This event is targeted toward tweens, teens, and adults and it will begin at 4:30pm, with a Q&A and book signing to follow.

In this accessible and engaging presentation on Colonization and the Wampanoag Story, Linda Coombs offers an Indigenous perspective on the impact of European settlement and colonization in Southern New England—the true story of injustice and disruption that is rarely told. Coombs will share how she came to write and research her book, Colonization and the Wampanoag Story, and discuss the history of the Wampanoag people who call Southern Massachusetts and the Cape and the Islands home.

Linda Coombs (Aquinnah Wampanoag) is the author of Colonization and the Wampanoag Story. An historian from the Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah, she lives in the Wampanoag community of Mashpee on Cape Cod. Coombs began her museum career at the Boston Children's Museum, and later worked in their Native American Program. She and her colleague Paulla Dove Jennings (Narragansett) wrote childrens books for a museum series highlighting aspects of southern New England tribal cultures. Coombs also worked for 30 years in the Wampanoag Indigenous Program (WIP) of Plimoth Plantation, including 15 years as WIP's Associate Director; and 9 years at the Aquinnah Cultural Center. Presently she does independent museum consulting and cultural presentations.

When you think about the beginning of the American story, what comes to mind? Three ships in
1492, or perhaps buckled hats and shoes stepping off of the Mayflower, ready to start a new
country. But the truth is, Christopher Columbus, the Pilgrims, and the Colonists didn’t arrive to a
vast, empty land ready to be developed. They arrived to find people and communities living in
harmony with the land they had inhabited for thousands of years, and they quickly disrupted
everything they saw.

From its “discovery” by Europeans to the first Thanksgiving, the story of America’s earliest days
has been carefully misrepresented. Told from the perspective of the New England Indigenous
Nations that these outsiders found when they arrived, this is the true story of how America as
we know it today began.

This local program is offered in collaboration with the Massachusetts Center for the Book on the
occasion of the 2024 National Book Festival, with funding provided by COSLA-IMLS and the Library
of Congress.

Registration requested for planning purposes; walk-ins welcome