This program was originally schdule Massachusetts soil holds two stories. One is celebrated every July 4th. The other, older, bloodier, and deliberately buried, is the one we need to understand first.
One hundred years before the American Revolution, King Philip’s War engulfed the Indigenous nations of southern New England,Wampanoag, Nipmuc, Narragansett and others, in one of the deadliest conflicts in North American history relative to population. When it ended, the colonial winners didn’t just claim the land, they also claimed the story. A narrative of inevitable destiny, of brave but doomed resistance, of a continent naturally passing from one civilization to the next. A story designed to be mourned, not questioned.
But what happens when you question it? In Wampanoag country, the war’s end was total: leaders killed, survivors enslaved. Or was it? What did colonists find when they arrived, and what did they dismantle? What was lost that we still don’t fully understand? The Indian wars didn’t end in New England; they migrated westward with the expanding nation. Was the logic of dispossession already present in the Pilgrims’ earliest encounters with the First Nations? Does Mary Rowlandson’s celebrated captivity narrative tell us as much about the making of American racial and gender identity as it does about war?
Hosted by journalist Phillip Martin, this conversation features Indigenous panelists from local tribal communities and asks what it means that we still carry this story, and what it costs us that we’ve never fully told the other one.
Brad Lopes.
Brad Lopes, Aquinnah Wampanoag educator, leads efforts to decolonize education and preserve Indigenous culture. As Education Manager for the Tribal Education Department and Outreach Coordinator for the Aquinnah Cultural Center, he works within his Nation’s homelands to uplift Wampanoag history and voices. A lifelong teacher and advocate, Brad also serves on boards dedicated to cultural preservation and environmental stewardship.
Mack Scott III.
Mack Scott III is a historian, educator, and member of the Narragansett Indian Tribe. His work focuses on the intersections of race and identity and employs agency as a lens through which to view and understand the voices, stories, and perspectives of traditionally marginalized peoples. He has published works illuminating the experiences of African American, Native American, and Latinx peoples. He is currently working on a project that traces the Narragansett nation from the pre-colonial to the modern era.
Christine DeLucia.
Christine DeLucia is Associate Professor of History at Williams College and author of Memory Lands: King Philip’s War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast, published by Yale University Press in 2018, which received the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians book award. She researches and teaches courses on early American history, Native American and Indigenous Studies, cartography, material culture, cross-cultural communications, memory and representations, and related topics. Her methodology embraces decolonizing approaches and community-engaged research, committed to hearing from and incorporating Indigenous perspectives on their own terms.
Phillip Martin.
Phillip Martin is a multi-award winning journalist and until recently, he was a senior investigative reporter for GBH News. Throughout his career, he has been awarded numerous fellowships, grants and tokens of recognition for his in-depth and thought-provoking reports — particularly about inequities and social justice at a local, national and global level. These awards include the
2023 Online Journalism Awards for social justice reporting on labor trafficking in Massachusetts, the
2022 National Edward R. Murrow Award for the multi-part GBH News series “
Unseen,” and National Edward R. Murrow awards for investigative reporting in
2019 and
2014. In February 2024, Martin was inducted into the
Massachusetts Broadcast Hall of Fame.
