As the United States commemorates the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary War, there is an opportunity to ask a different set of questions about 1776. What did independence mean to the Indigenous peoples who already belonged to these lands? What did sovereignty mean to people whose nations, communities, languages, relationships, and responsibilities existed long before the United States? And what does it mean to remember a war for independence from the perspective of the Indigenous people who fought it?

For Indigenous Revolutionary War veterans—particularly those who fought alongside the “Americans” in southern New England—the war was not an isolated event. It was part of a much longer history of resistance to settler colonialism and the hardships it imposed upon Nipmuc/k and other Indigenous peoples throughout the region which began with King Phillip’s War one hundred years earlier.

English colonists, soon to become “Americans,” spoke of freedom and liberty. Indigenous peoples were confronting a different question: how to survive, persist, and maintain sovereignty and self-determination in the face of a colonial society that was becoming a new nation. The goal was not to become part of that nation. It was to remain Indigenous -- to retain languages, cultures, ethics, diplomatic traditions, relationships to land, and connections to one another. To preserve the identities and responsibilities of Indigenous nations that existed long before the United States.

Pamela Ellis is an historian of the Natick Nipmuc People, Board Member of the Nipmuc Community Land Project, and an advocate for aboriginal rights.

This event is FREE and open to the public. Please click here to register on Eventbrite.