RESCHEDULED: Colonization and the Wampanoag Story: A Virtual Book Talk with Linda Coombs

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When you think about the beginning of the American story, what comes to mind? Three ships in 1492, or perhaps buckled hats and shoes stepping off the Mayflower, ready to start a new country? But the truth is, Christopher Columbus, the Pilgrims, and the colonists didn’t arrive to a vast, empty land ready to be developed. They arrived to find people and communities living in harmony with the land they had inhabited for thousands of years, and they quickly disrupted everything they saw.

From its “discovery” by Europeans to the first Thanksgiving, the story of America’s earliest days has been carefully misrepresented. Told from the perspective of the New England Indigenous Nations that these outsiders found when they arrived, Colonization and the Wampanoag Story tells the true story of how America as we know it today began.

Join us for a virtual book talk with Linda Coombs (Aquinnah Wampanoag) about her book in the Race to the Truth series, a book line for young adults that aims to correct common falsehoods and celebrate underrepresented heroes and achievements.

For more information, please email programs@14beacon.org.

 

SPEAKER BIO

Linda Coombs is a citizen of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe on Martha's Vineyard and has lived in Mashpee for more than 40 years. She has worked for 49 years as a museum educator, spending 11 years at the Boston Children's Museum; 30 years in the Wampanoag Indigenous Program at Plimoth Plantation; and 9 years at the Aquinnah Cultural Center, one of the old homesteads in the Aquinnah community that was built by an Aquinnah Wampanoag man and is now a museum of Aquinnah Wampanoag history.

She has been an interpreter, artisan, and researcher; led workshops and teacher institutes; written children's stories and articles on various aspects of Wampanoag history and culture; and developed and worked on all aspects of a wide variety of exhibits.

Linda has worked extensively with her own Wampanoag communities as well as with the public. The goal of her work continues to be communicating accurate and appropriate representations of the history, cultures, and people of the Wampanoag and other Indigenous nations.