# Video: 'Earth Bound' Welcoming a New Artwork by Ramona Peters September 29, 2022 ![Ramona Peters holding and looking at a brown clay pot with white inlay gliphs](/sites/g/files/omnuum5526/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/hds2/files/ramona_peters_900x600_anthony_trujillo.jpg?itok=45-Wkuep) Artist and Mashpee Wampanoag tribal member Ramona Peters, whose Indigenous name is Nosapocket, sits in her Mashpee, Massachusetts home holding her latest original piece, an ahkuhq or cooking vessel titled “Earth Bound,” which will have a permanent home on display inside Harvard Divinity School’s Swartz Hall. The new artwork offers a “living Indigenous presence at HDS.” Photo by Anthony Trujillo On Monday, September 19, 2022, Harvard Divinity School and the Swartz Hall Art Committee celebrate the unveiling of "Earth Bound," an original creation by artist and Mashpee Wampanoag tribal member Ramona Peters. The ceremony included remarks by HDS Dean David N. Hempton, Peters, Mashpee Wampanoag Historic Preservation Officer David Weeden, and others. "Earth Bound," is an ahkuhq or cooking vessel, which will have a permanent home on display inside Harvard Divinity School’s Swartz Hall. The work was commissioned by HDS and the Swartz Hall Art Committee, with support from the Harvard Culture Lab Innovation Fund. Full Transcript: SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School. SPEAKER 2: Earthbound-- Welcoming a New Artwork by Ramona Peters. September 19, 2022. DAVID HEMPTON: Good afternoon, everyone. It's with great pleasure that I welcome you today to celebrate the permanent installation of a new artwork, Earthbound, created especially for Swartz Hall. So thank you for joining me in welcoming this artwork to the community and in honoring its creator, Wampanoag artist, elder, longtime friend of Harvard Divinity School, Ramona Peters, also known by her Wampanoag name, Nosapocket. So welcome. It's really great to have you here. This event marks the convergence of two streams, both crucial to the educational aspirations of our school, the renovation of Swartz Hall as home to a multi-religious divinity school in the 21st century and the necessity to reckon with the university's past to inform who we will become as a multi-religious school. These streams met in the Swartz Hall Art Committee's commission to Ramona Peters to create an artwork that would bring Indigenous presence to the visual environment of HDS. Since 2010 Ramona has traveled repeatedly from her home on Cape Cod to the Divinity School to teach our students, to greet guest speakers, and perhaps most memorably, to welcome the new class at the convocation of 2019. With this installation, we hope to extend Ramona's impact as an educator beyond the students with whom she has direct contact to include all who learn, teach, and work and visit Swartz Hall. We're proud to have renamed our central building Swartz Hall for a contemporary woman artist, Susan Swartz, who took the creative possibilities for this renovation to heart. And we're grateful to the Harvard Culture Lab Innovation Fund for support of this project. A few months after Ramona accepted the commission, the Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery released its report detailing Harvard's abuse of Indigenous people as well as African-Americans in our journey from Puritan college to global university. The report finds that quote, "Slavery in New England began with the enslavement of Native Americans, and Harvard leaders and staff members enslaved and sold Indigenous people as well as people of African descent." its recommendations counsel that going forward, Harvard should quote, "honor, engage, and support native communities." The Divinity School will spend the coming year reading this report as a community. Our Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, led by Dean Melissa Bartholomew, plans a series of conversations using the report as an opening towards racial justice and we hope a step toward healing. So I hope you will join me at the first of these events on October 18. The report does not address Harvard's founding religious mission, a key concern for a multi-religious divinity school. The General Court of Massachusetts established Harvard College in 1636 to train a learned ministry both to provide leadership for English congregations and also, more ominously, to convert Indigenous nations from their own traditions to Christian faith. Ironically, Harvard's support for spreading Christianity to Native nations would far outlast its commitment to Puritan theology by nearly 200 years. The last expenditure of Harvard funds we knew of intended to support Christianity among Native Americans took place in 2007. We know this because in response to The Legacy of Slavery report, we have initiated a research project on an endowment that, since 2010, benefits the Divinity School, the Daniel Williams Fund. Over this past summer, doctoral student Anthony Trujillo conducted research on behalf of Harvard Divinity School into the use of the Daniel Williams Fund. Currently it provides scholarships to Native American students studying some aspect of Christianity at HDS. Multiple Indigenous students have received tuition support from the fund, but this was not always how the fund was used. In past centuries, the Daniel Williams fund gave Harvard a direct role in ordering, or more precisely disordering, the lives and livelihoods of multiple Indigenous nations, with its best-documented impact felt at Mashpee. The Welsh clergyman Daniel Williams-- who also and as well funded the Dr. Williams Library in London-- the Welsh clergyman Daniel Williams left an endowment to Harvard in 1711 to quote, "be paid yearly to the College of Cambridge in New England or such as are usually employed to manage the blessed work of converting the poor Indians there." Harvard used this money to support Christian missionaries who functioned not just as ministers, but also as overseers to the praying towns of Native Americans, who were viewed as legal miners by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Williams' gift was consistent with the university's founding mission. The 1650 Charter dedicated the university, quote, "to the education of the English and Indian youth of this country in knowledge and godliness." The Williams Fund was only one of multiple substantial gifts intended for the education of Indian youth, even though the benefits of that support accrued mainly to non-native students. This pattern would repeat itself at Mashpee in the 19th century, when Harvard used the fund to appoint as minister at Mashpee the Reverend Phineas Fish, who denied Wampanoags access to the meetinghouse built for their use more than 150 years earlier. And Fish did not stop there. He exploited natural resources belonging to the tribe for his own benefit, causing debt leading to land loss and other detriments. Anthony Trujillo's research, as well as his conversations with tribal historian David Weedon, from whom we will hear shortly, suggest a persistent pattern in Harvard's relationship with the Mashpee tribe in particular and with Native nations in general. By the end of the 17th century, Harvard abandoned the charter's mandate to educate English and Indian youth together at Harvard College. Instead, it continued educating English students in Cambridge and used the Williams Fund to send missionaries to teach a circumscribed curriculum intended to undermine Indigenous sovereignty. By contrast, what stands out in the history of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe is its continued pursuit of self-government and its concerted efforts to maintain its land base over a 400-year history of colonization. These themes are evident, for example, in the tribe's 1833 appeal to the Harvard Corporation to select the minister supported by the Daniel Williams Fund. Instead of the predatory congregationalist Phineas Fish, they asked that Harvard appoint their adopted tribal member, the Pequot Methodist minister William Apess, an outspoken advocate for Wampanoag self-governance. When recent Harvard graduate Phineas Finn began his disastrous tenure among the Wampanoags, the president of the university was John Thornton Kirkland, the same president responsible for the founding of HDS as the university's second professional school in 1816. Kirkland, who served on the Divinity School faculty from its inception, came from a long line of missionaries to Native Americans. He spent the summer before his appointment as tutor at Harvard, preaching with his father among the Oneidas. So when President Kirkland approved the use of Harvard's funds to support Phineas Fish, he was very well aware of the roles of missionaries in Native communities. He was most likely aware that Fish, by all evidence provided by the Mashpee community, was the very opposite of the ministers he proposed to train at the new Divinity School, ministers who he hoped would learn, quote, "not to transact our business and receive a compensation, but to be our friend, our guide, an intimate in our families, tend to our houses and affliction, and to be able to give us light, admonition, and consolation in suffering." This is precisely what Mashpee leaders were asking for in petitioning the Harvard Corporation to support William Apess. In 1833, the President and Secretary of the Mashpee Tribal Council, Ebenezer Attaquin and Israel Amos, sent this request to Kirkland's succesor, Harvard president Josiah Quincy. Quote, "To our white brethren at Harvard College and trustees of the Williams Fund that is under the care of that body, who we understand by means of that fund have placed among us the Reverend Phineas Fish, we thought it very likely that you would like to know if we as a people respected his person and labors and whether the money was benefiting the Indians or not. We think it's our duty to let you know all about it, and we do say as the voice of one with but very few exceptions, that we as a tribe for a long time have had no desire to hear Mr. Fish preach and do say sincerely that we as a body wish to have him discharged." This would not be the last time Mashpee representatives would petition Harvard for the use of the Williams Fund to benefit their community. More than a century later, Ramona Peter's great grandmother, Mabel Avant, led another effort by the Mashpee tribe to maintain their authority within what had become a vital space, the Old Indian Meetinghouse. The records we have located thus far do not indicate a single instance in which Harvard acceded to direct requests about the use of the Williams Fund. In light of Harvard's history of disregard for its Indigenous neighbors, Ramona Peters vessel Earthbound makes visible a critical Indigenous presence which for too long has been ignored. We're here today to welcome Earthbound as a community. We're here to acknowledge that the Indigenous insights infused into its body, insights into how to relate with this Indigenous place and with Indigenous nations here and beyond, are imperative for our educational mission. As Ramona has explained, the clay composing Earthbound witnessed nearly 400 years of Harvard's legacy of slavery and abuse, but has also witnessed thousands of years of Indigenous life, joy, creativity, and care for this land, both before and after Colonial incursions. Ramona, Harvard Divinity School is fortunate to have you as a partner in broadening and deepening our aspiration to become a multireligious institution. We are grateful for all that you have given to our school, and especially for giving us so much of yourself with this beautiful artwork. Because of your contributions over the past dozen years and because of the labors of generations of Indigenous thinkers and educators, we arrive at this very special moment. So let me now give you a brief preview of the program we have assembled to welcome Earthbound into our midst and to begin to benefit from its presence here. We begin with welcomes from Dean Steph Gauchel from the HDS Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, as well as from Professor Joseph Gone, Faculty Director of the Harvard University Native American Program. We will then be privileged to hear from David Weeden, the Cultural Preservation Officer and Council Member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe. I'll then call on my colleague Ann Braude, who has shepherded this commission every step of the way, to guide us through this unveiling. Anthony Trujillo, who spoke at length with Ramona about the artwork and wrote the note that appears in the case, will read the note, which is a small artwork in itself. Finally, we will have a chance to hear from Ramona directly about Earthbound and its transition to Swartz Hall. After that, two students, one current and one just graduated, will make presentations. The program will close with an honor song from Justin Beatty, a founding member of the Urban Thunder drum group and a musical and visual artist of the Ojibwe Saponi and African-American descent. We will then proceed outside for a feast catered by Wampanoag chef Sherry Pocknett. We probably will stay inside. Irish weather affects everything. So I now ask my colleagues who will offer a welcomes to please join me at the podium. Thank you so much. Thank you. \[APPLAUSE\] STEPH GAUCHEL: Hello. Welcome, everyone. My name's Steph Gauchel. I'm the Assistant Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging here at HDS. I use he or they pronouns, and I am a proud Muskogee Creek descendant. My words of welcome on behalf of our office came to me through a form of a letter which I'll now offer. Dear Elder Peters, it is so wonderful to have you back on campus. I had the honor of meeting you on one of your visits to Professor Braude's class about five years ago. It is an honor to be in your presence again today and to be a part of welcoming Earthbound. A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of Professor Braude sharing a picture of you with Earthbound, as well as sharing the description of Earthbound that Anthony Trujillo wrote from his conversations with you. The picture and description overwhelmed me with emotion. Even as I stand here today with these written words, I find it hard to articulate how Earthbound makes me feel, what it means to have Earthbound with us on campus, what it means to honor my and our collective responsibility and commitment to care for and to be with Earthbound as you entrust Earthbound with us. I feel the weight of this gift and this privilege and responsibility even more so as I mourn, grieve, and rage for the stolen artifacts and ancestors that exist unsettled right next to us every day on this campus. I feel overwhelmed by these emotions and what I see in Earthbound in your tender care and artistic molding. But even more so, what I most feel is connected. I feel connected to Earthbound, to you, to every Native person here today, and to every Native person who has stood on and stewarded this land. As a white-passing transracial adoptee, my knowing and connection to my Muscogee Creek biological father, my ancestors, and my culture were severed. I've struggled my whole life to feel connected, to feel a right to my history, my roots, my nativeness. In this moment and in this responsibility and honor, I feel connected as a Native person and less alone on HDS's campus. What I feel and see woven in Earthbound is the many ways in which colonization, historically and currently, continues to try and sever us from our lands, cultures, language, kin, and even one another. But bigger than this, what I see in Earthbound, through your artistry, is generation after generation of Native peoples' resistance resilience, patience, and resourcefulness in the face of Colonial violence. When I look at Earthbound, I am reminded of my own process of grieving and healing, and I feel connected to collective grieving and healing. We all have our pain and we all have our joy. Colonization has and continues to touch us all, no matter how close or how far removed we are from our culture history and kin. But we are still here, and we are all connected. Your art and artistry are precious gift to our campus, and I am full of deep gratitude. I'm grateful to you, and I am grateful to have Earthbound in our community. \[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH\]. Thank you. \[APPLAUSE\] JOSEPH GONE: Good evening and welcome. It falls to me to offer some remarks as the Faculty Director of the Harvard University Native American Program. My name is Joseph Gone. I'm a psychologist by training. I'm a Professor of Anthropology in the FAS and a Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine in the medical school. I'm also an enrolled member of the Aaniiih Gros Ventre Tribal Nation, Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana. And I've been in this role as Faculty Director for about three years now. And part of my responsibility falls to helping to curate and tend, through our able and eloquent staff, the Harvard University Native American community, of which tonight we are glad to welcome one more person, along with those of you who are relatives of this person who will be joining us. Briefly, Harvard University Native American Program is an interfaculty initiative. We really have a four-fold mission, which is important to keep in mind. The first is education, of course, to cultivate the development, achievement, and impact of American Indian, Alaskan, Native, Native Hawaiian, and other Indigenous students to further the goals of the Harvard Charter of 1650 which Dean Hempton mentioned, which committed the President and Fellows of Harvard College to quote, "the education of the English and Indian youth of this country." Besides education, our second mission is to produce and support community, really to create and nurture a thriving community for Native American Indigenous people and their allies and supporters on campus. Beyond this, we are committed to scholarship to promote university-wide engagement with Native American and Indigenous issues in support of Indigenous self-determination through relevant research, teaching, partnership, and exchange. And finally, we promote inclusion, which is to expand the presence, visibility, and impact of persons of Native American and Indigenous affiliation or descent on campus and in a wide variety of roles. Now in Indian country, we recognize lots of persons who are not actually human. And my understanding tonight is that the individual we are welcoming, Earthbound, Is also a person and will therefore become a member of the Harvard University Native American community. And so the installation of this pot is very, very important for the work that we do in trying to ensure that Harvard does right by its charter, and by the commitment in the recent Harvard Legacy of Slavery report and recommendation number 5 to begin that issue of repair and reconciliation with Native peoples in the way that Dean Hempton talked about. And Dean Hempton, if I can just say that was a very moving opening. I'm so grateful for those words coming from a Dean at Harvard University. I thank you for those words. HUNAP is also very interested in undertaking and advancing diplomacy with our surrounding tribal nations, particularly in the New England region and in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and with tribal members. And so with that in mind, I'm very delighted to welcome you all here and to be present for this really historic installation of our newest member of the Harvard University Native American community. Thank you. \[APPLAUSE\] DAVID HEMPTON: Thanks, Steph and Joe, very much, for those wonderful words. It's now my great pleasure to introduce David Weeden, who has traveled here from Mashpee to be with us today to help us with a Wampanoag perspective on Earthbound's location, relocation from Mashpee to Swartz Hall. David was raised in a traditional family grounded in Wampanoag cultural beliefs and practices. In addition to serving as Historic Preservation Officer and member of the Tribal Council, David sits on the town of Mashpee Board of Selectmen, serves on the town's Planning Board, and is a Native American representative on the Cape Cod Commission. David, let me extend a very warm welcome to Harvard Divinity School. Thank you so much for being with us today. \[APPLAUSE\] DAVID WEEDEN: \[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH\] Hello, everyone. My name is \[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH\], One Who Walks Alone. Thank you for having me. I am Mashpee Wampanoag. I'm of this land. And thank you, Dean Hempton, and also Assistant Deans Gauchel and Faculty Director Gone for inviting me here to participate in this remarkable presentation and the receiving of this work. I'd like to start off with a prayer in our language, as we are here on Native American lands and I feel it important to start with prayer. This is something that we do in our culture everywhere across Indian country. So at this time, \[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH\]. Creator and ancestors, I thank you for all things. I thank you for the sky. I thank you for the stars. I thank you for the land. I thank you for the rivers. I thank you for the oceans. I thank you for all creatures. I thank you for all my relations. Help us to see only what is good. Help us to do only what is right. I am honored to be here, as I said. Harvard's played a critical role throughout the history. In order to teach the young people and the young minds and influence those minds, we should take a good hard look at the past and learn from everything that's taken place in order to set the tone and reconcile with the wrongs that have been done. Harvard is still today a prominent institution that influences many people that move on to federal policymaking and different aspects of the federal government, major decision makers that affect all of Indian country. And throughout that history, their role in that history has been very significant, and it's not always been favorable to how it's affected the Native Americans within the Commonwealth and beyond. And so at this time, I'd like to give a brief background on the relationship with Mashpee and kind of set the tone in and from a Mashpee perspective. Prior to colonization and the arrival of the Mayflower in 1614, there was a great play. People don't realize that we had been interacting with Europeans for over 100 years. Folks were coming over here and they were trading with natives, sometimes capturing natives, taking them back to Europe and beyond and selling them off into slavery. This set the tone for how we interact with newcomers. And some tribes welcomed them and traded with them with hesitation. Other tribes were leery of them and wanted to stay away. It wasn't always pleasant, the effects of interacting with these people. In 1614-1616 time period, there was a great plague that came through as a result of the trade. And in that, it wiped out nearly 2/3 of the Wampanoag population. Some estimates suggest that the population at the time was anywhere between 60,000 and 75,000 people. Now jump forward to when the Mayflower arrived. We didn't have the military might, after the effects of the plagues, to actually mount an opposition and drive them out like many would expect we would have done. So we nurtured a relationship with them after some hesitation and watching them, and observing how they arrived and the state of affairs they were in. Winter was coming on. They had women and children with them. So we looked upon them with sympathy. But then that wasn't reciprocated as the years went on. So in 1620, after the arrival of the Pilgrims, in 1685 there was a title and a deed that was established as a result of the local chiefs acknowledging that some of the local tribes within the Mashpee area and South Sea Indians took interest in learning and listening to the propagation of gospel that was being imposed upon us. And so they set aside lands and boundaries to establish a town or plantation at the time of praying Indians. That original title and deed was 50 square miles that encompassed what's now Walkway and parts of Cotuit Santuit up to Spectacle Pond and such north of Mashpee into Sandwich. It was much larger footprint than what is today. Some land purchases took place over that time period. And in 1685, the original title and terms of the deed were ratified through the Colonial Court, put to paper by Richard Born, and then 100 years later, ratified through the Colonial Court, again through a title and deed, a legal mechanism. And that established 25 square miles set aside for the Mashpee proprietors, that being the tribal membership. And so many of the towns around us were established through that same process, through the Colonial Courts or of a corporate charter corporation. The Colony and Mass Bay was another Colonial Charter. They were corporations. They weren't formal governments. But then they were continually trying to get at the land. In 1746, there were guardians appointed. The guardians were oppressive. That's been consistent through our history. Every time they impose and take away our self-governance, they impose authorities that don't work in our best favor. And Mashpee was trying to listen to the gospel and learn some of their ways. But it was a hybrid. We didn't just turn a blind eye to our original teachings. It was an approach where up until the 1850s, half of the homes in Mashpee were still wigwams. They weren't coming to Mashpee and building stick frame construction. So alternative to what a lot of folks say is, you adopted Christianity, so you assimilated. That's not necessarily the case. We didn't just turn it back on our original teachings. And so the oppression continued in the form of indebtedness, not treating people fairly, stripping away your self-governance, limiting your self-governance. And as someone said earlier, they wouldn't even allow us into our own meeting house that was established in 1684. That building still stands, I might add, and is on the National Register as a historic property, as well as our tribal museum. And we are very proud of that because it's a part of our history. And so our fight for self-governance is one of our longest standing fights. Many of the issues that we have been fighting for throughout our history, they're still the same issues today. We're always been trying to save the land. We rely on the land. When I say \[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH\], it means we are of this land. And so those things have carried on. The culture, the original teachings have carried on. And it's an honor for me to be here and be a part of this because Ramona is somebody that I've looked up to my whole life. And I hope I don't get all emotional. But some of my oldest memories, when I say I was raised in a traditional family, there was only a few core people-- and it's always been that way, that you have your traditionalists, and then you have your people that are kind of more willing to accept change. And so the tribe is divided. And my family took us serious to take us around to participate in ceremony and all the other kind of things that tried to keep the culture going. And Ramona was always there, a part of that. In our way, we consider some folks warriors. You're not necessarily a man to be a warrior. And Ramona has always been a warrior woman. And she's dedicated her life to preserving-- and I don't think even the whole tribe understands everything she's done. You know, she's dedicated her life to preserving land, learning about the history, the culture, perpetuating, that passing. On she told me once that when we learn things, that knowledge isn't ours. We shouldn't hold the knowledge hostage. It's actually inconsistent with our cultural teachings. You have to pass that on and perpetuate it. It's not yours to hold hostage, and so you have an obligation to share it. And that's the way our way works, is through oral history and interaction between the young and the old. And I'm so thankful for all the things that Ramona has taught me because they'll stick with me and they influence every decision. I'm no longer on the planning board. I was started on the planning board, but I have ascended to, actually, the Chair of the Mashpee Select Board currently. And it wasn't an easy fight. I had to fight for that position as well because even in this day and age, you're not afforded the same opportunities as everyone else takes for granted. It took us over 31 years to get federal recognition. In the 1830s they took away some of the self-governance. We sent a delegation over to England to speak with the King. And even prior to that, in 1736, the King allotted us limited self-governance. And then we ended up deciding to fight in the Revolutionary War. And when they came around to solicit people to fight in the Revolutionary War, they made the same promises to us that everyone else that inspired everyone else to fight for. And civil liberties, everything that you find in the Constitution. And still to this day, those same things haven't been afforded to us. We're still waiting for equal justice under the law. We're still waiting for all the other things, to be treated fairly in the end, like human beings, the stewards and people that have always been the original inhabitants of this land. And so we fought for federal recognition because in 1976, we sued on behalf of the land because when they converted the town over from an Indian district to a township against the original terms of the deed, the deed said that the land would be held in perpetuity for the proprietors, never to be alienated, taxed or alienated unless there was a vote specifically for that issue and it required a unanimous decision. So in 1870, the state ended p-- prior to that, they had done some allotments. They made us citizens and allotted all the land so it wasn't common land, hoping that we would become productive agrarian in nature and develop a local economy through agriculture as everyone else was doing. And so the system that they had envisioned with this assimilation was, as an Indian district, it started out as a plantation. As you assimilated and learned their ways of governance, you would become an Indian district. And then eventually, you would become a municipality unlike any other, and you would be fully assimilated. That never really took because the cultures, there's still inconsistencies between the two, and they still carry on to this day. We don't aspire to be wealthy. We don't have the same value systems. And those things will always prevent full assimilation as long as we continue to teach our ways to the next generation. So in that fight, we fought for the land of Mashpee because we saw aggressive development coming and changing our towns. And our Chiefs at the time were saying to the local politicians, like, you can't continue on this path. You're going to destroy everything that's beautiful here, everything that we've relied on for so long. The fish will go away. You won't be able to drink the waters. And all that stuff's come to be true now in my lifetime, and I'm 50. So now I sit on the board because those issues are still significant. We still need to speak up for those things that don't have voices. Our ponds are sick. Our bays are sick. Our reports are telling us, the reports from UMass Dartmouth are telling us that the rivers are slowly dying, that the bays are becoming eutrophic. And we have the Mashpee Lake's getting cyanobacteria in June, one of the deepest lakes and largest lakes on the Cape. And that shouldn't be if it's a healthy environment. But when it's sick, then every stressor is just compounding a problem. And a lot of it, most of it's attributed to over development and lack of infrastructure. And still yet they want to continue to build. And so when I ask you to influence the minds and share our history, it's so that things can change. And we can have something to look forward, something to leave in a positive light to our future generations. All that we appreciated growing up in Mashpee, we want to save those things, and the environment is a key part of that. And it took us the 31 years to get federal recognize. And then they tried to take it away. So still to this day, we're not receiving equal justice under the law. And now we fight for the ability to be able to grow our tribal government so we can provide homes. We're challenged by the high cost of living on the Cape. Also the taxation, the bureaucracy. The taxes continue to go up people. For a long time were land rich and money poor. Now we're not so land rich anymore. We've lost a lot of the land to taxes and things like that. Families have had to sell it off because they can't afford the taxes. So it's either sell it or lose it. And so now it's challenging our communal structure. Without the communal structure, how do you perpetuate oral history, tradition, culture, language without the physical presence of everyone being there in the community? So now it threatens our existence, our ability for people to live there in the homelands that we've called home for thousands and thousands of years. Our oral histories inform us that we've been there prior to the last Ice Age. And yet we're still being challenged on remaining there people are moving away at high rates because they can't afford to live there. And our sister tribe over on the island, Nokona. It's even worse for them over on the island as far as people can't afford to live there. So these are some of the things that we're currently going through. And you know, your young minds-- there was a gentleman that advocated for Mashpee. We always wrote petitions. We were always fighting. And we learned. We were observing everything that was going on around us in the world. And we referenced in some of the early petitions what was going on in Georgia with the cases down there and the Cherokees versus McIntosh, and we referenced that in 1795 Petition to the General Legislature. We referenced the Non-Intercourse Act that was supposed to apply. We recognized the fact that Massachusetts was malfeasant in their over assertion of authority. We recognized that the federal government was nonfeasant in their lack of applying the Non-Intercourse to protecting us. And we've recognized those things. We're still considered domestic dependents, treated as wards, like children that are incapable of doing for themselves. And so we have high expectations of that trust responsibility, yet it's never fulfilled in the spirit of the law. And so these are the things that continue to make me fight. I watched and observed. We're mimics, as Indian people. We watch the people around us, the leaders. We're always watching. The young ones always coming up behind us and watching. So we have to carry ourselves in a good way and fight for the things that arr-- the good fight, always do the good fight. And Ramona has been a huge inspiration for me, always maintaining herself in a positive light. And when it's time to speak up, she's right there on the front lines. And as long as you do that, then Creator will support you and the people will get behind you. But I want to thank you, Ramona, for everything you've ever done and all that you shared with me. That's more valuable to me than anything else. And I just want you to know that you are very truly appreciated by all of us, even when it's not said. Thank you. \[APPLAUSE\] ANN BRAUDE: Thank you so much for those words, David. A teacher's greatest moment is to see their student excel, and I know you've made Ramona very proud tonight, as well as informing us of what we really need to know as a community to be able to move forward. I'm Ann Braude, and I'm very happy to have the duty tonight to finally introduce Ramona Peters and the unveiling of Earthbound. I first met Ramona, I think, 13 or 14 years ago when I started contemplating teaching a course built around Indigenous guest speakers. Marcus Briggs Cloud, then a student, suggested that I consult Ramona. I drove out to Mashpee to ask her advice, and she was encouraging and agreed to participate. And since then, she has spoken every time this course has been offered, making a deep impression on a generation of Divinity School students. Invariably no matter what great scholars and wonderful elders I bring into the classroom, students comment on Ramona's visits more than any other speaker. They find a touchstone in her words and her presence, not only for the course and their studies at HDS, but also for much beyond the classroom. Over the years of class visits, Ramona has ranged broadly over her experience growing up in Mashpee, her travels as a student, activist, and educator, her travels around the world, and about the many ways she has served her tribe-- she's ranged over millennia of Wampanoag history-- as well as her thoughts about the future. She has spoken about responding to warrior alerts in the 1970s, when various Northeast tribes made urgent calls for defense when they were threatened with physical violence. She's talked about the long process of reviving the ancient Wampanoag art of pottery making and other traditions. She's spoken about her duties as cultural preservation officer before David succeeded her, and about her roles in repatriation with universities and governments. But she has said very little, perhaps nothing, about her accomplishments of the kind that usually go into the introduction of an artist on the day of an installation of a new work. She has said nothing about the museums and private collections on multiple continents that hold her work, including the Plimoth Patuxet Museum and the Box Museum in Plymouth, England, or the many schools where she has offered instruction in ceramic art. In our very first conversation-- I don't know if you remember this-- when I came to Mashpee, Ramona held a small clay pot in her hands to which she occasionally applied sandpaper. Whenever she spoke at HDS, Ramona also held something in her hands, and her hands were always moving. It was a different object every time, usually something from the natural world. Sometimes she used the object to frame or amplify her remarks. Sometimes she said little about it. Her connection with the object seemed to keep her grounded while she spoke in the somewhat alien environment of a Harvard classroom. It also served as a non-verbal means of communication, engaging students through multiple sensory pathways. Now as those of you who know me know, during my years at the Divinity School, I have had a not-so-secret agenda of making incremental changes in to our visual environment so that a diversity of students, faculty, and staff would feel included in our space, would be able to breathe in this space, as Melissa is always reminding us to do, whether by adding art, by diversifying our portrait collection, or by displaying images evoking the school's 200-year aspiration to expand the category of religion toward inclusivity. The opportunity to invite Ramona Peters to create a permanent Indigenous presence inside Swartz Hall through her ceramic art feels like a culmination of these efforts. And the opportunity now to unveil that work fills me with gratitude and with a sense of peace I'm not sure I've ever felt inside a Harvard building. But first, a lot had to happen, Bob, the first slide, please. It took the work of dozens and dozens of people listed on the back of your program to make this all come to fruition. I thank each and every one of you, and I apologize to those who I'm sure I forgot to include on the list. We are not going to be able to all move outside into the foyer for the unveiling. There's too many of us. So I want to tell you just a little bit about what is going to happen on the case before we actually unveil Earthbound. The label on the case includes a QR code that will enable viewers to hear and see the living artist talking about the creation of Earthbound when they stand before it. Our doctoral student, Anthony Trujillo, who comes from a family of potters in the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, interviewed Ramona for hours about her work, and she lived to tell the tale. He and Bob Deveau, who's in the back of the room, edited the footage to create several salient short clips that will be available on an HDS website accessible through this QR code. And thanks to all who whipped that into existence. And Anthony also wrote the note that appears on the case, which he will read as soon as we have the unveiling. So what I want to do right now is first I'm going to play for you the first of the short clips that will be accessible on the case to give you a sense of what viewers will see and hear. \[BEGIN VIDEO PLAYBACK\] \- We're first light people. We go the first light. And there is the teaching about seeing the first light of the day is like a new thought of the Creator. And so for us to tune in to the Creator to see if we can hear and understand a new thought. So it's an ever evolving Creator. It's not-- so it keeps us very present. And it also keeps the brain fresh to-- the spirit's always open. And we know that those same new thoughts are brightening and they're going to grow across the land. So sometimes we would add prayers to it so it goes off and affects, in a good way, to the rest of the continent or the world, for that matter. \- Can you tell me a little bit about your decision to accept the commission for this piece that that's going to be in the Divinity School? \- Well, when I was approached about the potential for the commission, it was described to me as a desire to have an Indigenous presence in the School in the Swartz Hall in particular. And yeah, I agreed that yeah, there's should be an Indigenous presence there. I have known other-- that there are other Native people that have gone to school there. Sometimes I would go and help walk them in to the school, to the area, really, because I know what it's like to be away from home, away from your elders, and the children and land. So yeah, I thought, OK, this could be there. That's pretty much what made the decision for me, as well as a respect for Indigenous spirituality and spiritual practices. Not that the piece of pottery, per se, is that, but that in a school that is dedicated to religious studies, I thought, sure, include us as well. \[END PLAYBACK\] ANN BRAUDE: So that's just a taste and just a little sample. So I'm now going to ask the students who are going to unveil the work to come forward, Tessa Foust, Zia Polis, and Sterling Sanchez, if you would come up. And I'm going to ask Rebecca Mendoza Nunziato to say a few words before the unveiling. REBECCA MENDOZA NUNZIATO: Hi, everyone. My name is Rebecca. I'm a third year Master of Divinity student. I study Indigenous and Mesoamerican rituals and relationships. I'm Chicana, the child and granddaughter of Mexican farmworkers who are Indigenous to what is now the US Mexico borderlands. And I'll just take two minutes before we finally unveil our new friend. I know I am not only speaking for myself when I acknowledge that it's very hard to be here at Harvard a lot of the time. And yet we are working at the edges and with our ancestors and with our elders and community members both here and far to transform, to become re-educated and reconnected in ways that institutions like this often cannot hold. But we persist at the margins and we fight, as David had explained to us as well. And we do so encouraged by people like Ramona Peters, held by the Earth, supported by animal and plant relatives, celestial bodies, and more than human forces. In addition to speaking from my own perspective with my lineage, and ancestors, I join alongside and in solidarity with Indigenous and Native students and friends of HDS. And importantly, I also welcome and include speaking of and with the millions of ancestors and materials stored across this campus, many of whom our communities know to be alive, capable of being animated, already flowing with power, or ready to return to the Earth. They are not artifacts. They are our relatives and our ancestors. And they came here under different conditions than Earthbound today. And we hope to usher them out of these places. We fight to see them return home to their land, to their people, and to their more than human kin. And at the same time, we're welcoming this new being. And in many ways, we from other peoples and lands are being welcomed by Earthbound. So thank you, Ramona, for co-creating with Earthbound, for working with, wrestling the clay, and birthing this being, for your willingness to bring Earthbound here, to hold space and energize indigenization, decolonization, liberation, and resistance. And thank you to Earthbound for your presence, for making this a more beautiful place to be. And to Earthbound, I have brought you an offering, a small bundle of gratitude. We will breathe the same air in this next year, occupying this place unapologetically. Thank you for showing us how to be strong and stubborn. Thank you for welcoming future Indigenous and Native students, future Indigenous and Native faculty, and ultimately, a future that is native and Indigenous. Thank you. \[APPLAUSE\] ANN BRAUDE: OK. They're now going to go out in the hallway. And if everything is on our side, Bob is going to connect the camera in the hallway so we will see on screen the unveiling of Earthbound. \[VIDEO PLAYBACK\] \[APPLAUSE\] \[END PLAYBACK\] Now I'm going to get emotional. So I'm going to turn the microphone over to Anthony Trujillo. You've already been introduced. And it has been such a great pleasure to work with Anthony this summer on this project. And I really can't thank him enough for all his efforts. \[APPLAUSE\] ANTHONY TRUJILLO: I'm not that tall, but I have to be able to read. \[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH\] With your respect. Respect to the ancestors who are here with us. Respect to Ramona Peters. Respect to David Weeden. Respect to Ann Braude, Dean Hempton, and all the HDS folks who have made this possible. Respect to all of you who are gathered here to celebrate today. And with the great respect to Earthbound, who we welcome. I'm going to read the label. Gathered, needed, coiled, scored, smoothed. This \[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH\] cooking vessel embodies the nutrients, relations, and poetics that have long invigorated Wampanoag life. Borne out of the intimate connection between the flesh of clay and the discerning hands of Mashpee Wampanoag educator, intellectual, Nosapocket Ramona Peters. This animate clay being vigorously asserts enduring Indigenous presence in this place. From its female body to its male head, each curve, groove, color, and material tells a story, stories that recognize colonial influence, the white dots, but define narratives of Indigenous impoverishment and erasure. Stories that celebrate, that celebrate deep histories and far-reaching futurities of Wampanoag ingenuity and self-governance, the brown skin of the vessel. Stories that grieve the diseases of anti-blackness and ecological destruction, the black band. And stories that offer potent alternative visions of spiritual life in relation to the array of beings who, like this vessel, draw their beingness from the waters and lands of the native Northeast. Ramona Peters' Earthbound is not a vessel that can be contained within Harvard Divinity School. On the contrary, it is an expressive clay being who calls for a ground up reimagining of what a divinity school might be, an institution of learning and spiritual formation that recognizes its place within this Indigenous Earth. \[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH\]. Thank you. \[APPLAUSE\] ANN BRAUDE: I'm not sure Ramona is ever going to forgive me for making her so much the center of attention. But I'm finally going to ask you to come up to the podium and share with us whatever thoughts you would like to. RAMONA PETERS: All right. I didn't realize there were so many people in here. Yes, this is quite a to-do, and much more than what I've ever experienced. I can say that. Artists kind of know when something flows through us, it's really hard to really even own it. It's really something that we partner with, and it gives us an experience that if we're lucky, it stays with us, the technique. And for me, it's always new every time I pick up a piece of clay. From the start of this piece, and throughout its evolution, there were some pauses, stopping. I felt confused about it, why it-- so I just had to be patient about it. And I actually can't offer you any insight yet because I'm still going to listen for why this piece had such a difficult time being made. And at the same time when something happened, the feeling of it was-- it's too bad you aren't able to actually feel it because that's part of its greatest expression. I actually enjoyed it being in my home for the time that it was there. After firing, and usually after it's fired, there's a detachment that happens. But this piece is different. And so as long as I can, I'll come back and visit it, and you. It is a pot that I had hoped will nourish all of the students here and offer some medicine to Native students who need a little grounding when it gets difficult to be almost alone in a very-- I assume it's very competitive here. And there's so much to look forward to when you leave and go back to where you came from, or not. Sometimes when we're educated too much away from the home, the people at home are a little afraid of us. That happens, too. Not sure what we're bringing back that might change things, what David was talking about. But I know I have gone through as far as a master's program. And I went home and I've stayed home. And I feel like a bridge in a way sometimes. The tribe needs bridge people to speak to the outside world. But we also need to protect our people as well by being smart enough to know what's happening, what was happening to us and our forefathers. They were unaware there were laws already that protected us that we weren't using because we didn't know they existed. So education has a lot of purposes. And I've tried to use mine to both enrich and serve my people. And this, too, one of the reasons it's so awkward to be standing here is we don't generally like to-- we don't typically acknowledge, put a person up above anybody else. It's not good form in a circle culture. We're not a I culture or a we culture. And so the piece will be reminding, hopefully, that you have a we, that there is a we right here. We're capable of going anywhere on the planet, alone or with our family, of course. But all of those ancestors walk with us. And the Earth holds it, and this clay-- why I called it Earthbound was to remind you, all of you, to be with the Earth, really be here. Too much recklessness has happened to this planet because we haven't really been earthbound. We've been something else. And that has to stop. It should have stopped. It's too bad that it went this far. But that's why I named it that. There's a few rocks in there. You saw the rocks. They're ancient ones, too, and really solid. I couldn't find rocks from Cape Cod that were willing to move to Cambridge, so they're not here. These came from Concord through a friend of mine. They volunteered, and so they're here. There's only one rock from Mashpee, and it's a tiny small one that my grandson found for me down near the river. So that's in there to bring that child treasure into the space. The shell was actually a gift to me, but I'm passing it forward to you. The shell, as you can see, there's some burn inside. There was an offering made, tobacco offering, and sweet grass and sage. And so these cooking pots do need fire. That's the way they're usually arranged so they sit on the rocks near a fire that you bring the coals closer to the pot to control the temperature, which reminds me I got to get off of the stage because I'm standing in the way of food. It's downstairs, right? But just for your mind's sake, the rocks are not holding up the pot, but they're there to represent that foundation. We ate communally. The pots of food was always there. It's a good size piece, so you can imagine quite a few helpings could be served from there. And yeah, that's about all I want to say tonight. Thank you all of you for greeting it and meeting the way that you have. \[APPLAUSE\] ANN BRAUDE: Ramona is always teaching. Thank you so much for your words. And I'm now going to call up Maisie Luo. Maisie, where are you? Oh, there you are. Great. The Swartz Hall Art Committee asked Maisie to create a small work as a token of our gratitude for bringing Earthbound to HDS. Maisie graduated last May from the Divinity School and is now doing her MFA at Rutgers. And this project would not have come to fruition without her commitment, work, and talent. As an artist herself, she really understood what the power of art and what it could contribute. So Maisie. MAISIE LUO: I'm glad to come back here. And the Swartz Hall Art Committee asked me to make a painting as an offering back for you, Ramona. And I had some footages from Anthony, and I did a little research on your website to learn about people of the first light. And I discussed with Ann, and as an artist myself who have done pottery before, I know that hands of an artist, special when working with clay, because you leave fingerprints and you sculpt everything. So we decided for me to paint your hand making this pot. ANN BRAUDE: Would you like to show them? MAISIE LUO: Against the first light in the morning. So we offer this to you. Thank you. \[APPLAUSE\] ANN BRAUDE: And there it is. \[APPLAUSE\] \[GUITAR CHORDS\] SPEAKER 1: Copyright 2022, the President and Fellows of Harvard College.