History, Historiography, and Mom: A Meditation for Indigenous Peoples' Day

Real history.

My mother wasn't a historian. She remembered her own life, of course, and some of the stories told by her relatives about earlier years. Descended on her mother's side from Quakers, who kept good records, she owned one small book written by a Quaker ancestor. Otherwise, her exploration of family history took place via letters exchanged with her cousin Alice -- who, as a professor, might have been expected to be more tuned in with the standards of history. But Alice's interest was in religion, and she too mostly provided family history via stories, letters, and some photographs, as well as her personal experience. Some of those details appear in my Winds of Freedom series of historical novels set in the 1850s in Vermont.

On my grandfather's side -- Mom's father's side -- there are better records because many of the ancestors were merchants on Cape Cod. Those folks are well documented and date back quite neatly to emigration from England on the Mayflower and other notable ships. And in England, church records allow good reliability for tracking the family tree, too.

The most fragile part of Mom's stories about the family turned out to be its connections with Native Americans. I wasn't yet asking "the right questions" at the time of Mom's death -- I was only 28 then. But I have one of her excited letters, splashed with exclamation points, suggesting that my four-greats grandmother Love Perkins in Wells, Maine, might be of Native American ancestry.

Thanks to marrying historian Dave Kanell, I've become a researcher, and I question everything in the family tree, especially connections to America's pre-1600 people. It took a lot of work, but I've demonstrated that Mom was wrong about Love Perkins. But another branch of her tree, the Hopkins line, seems to have descended in part from Wampanoag members based around Nantucket and Cape Cod. I would love to be sure about that, because it would certainly be a source of great interest. But ... the historian part of me doubts that I'll ever have enough evidence.

Still, I am thinking of Margaret Diguina today, on what has been a date recently to contemplate Indigenous peoples of our continent. If she was indeed the Wampanoag person that some records suggest, she had an amazing heritage herself. I hope that her marriage to Gabriel Weldon was both willing and happy. "Historiography," the study of the writings of history, suggests I won't get answers to my related questions during my lifetime. (Also, DNA from back then is far too diluted at this point to show up in my own genetics.)

But for the sake of a bit of history today, I recommend this article on Ruth (West) Coombs of the Mashpee Wampanoag. And for the sake of my grandsons, who may read this post some day, here's a reminder: The Wampanoag did not wear those massive feather headdresses that you see in old movies. Dig into the history of your people, and your nation, and this continent. There is so much to learn!

Real postcard but fake history and garb.

 

Rhymes for Young Ghouls: When Fiction Turns Fierce

These are "stills" from the Canadian award-winning movie RHYMES FOR YOUNG GHOULS, coming to our local "arts cinema," Catamount Arts, on October 31 (through Nov. 6). The Halloween timing will fit the photo you see above -- but this movie has a lot more to do with Vermont, and my book The Darkness Under the Water, than you might have guessed.

Discovering the horrors of Vermont's home-grown eugenics project, which targeted Vermonters of Abenaki (Native American) heritage in the 1930s, pushed me to write The Darkness Under the Water. What was difficult for me to confront -- the betrayal and medical crippling inflicted by our own mostly fair-minded state -- remains much more terrible and present for those whose families suffered in person from this. It was also the reason Vermont's tribal presence became silenced for decades. Census takers in 1980 recorded the state as "empty" of Native Americans; in 1990, when some measure of safety had been restored, so people could answer more honestly, the Census takers (naive!) asked, "Where did all these Native Americans come from all of a sudden?!"

Back to the movie: Filmmaker Jeff Barnaby confronts the parallel racism and oppression that were taking place in Canada, with a very up-to-date and eerily believable "revenge fantasy" film, as a pot-dealing "native" teen takes aim at the Indian Act and the local Indian agent who is threatening to place her in a residential school. If you like your history served up current, with a generous dash of dark humor and good performance, this could be your film. I know it's one I'm going to see (with thanks to Mr. Aldredge at Catamount for the effort of bringing it through the international network).

And if it makes you angry in the long run, about the treatment of Canada's "First Peoples" and our own -- I'll be glad.

Trailer here.

Globe and Mail review here.