Stolen Relations: uncovering enslaved Native people's untold stories

Join the team at the heart of a unique project and website revealing the lives of thousands of enslaved Indigenous people.

From the earliest moments of colonization, Native peoples experienced the loss of community members through abduction, enslavement, indenture, servitude, and other means. Millions of Indigenous people in the Americas were stolen in this way, and yet we are only now beginning to understand the scale of this history and the ways Native peoples resisted and survived.

To help shed greater light on this history, the groundbreaking project Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas is recovering the history and stories of Indigenous individuals who were enslaved in North America and the Caribbean between 1492 and 1900. This presentation will show you how to use this groundbreaking website to research the lives of people who lived all over New England, across the Americas and beyond.

The result of a collaboration between researchers at Brown University and a dozen regional Native nations, at the core of the project is a database that currently contains nearly 8,000 records that allow users of the site to learn more about the history of Native slavery and trace the stories of enslaved Indigenous people that would otherwise be nearly impossible to access.

While these records are a small sample from the estimated five million Indigenous individuals who were enslaved during this period, the data set provides a rich array of archival sources that give, at times, surprisingly intimate details about kinship connections and life experiences.

Tribal representatives have been involved at every stage of development and have shaped everything from the name of the project to the presentation of people. The website also points people to the present by showcasing contemporary community interviews and perspectives, artwork, music, and poetry.

This event will feature presentations from some of the members of the core Stolen Relations team on the meaning of this history for tribal communities. Presenters include Linford Fisher (project PI and associate professor of history at Brown University), Cheryll Toney Holley (Hassanamisco Nipmuc, Sonksq), Paula Peters (Mashpee Wampanoag, journalist and community organizer), and Lorén Spears (Narragansett, director of the Tomaquag Museum).  

www.stolenrelations.org

Linford D. Fisher is an associate professor of history at Brown University. He is the author of Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in US History (2026), The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America (2012), the co-author of Decoding Roger Williams: The Lost Essay of Rhode Island’s Founding Father (2014), and the co-editor of Reading Roger Williams: Rogue Puritans, Indigenous Nations, and the Founding of America – A Documentary History (2024), as well as more than a dozen articles and chapters. Fisher is the principal investigator of a digital project entitled Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas, a community-centered, tribal-collaborative project that seeks to broaden our understanding of Indigenous experiences of settler colonialism and its legacies through the lens of slavery and servitude. His most recent book, Stealing America, offers a panoramic view of Native American enslavement in English colonies in North America and the Caribbean and, later, in the United States, between Columbus and early 20th century.

As sonksq (female leader) of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc Band as well as a researcher, writer and speaker, Cheryll Toney Holley advocates for economic and social justice in all aspects of her community, including land-back opportunities, education and language reclamation. She is a co-founder and board member of the nonprofit Nipmuc Indian Development Corporation (NIDC) and a former director of the Hassanamisco Indian Museum, located on the tribe’s Hassanamesit reservation. For ten years she served on the Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs. Currently she is a member of the Commonwealth’s Environmental Justice Council and of the Worcester Black History Project. Holley has a BA in history and an honorary doctorate in public service from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the recipient of multiple awards including the Mass Humanities Governor’s Award. A veteran and a mom of four and grandmother of eight, she currently lives in Worcester, where generations of her family lived before her.

Paula Peters is a politically, socially and culturally active citizen of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. For more than a decade she worked as a journalist for the Cape Cod Times and is now co-owner of SmokeSygnals, a Native owned and operated creative production agency. As an independent scholar and writer of Native, and particularly Wampanoag history, she produced the traveling exhibit Our Story: 400 Years of Wampanoag History and The Wampum Belt Project documenting the art and tradition of wampum in the contemporary Wampanoag community. In 2020 she wrote the introduction to the 400th anniversary edition of William Bradford’s, Of Plimoth Plantation. Paula is also the executive producer of the 2016 documentary film Mashpee Nine and author of the companion book, a story of law enforcement abuse of power and cultural justice in the Wampanoag community in 1976. Paula lives with her husband and children in Mashpee, Massachusetts, the Wampanoag ancestral homeland.

Lorén M. Spears, enrolled Narragansett Tribal Nation citizen and executive director of Tomaquag Museum, holds a master’s in education and received a Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa in 2017, from the University of Rhode Island and Doctor of Education, honoris causa, from Roger Williams University in 2021. She is an author, artist and shares her cultural knowledge with the public through museum programs. She has contributed to a variety of publications such as Dawnland Voices, An Anthology of Indigenous Writing of New England; Through Our Eyes: An Indigenous View of Mashapaug Pond; From Slaves to Soldiers: The 1st Rhode Island Regiment in the American Revolution; and Repair: Sustainable Design Futures. Spears co-edited a new edition of A Key into the Language of America by Roger Williams; and recently co-authored “As We Have Always Done: Decolonizing the Tomaquag Museum’s Collections Management Policy" published in the Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archive Professionals. Under her leadership Tomaquag Museum received the Institute of Museums and Library Service's National Medal in 2016 and she has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors including induction into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 2025.

The Partnership of Historic Bostons is an all-volunteer organization. As always, our public history events are free. But to make events such as this one - as well as our Metcom's Resistance series, we need your help! Please donate now to support real history.

Image: Penny Gamble-Williams, Chappaquidick Tribe of the Wampanoag Nation, Guidance from the Ancestors, 2025. She writes that her painting shows "the yearning for a connection to the land...emphasiz[ing]interconnectedness with the natural world - trees, roots, leaves, animals, water, and the ancestral remains resting without our Mother Earth. This creation captures the essence of resilience and the spirit of those who bravely stood against enslavement and sought liberation. The wisdom and lessons inherited from the Ancestors remind us of our deep connection to every element of this planet and the vast universe. We are all related!"