Suffolk University and on YouTube
Smith Commons, 5th floor, 120 Tremont Street
Paula Peters, the founder of the Native American creative agency SmokeSygnals, will explore the deep relationship between environmental health, Indigenous knowledge, and cultural practice. Focusing on native materials such as bulrush and wampum, the talk will show how plants and shells are not simply resources, but living connections to land, water, craft, and identity. Peters will discuss how invasive species, development, and ecological imbalance threaten these traditions—and how restoration efforts to bring native plants back can help renew both the landscape and the cultural practices rooted within it.
This lecture is presented as a part of the Paul Revere Memorial Association’s 2026 Lowell Lecture Series, “Engrave, Paint, Sew, Weave: Craft and Craftspeople in Massachusetts.”
Paula Peters.
Paula Peters is the founder of the Native American creative agency
SmokeSygnals, an independent scholar and a politically, socially, and culturally active member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. As an independent scholar and writer of Native, and particularly Wampanoag history, she is a producer of the traveling exhibit
“Our” Story: 400 Years of Wampanoag History and is currently engaged in the Wampum Belt Project in search of the lost treasures of Metacom, including an effort to restore the art and tradition of wampum making among her people. She is the executive producer of the 2016 documentary film
Mashpee Nine and author of the companion book. She lives with her extended family in Mashpee and travels internationally to speak and educate on the true Wampanoag story. A graduate of Bridgewater State College, she was formerly a writer at the Cape Cod Times where she won numerous national awards for her journalism.
