Into the Circle, a public conversation series presented by the Ohketeau Cultural Center in partnership with the Museum of Science, invites audiences to a rare and intimate exchange between Larry Spotted Crow Mann, Founder and Executive Director of Ohketeau Cultural Center, and Mark Charles. A citizen of the Navajo Nation and an acclaimed author, speaker, and former independent candidate for President, Charles has dedicated his work to encouraging Americans to engage honestly with the history, assumptions, and enduring legacies of the nation’s founding. Together, Larry and Mark will explore the 250th anniversary of the United States through Indigenous perspectives, examining how history continues to shape our relationships to land, democracy, identity, and belonging, while inspiring meaningful dialogue about truth, healing, and our shared future.
Ohketeau’s Into the Circle series brings together Indigenous scholars, historians, and changemakers to deepen public understanding of the stories that have shaped Massachusetts and the nation from the American Revolution to the present day. More than a conversation, Into the Circle is an invitation to listen deeply, reflect openly, and imagine a future rooted in honesty, mutual respect, and shared understanding. This program is supported by a grant from Mass Humanities and presented as part of the Museum of Science’s Year of Revolutionary Science, a yearlong exploration of the scientific, civic, and cultural ideas that have shaped the United States since its founding.
Mark Charles.
Mark Charles is an author, public speaker, podcaster, and leading authority on the 15th-century Doctrine of Discovery and its ongoing impact on US history, faith, and culture. A dual citizen of the Navajo Nation and the United States, he is the son of a Dutch-American mother and a Navajo father, drawing on his dual heritage to forge a path of national conciliation across racial, gender, and class lines. He co-authored the award-winning book Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery and ran as an Independent candidate for U.S. President in 2020 on a platform to build a nation where “we the people” might actually mean all the people. Mark is currently writing his second book, Decolonizing Faith, and hosts the weekly podcast My Second Cup of Coffee, where he delivers paradigm-shifting insights on history, theology, and politics.
Larry Spotted Crow Mann.
Larry Spotted Crow Mann is an enrolled citizen of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc Tribe of Massachusetts and executive director of the Ohketeau Cultural Center. He is an award-winning writer, poet, cultural educator, Traditional Storyteller, tribal drummer and motivational speaker involving youth sobriety, cultural and environmental awareness. He has served as a board member of the Nipmuk Cultural Preservation, which is an organization set up to promote the cultural, social and spiritual needs of Nipmuc people as well as an educational resource of Native American studies. Mann also serves as a Review Committee Member, at The Native American Poets Project at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology.
He travels throughout the United States, Canada and parts of Europe to schools, colleges, pow wows and other organizations sharing the music, culture and history of Nipmuc people. He has also given lectures at universities throughout the United States on issues ranging from Native American Sovereignty to Identity.
