headshot of the State Historian Andy Horowitz

 Connecticut State Historian Andy Horowitz interviews people who are bringing the past into the present.

There are more than 1,000 enrolled members of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation. The tribe maintains an active program of historical research, education, and cultural preservation. Since 1998, this work has centered around the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. The museum documents continuous Indigenous presence in the place Pequots call “Muhshôtuquk”: enduring epidemic disease brought by European colonists, surviving a violent attempt to eradicate the tribe during the 1636–1638 Pequot War, responding to the colonial establishment of Mashantucket as one of the first Indian reservations in North America in 1666, sustaining the community in the face of centuries of discrimination, securing federal recognition in 1983, and flourishing in the present. The museum honors the Pequots’ enduring connection to the land their families have called home for 10,000 years.

I visited the museum to meet with five Pequot historians: Wayne Reels and Michael Thomas, who work in the Cultural Resources department; Michael Johnson and Stormy Hay, who comprise the Tribal Historic Preservation Office; and Joshua Carter, who directs the museum. This is an edited and condensed transcript of our conversation about the tribe’s efforts to document and protect its history—and to put knowledge of the past to work in the present.

Wayne Reel, Michael Johnson, Stormy Hay, and Michael Thomas. photo: Sidney Horowitz

Andy Horowitz: Michael, when I asked if I could interview you, you suggested we include more people. Why that was important?

Michael Johnson: Because history here is a shared responsibility. I don’t have all the answers as one person, but others do. I learn from my relatives as they learn from me.

AH: What does the Tribal Historic Preservation Office do?

Michael Johnson: We’re a regulatory group with the central point of protecting our traditional cultural properties on the reservation as well as off. We have been doing a lot of work recently with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. New federal rules provide better mechanisms for the return of our ancestors and our items of patrimony from higher education institutions and museums. But the Connecticut procedures related to excavation of burial sites, remains removal, and reinternment are very old. Our office is working with the State Historic Preservation Office, other tribes, and the Office of State Archaeology to update these policies. We hope to bring more balance and fairness for tribes in policies that are workable for everyone.

AH: Joshua, is there one thing you hope everybody who visits the museum leaves knowing?

Joshua Carter: Our mission is to strengthen Pequot culture in order to honor and serve our tribal family and friends. Our first priority is our tribal community. Secondly, we serve our sister tribal nations. And then, third, we serve everybody else. With that being said, our goal is to tell our story, and it starts with the fact that we’ve always been here, and we will always be here.

AH: Several of you talked about having multiple strands in your family histories—African American, Jewish, and others—along with Pequot. Do you feel like Pequot history is just another piece of your multicultural tapestry, or is it something different?

Michael Thomas: It’s different. What makes it different is the relationship-based approach, which, for our culture, doesn’t stop with just relationships with each other. It’s relationships, first and foremost, elders would tell you, with the dirt that your ancestors have protected for thousands of years. They would tell us that we have an invisible umbilical cord from our belly to the land of our tribal ancestors.

AH: Is there anything that you’d like to say to Connecticut Explored readers as Pequot historians?

Stormy Hay: Be mindful of who we are, be respectful of who we are. I remember when my children were in elementary school and they had a “colonial day.” They wanted me to dress my kids up in colonial garb. I called the school, and I said, “My children will not, on any day, be coming to your school in colonial garb. They will wear their Native American regalia, and they will speak on their history, what colonists mean to them, and what colonial time means to them and their ancestors.” It was mind-boggling to me that people didn’t even think of the disrespect of that portrayal. It’s just second nature. If there’s anything that I would love to see, it is a curriculum that is equal and has much more true information.

Wayne Reels: We hear about cancel culture. What’s leading to that is guilt: we can’t teach you about history because you’ll feel guilty. But I always say that we don’t want reparations. We want equality now. You talk about oppressive things that happened yesterday. We look at what’s oppressive that’s happening now. Can you stop it now? Because you didn’t kill anybody. Your ancestors might have been a part of that, but you weren’t. I don’t want to hold you responsible for what your ancestors did but what you do. Let’s talk about today, for my children’s sake.

Visit the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, 110 Pequot Trail, Mashantucket, pequotmuseum.org.