Plimoth Plantation to change name
Plimoth Plantation will change its name to better incorporate the history of the Native Americans who have long lived in the region.
A new moniker that will be “inclusive of the Indigenous history that is part of our educational mission” will be unveiled later this year, the living history museum said.
But this week, the museum unveiled a new logo that includes the word “Patuxet,” the Wampanoag name for the area, alongside Plimoth, which is the name given to the land by English colonists.
“Plimoth Plantation strives to create meaningful encounters with history built on thorough research about the Indigenous and European people who met along these shores of change,” the Plymouth museum wrote on its website. “Although our educational mission is inclusive of Indigenous history as well as European colonial history, the name of the Museum underscores only half of the story.”
Plimouth Plantation was founded in 1947 and features colonial re-enactors replicating life on a Puritan settlement.
Conversations about a name change have been going on for more than a year as the museum looks to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival this year.
“As our Nation faces a pandemic, an economic crisis, a reckoning with racial injustice and a highly-charged election year, there is no doubt that we have reached an inflection point in our history, one that raises necessary, and at times painful, discussions,” the museum said in its statement, adding, “We recognize that the commemoration of 400 years of shared history is complex and we embrace this moment as an opportunity for reflection and learning.”