Indigenous and Black people tell their own stories at the Mystic Seaport Museum

“Entwined: Freedom, Sovereignty and the Sea” at Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut explores Indigenous and African ties to the waterways of New England. The exhibition calls on guests to consider historical past, water and spirituality in new methods.

“Walking through the exhibition space you get the sense that time is cyclical, not linear. And that everything cycles and has a birth, a life, a death and a rebirth, as do our histories,” mentioned curator Akeia de Barros Gomes.

There are loaned “belongings” — or objects — from Indigenous and African communities relationship again 2500 years. They present maritime navigational abilities and religious connections to the ocean on either side of the Atlantic.

Senior Curator of Maritime Social Histories Akeia de Barros Gomes mentioned a primary step in creating the ‘Entwined’ exhibition was to ask native tribal and Black communities how they’d tell their maritime historical past. “What came from that conversation was the ocean as a place of creation and rebirth,” she mentioned.

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Ryan Caron King/Connecticut Public Radio

“Yes, for the last 500 years, colonialism, slavery and dispossession have been a major factor in our histories,” de Barros Gomes said. “But if you think about African and Indigenous Dawnland, or New England, maritime histories, they go back over 12,000 years.”

“Dawnland” is the Indigenous time period for New England.

Mystic Seaport Museum was based in 1929 to protect America’s seafaring previous. Visitors can stroll by means of a Nineteenth-century coastal village and climb aboard a wood whaling ship. But for many years, most Black and Indigenous maritime histories have been lacking. Inside the gallery area, de Barros Gomes factors to an historic ceramic cooking pot that’s partly damaged in items.

“We are going to continue to do the work until the vessel is whole and holds water once more.”

“Drums from All Directions” is a bit created by Sherenté Mishitashin Harris of the Narragansett tribe. It sits on show as a part of the “Entwined” exhibition.

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The exhibition features a brightly painted dugout canoe, conventional masks and jewellery, and a primary version Eliot Bible translated into the Algonquin language. There are additionally wampum beads discovered simply throughout the river at the web site of the Pequot Massacre of 1637.

Mystic Seaport Museum stands on Indigenous ancestral homelands, mentioned designer Steven Peters, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe.

Believed to be the first translation of a Christian bible into an indigenous language is on show in the “Entwined” exhibition at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut.

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“There was a lot of healing that had to take place so that the communities became comfortable sharing within those spaces.”

Before loaning any supplies, native tribes wished to make sure that together with the laborious historical past there could be stories of power and resilience. Peters and de Barros Gomes spent almost two years assembly with Native and Black neighborhood members from round New England to form the narrative.

“It needed to be each African and Indigenous communities that have been saying, ‘Here’s the story that we need to tell,'” he mentioned.

Director of Research and Scholarship Elysa Engelman mentioned she hopes that guests can achieve a brand new perspective from the exhibition. “I think, like with reading, like with movies, one of the powers of museums is to transport you outside of your own experience.”

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This is just not the first time Mystic Seaport has labored with exterior advisers, says Elysa Engelman, the museum’s Director of Research and Scholarship, “but (it’s) the first time that we’ve had an outside committee that was responsible for the content and really was the voice of the exhibit.”

Advisor Anika Lopes traces her ancestry to enslaved Africans and members of the Niantic tribe.

“It reminds me always of your foundation, foundation, foundation,” she says. “Like, who is at the table and who are you involving in the discussions from the very beginning is so important.”

Anika Lopes is an Afro-Indigenous girl who was a member of the committee that helped to form the narrative of ”Entwined: Freedom, Sovereignty and the Sea.” To create it, the curator and designer asked Indigenous and Black communities in New England (or the “Dawnland”) how their ancestors would have wished their historical past and stories to be informed? The exhibition runs by means of spring of 2026.

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Standing exterior the gallery, customer Susie Gagne mentioned ‘Entwined’ makes Mystic Seaport higher. She appreciated the language of the exhibition.

“It was for the most part written in like, ‘we’ and ‘I’ perspectives; written by people in the groups that it’s about. And obviously there are historical atrocities associated with Mystic alongside all of the good historical connotations.”

Back inside, de Barros Gomes walked by means of two smaller darkened rooms. First, an attic area with ship carvings and religious objects of enslaved Africans. Next, an Indigenous hut known as a Wetu. And lastly, into a lightweight, shiny up to date area with a big assortment of artwork by present Native American and Black artists. There are work, sculpture, and conventional clothes.

 “Art that really speaks to contemporary artists reclaiming their ancestry and their ancestral stories,” mentioned de Barros Gomes.

For too lengthy, others informed America’s maritime historical past, she mentioned. ‘Entwined: Freedom, Sovereignty and the Sea’ shifts the tide.