Senior Research Associate at @BrookingsMetro, proud member of @BrookingsUnion. Write about workers, tech, higher ed, and more. Mashpee Wampanoag 🌅 Views my own
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Nov 25, 2021 • 25 tweets • 8 min read
On the 400th anniversary of what is called the ‘First Thanksgiving,’ I want to highlight a project that has changed my and many other Wampanoag people’s lives
Here’s a 🧵 on how a Wampanoag woman, jessie little doe baird, brought our language back from near extinction (1/25):
First, some context. Wôpanâôt8âôk, the Wampanoag language, is an Algonquian language. Algonquian languages are indigenous to a broad swath of what is today called North America.
While this map isn’t perfect, it provides a rough idea of their distribution (2/25):
Oct 11, 2021 • 19 tweets • 5 min read
On this #IndigenousPeoplesDay, I want to highlight an ongoing way that the U.S. harms Tribal sovereignty.
Many Americans assume all Tribes have a reservation. In fact, the Supreme Court has actually forbidden many Tribes from reclaiming their lands.
Here’s a thread on how 👇
The U.S. has a long history of Native land theft, from European colonization to the Dawes Act and the Termination Era.
This policy begins in 2009. That year, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the Interior Secretary may not create reservations for Tribes recognized after 1934.
Nov 26, 2020 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
A reminder, 400 years after the Mayflower, that the Wampanoag people are still here, still practicing our culture, and still facing adversity
We didn’t just disappear or go extinct. And so I want to note some of the amazing things that we’re doing as a people (THREAD 👇)
Tribal citizens continue to revitalize the Wampanoag language. We run an immersion school taught fully in Wôpanâak: wlrp.org
