November casts spotlight on Native American stories

As theatergoers flock to cinemas to see director Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of New Yorker journalist David Grann’s 2017 book “Killers of The Flower Moon,” detailing the tragic murders of Osage Native Americans in Oklahoma, several area organizations in Connecticut and New York State are honoring the history and heritage of the Northeast’s Indigenous tribes.

At David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village, Conn.,  Schaghticoke Tribal Nation member Darlene Kascak, education director for The Institute for American Indian Studies Museum and Research Center in Washington, Conn., will share an interactive presentation of the history of Connecticut’s Indigenous people on Wednesday, Nov. 22 at 1 p.m. Per The Institute’s research, the state’s name Connecticut originated as an Algonkian word translated as “place of the long water” — Quinnetukut. Kascak’s Schaghticoke Tribe shares a long history with the state’s land, deeply entwined with the Housatonic River. The river, which runs through Western Connecticut and drains into the Long Island Sound, was also occupied by the Algonquins and originally by the Mohicans, an Eastern Algonquian Native American tribe that historically called Housatonic “usi-a-di-en-uk” or “beyond the mountain place.” The river was sometimes known as “Pootatuck” or “The Great River” until the 18th century.

Earlier in the month, on Sunday, Nov. 5, at 12:30 p.m., The Institute for American Indian Studies will hold a service in honor of Veterans Day, memorializing the military service of Native Americans throughout the history of the nation’s conflicts, both domestic and overseas. The event will be led by Gary Tinney of the Golden Hill Paugussett Indian Nation, a state-recognized Native American tribe with a reservation in Trumbull, Conn. He will be joined by the Yootây Singers Drum Group from Mashantucket, Conn. Culturally, drum circles have been traditionally used to gather participants in a ritual of healing, equity, and shared consciousness.

Also on Sunday, Nov. 5 at 2 p.m., the Spencertown Academy Arts Center in Spencertown, N.Y., will present “Still Here: A Survival Story of Indigenous People” led by activist and historian Heather Bruegl, a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and first-line descendant of The Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Tribe, who has presented her research at Bard and Vassar Colleges. She was a guest speaker at the first ever Indigenous People’s March in Washington, D.C., in 2019.

For those looking to explore further, there is The Forge Project, a Hudson Valley, N.Y., initiative founded in 2021 by Zach Feuer and Becky Gochman. Housed in a residence designed by Chinese contemporary artist Ai Weiwei built on the ancestral homelands of the Moh-He-Con-Nuck, The Forge Project is host to a rich collection of contemporary work by living Indigenous artists, including Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, a Cowichan/Syilx First Nations painter from Canada and Nicholas Galanin, a Tlingit and Unangax multi-disciplinary artist from Alaska.