum, Mysticseaport.org
CCSU Educates the Next Generation of History Leaders
Registration Begins: November 7-18
With the only Public History program in Connecticut, Central Connecticut State University welcomes new faculty (Camesha Scruggs, Aimee Loiselle, Tyler Kynn, and David Naumec) this year who will help us continue to graduate alumni who rise to leadership positions in the state and strengthen our relationships through grants and collaboration with community and in-house partners, including the Connecticut League of History Organizations and the Witness Stones Project.
History Department, Central Connecticut State University, ccsu.edu/history/
In the News
CCSU public historian Dr. Leah Glaser and Connecticut Explored publisher Dr. Katherine Hermes won the Betsey Doane Award for Digital Accessibility Innovation.
They partnered with CrisRadio (sight-impaired programming) on a grant to provide historical content about soldiers of color at the Redding Encampment during the American Revolutionary War. This project aims to make accessible generally unknown information about the roles of unacknowledged participants at the site of the Continental Army’s 1778-1779 winter encampment in Redding, Connecticut during the Revolutionary War for both in-person and virtual visitors to Putnam State Memorial Park. The National Parks Service American Battlefield Protection Program identified the “Forgotten Voices of the American Revolutionary War” grant application as “one of the outstanding projects meriting funding” and the project received praise from Congressmen John Larson and Jim Himes as well as the DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes.
Editor’s Picks
Grating the Nutmeg: 72a BONUS EPISODE: Colin Calloway on Dartmouth as a School for Native Americans
Historian Colin Calloway discusses the founding of Dartmouth College.
State Archaeologist on 30 Years of Great Finds, Connecticut Explored, Summer 2014
On the eve of his retirement, Connecticut Explored invited Nick Bellantoni to reflect on his long tenure as state archaeologist.
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