Native names still dot the map of New England, but tens of thousands of Native names were lost or distorted by English colonists. In this fascinating presentation, Dr. Frank Waabu O'Brien, Abenaki, explored the history of Native placenames in southern New England and asks: whose place is this? He was joined by Rashad Young, Mashantucket Pequot, who teaches the Pequot language and is active in its recovery.
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Aquidneck, Natick…. Native names the map of New England, mingling with the imported English names the Puritans so eagerly called their new abodes. How many Native placenames names remain? How many were lost to colonization? Sociolinguist and placename expert Frank Waabu O’Brien, Abenaki and former president of the Aquidneck Indian Council, took a unique look at the history of Native placenames, their linguistic mangling by colonists and both their slow erasure and survival.
What was lost in this re-naming, as Shawmut (in fact, probably originally Mashauwomuk) became Boston and Hassanemesit became Grafton? Did erasing the original names serve to erase, culturally, the people? Did new names become a claim to the land itself? Should we be restoring the original names to their places? And how do we even know what those original names were?
Dr O’Brien examined the meaning of individual Algonquian words to reconstruct, where possible, the landscape- and culture-specific meanings hidden within many colonial versions of Native names placed on the New England landscape, and to rescue those long thought lost.
Placenames have the power to convey the living history of people and their languages. Despite the distortions of time and renaming, recognizing Native names reminds us that this was, and is, a Native place. Join us in this important and unique exploration of New England placenames.
Frank Waabu O’Brien
A member of the Abenaki Nation, Dr. O’Brien is the author of Understanding Indian Place Names of Southern New England and other books on Southern New England Native culture and language. He is the former president of the Aquidneck Indian Council, a disabled Vietnam veteran, and was a career civil servant and mathematician for the Department of Defense.
Rashad Young
Rashad Young is a member of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation. With a degree in computer science, he works in cultural resources for the Tribe and is active in teaching and recovering the Pequot language.