Educators, tribes to collaborate on K-12 curriculum
HARTFORD — State educators are collaborating with Connecticut’s five Native American tribal nations in preparation for their under-told stories to become part of the kindergarten through 12th grade curriculum in the 2023-24 school year.
It’s not always a pretty, or easy-to-tell story about the Northeastern Woodland tribes whose centuries of culture, government and religion were forever changed by the arrival and expansion of Europeans in the 17th century. But ageappropriate courses are being developed for the optional teaching of courses with help from the Golden Hill Paugussett, Paucatuck Eastern Pequot, Mashantucket Pequot, Mohegan and Schaghticoke tribal nations.
On the final day of Native American History Month, Gov. Ned Lamont joined tribal representatives in a Wednesday news conference underscoring the goals of the program, which will make the tribes full partners in developing a 21st Century curriculum, including public portals
available for anyone interested in the little-known and sometimes-controversial history that for Europeans started in 1614, when Dutch trader Adriaen Block sailed up the “long tidal river” referred by local tribes as the Connecticut.
“Let’s tell it the way it was,” said Laughing Woman, a Mashantucket Pequot elder who led an opening prayer for an hour-long news conference in the State Office Building that included a drum group and questions from reporters that centered on the May, 1637 slaughter in Mystic of hundreds of Pequot tribal members including elderly, women and children by Europeans led by Capt. John Mason along with Narragansett, Mohawk and Mohegan allies. It led to the Treaty of Hartford, an ultimatum that divided up the former Pequot land.
“It’s going to be hurtful, but it is important to speak the truth and not dress it up,” she said. “We will never forget the atrocities and the genocide, which is still going on for Native American people. We have to be respectful of each other. We want to tell our own story, not what is already written down. This is a beginning, a new day.”
Wayne Reels, director of cultural resources for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and its museum, said that while there are many conflicts over history, the new curriculum will offer a chance for tribes to take part. “Our version of history is just our story, the way we see it,” he said. “We’re not looking for reparations. We’re not trying to cancel culture.”
While plans to remove a 3,000-pound statue of Mason from the third-floor exterior of the State Capitol were recently delayed by Republican leaders of the General Assembly and an advisory commission, there are no plans to remove a sculpted, ornamental frieze on the Capitol building that also depicts the Mystic battle. Reels believes that it can remain in place.
“It has two stories to it,” he said. “History has two sides to it. The only reparations we want from history is not repeat it. Nobody here is responsible for killing Pequots in the massacre, but if we go on canceling our culture and just ignoring it and not telling the truth about it, then you’re responsible. This is a great moment for us to work together, to look at history and say, well, this is our story.”
State Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, the co-chairwoman of the budget-writing legislative Appropriations Committee who led the effort to remove and relocate the Mason statue and who introduced the voluntary curriculum, said it’s about “finally teaching our true history,” while giving the tribes the respect they deserve. “It recognizes where we stand today and we will no longer silence the voices that were here first,” Osten said.
Beth Regan, vice chairwoman of the Mohegan Tribe Council of Elders, said that in her former job teaching history and social studies, she was able to persuade the town of Tolland to adopt some Native American units. “Now, with implementing native curriculum into our social studies curriculum, now all Connecticut students can learn about our roots through the voices of our people,” she said. “Not through the colonizers’ voice, but through the voices that have been left out to tell our true, tragic yet also wonderful history in many ways. Students want to learn about who we are.”
“It’s a new day,” Lamont said. “It was a long time coming. I’ve always appreciated the phrase that ‘we all came to America on different ships, but we’re all in the same boat.’ I love the spirit of what that means. We’re not going to understand what it is to be an American until we understand our history. And history didn’t start with the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1621. Every culture has its own story. Native Americans got here first, over the Bering Strait.”
Asked about the John Mason statue on the Capitol building, Lamont called the sculpture “incredibly offensive to at least one of our tribes — Native Americans — and we ought to take a hard look at that. The question is are they also learning moments or do they disqualify?”
Irene Parisi, the state Department of Education’s chief academic officer who hosted the event, said that there are already school districts that have adopted some units with the cooperation of their nearby tribal nations, and that the public will eventually have access to the curriculum as well through the CT Open Data portal. The Mohegan tribe has an educators project that is also available to the public.