Paulla Dove Jennings | |
|---|---|
 Paulla Dove Jennings (2012) | |
| Born | 1940 |
| Nationality | Narragansett Indian Tribe, American |
| Education | Community College of Rhode Island |
| Occupation(s) | Professional story teller, educator and children’s book author, curator |
| Employer(s) | Boston Children's Museum, Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum |
| Known for | Book, Strawberry Thanksgiving, lawsuit regarding a raid on a tribal smoke shop |
Paulla Dove Jennings is a Narragansett storyteller, educator, and children's book author.
Paulla Dove Jennings was born in 1940 in Providence, Rhode Island. [1] Her parents are Eleanor and Ferris Dove, and her family is Narragansett with Niantic ancestry. [2] Jennings is an enrolled member of the Narragansett Indian Tribe [3] and belongs to the Turtle Clan. [4]
Jennings' father was a Narragansett war chief and graduated from Bacone College. [5] He and his wife ran a popular restaurant and trading post for many years called Dovecrest. The site later became a school teaching a curriculum of Native American history and values. [6] Jennings was one of four children, she learned her tribal and family history from her grandmother.
Jennings also obtained a degree from the Community College of Rhode Island and has worked as a curator for both the Boston Children's Museum and the Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum in Exeter, Rhode Island. [7] She has performed as a storyteller at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. [8] In 2010, Jennings served as the Tribal Historian in Residence for the certificate program in Native American Studies at the UMASS Amherst. [9]
In addition to her work as an educator and storyteller, Jennings has been politically active in her tribe. She has served on her tribal council, and in 2007 ran an unsuccessful campaign for the position of chief sachem. [3] [10] She and her son Adam were among the plaintiffs [11] in a lawsuit against Rhode Island State Police, which in July 2003 raided a tribal smoke shop. The raid resulted in eight arrests and eight injured, [12] including Jennings's son. [13] Jennings herself has spoken publicly about the case as an infringement on Narragansett tribal sovereignty. [14]
Strawberry Thanksgiving was written for the Multicultural Celebrations at the Boston Children's Museum, part of a series of books designed to educate children about different cultures. Written by Jennings and illustrated by Ramona Peters, the book tells how a young boy, Adam, learns to forgive his sister by hearing his grandmother tell the story of Strawberry Thanksgiving.
King Philip's War was an armed conflict in 1675–1676 between a group of indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands against the English New England Colonies and their indigenous allies. The war is named for Metacom, the Pokanoket chief and sachem of the Wampanoag who adopted the English name Philip because of the friendly relations between his father Massasoit and the Plymouth Colony. The war continued in the most northern reaches of New England until the signing of the Treaty of Casco Bay on April 12, 1678.
The Wampanoag, also rendered Wôpanâak, are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands currently based in southeastern Massachusetts and formerly parts of eastern Rhode Island. Their historical territory includes the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.
The Narragansett people are an Algonquian American Indian tribe from Rhode Island. Today, Narragansett people are enrolled in the federally recognized Narragansett Indian Tribe. They gained federal recognition in 1983.
Ellison Myers Brown, widely known as Tarzan Brown, a direct descendant of the last acknowledged royal family of the Narragansett Tribe of Rhode Island, was a two-time winner of the Boston Marathon in 1936 (2:33:40) and 1939 (2:28:51) and 1936 U.S. Olympian. He ran the marathon in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin and also qualified for the 1940 Summer Olympics, which were ultimately canceled due to the outbreak of World War II.
Melvin Coombs was a Wampanoag dancer, cultural educator, and cultural interpreter.
Narragansett is an Algonquian language formerly spoken in most of what is today Rhode Island by the Narragansett people. It was closely related to the other Algonquian languages of southern New England like Massachusett and Mohegan-Pequot. The earliest study of the language in English was by Roger Williams, founder of the Rhode Island colony, in his book A Key Into the Language of America (1643).
The Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum is an Indigenous museum in Exeter, Rhode Island. The museum was founded by anthropologist Eva Butler and a Narragansett and Wampanoag woman named Princess Red Wing in 1958.
Cheryl Savageau is an American writer and poet who self-identifies as being of Abenaki descent.
The Narragansett Dawn was a monthly newspaper that discussed the history, culture and language of the Narragansett tribe. It was produced in 1935 and 1936, with a total of seventeen issues. Princess Red Wing and Ernest Hazard were the paper's founders and editors. Both were Narragansett tribal members.
Lorén M. Spears (Narragansett/Niantic) is an educator, essayist, artist, and two-term Tribal Councilwoman of the Narragansett Tribe in Providence, Rhode Island, where she currently resides. Spears has taught for over two decades, including 12 years in the Newport Public School system working with at-risk children in both first and fourth grades. In 2010, Spears was chosen as one of 11 Extraordinary Women honorees for Rhode Island in the area of education.
Linda Jeffers Coombs is an author and historian from the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). Coombs is the former program director of the Aquinnah Cultural Center.
Princess Red Wing, aka Mary E. (Glasko) Congdon, was a Narragansett and Wampanoag elder, historian, folklorist, and museum curator. She was an expert on American Indian history and culture, and she once addressed the United Nations.
Cheryll Toney Holley is a First Nations American historian, genealogist, and museum director. She serves as the Sonksq of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc Band, a Massachusetts state-recognized tribe.
Paula Peters is a journalist, educator and activist. A member of the Wampanoag tribe, she has spent most of her life in her tribal homeland of Mashpee, Massachusetts. She hails from a prominent Mashpee Wampanoag family, including Tribal Chairman Russell "Fast Turtle" Peters, and was active in the tribe's long and contested push for federal recognition. In a 2006 interview with NPR, Peters recalled a time when "nobody in Washington cared much about which tribes were recognized." Like her father before her, Peters served on the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council. In 2005, she ran against Glenn Marshall for Council Chairperson.
Zara Cisco Brough, also called Princess White Flower, served as the Chief of the Nipmuc Nation, a state-recognized tribe in Massachusetts, from 1962 until 1987. She is best known for her work to preserve Nipmuc heritage.
Jesse Bowman Bruchac is an author and language teacher from the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation, a state-recognized tribe in Vermont. He has dedicated much of his life to studying the Abenaki language and preserving the Abenaki culture. He created the first Abenaki language website.
The Atherton Trading Company also known as the Atherton Syndicate was formed in 1659; with Humphrey Atherton and John Winthrop, Governor of Connecticut at the helm. This partnership of merchants and investors included Simon Bradstreet, Daniel Denison, Elisha Hutchinson, Richard Smith and Boston traders; John Tinker, Amos Richardson and William Hudson. Edward Hutchinson joined and by 1661, Plymouth investors included Josiah Winslow, John Brown and Thomas Willet. Their land speculation in the Narragansett area of Rhode Island was at the expense of the Native American inhabitants.
Ella Wilcox-Thomas Sekatau, or Firefly-Song of Wind, was a poet, historian, and ethnohistorian and medicine woman of the Narragansett Indian Nation. Instrumental in the Narragansett's federal recognition in 1983, she was a powerful cultural and political presence in her community and across the Native American community of New England. Sekatau was one of the first Native American interpreters to partner with Brown University's Heffenreffer Museum of Anthropology in their education program, and was also a key figure for the Wampanoag history program at Plimoth Plantation, now Plimoth Patuxet.
Everett Gardiner Weeden Jr., or Tall Oak, was an artist, activist, survivalist, and historian of Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe stated that Weeden was "a documented descendant of the Mashantucket Pequot, Narragansett, and Wampanoag tribes".