Post by Okwes on Dec 19, 2006 15:57:16 GMT -5
Ancestry shapes views on holiday
Volunteer spent much of life educating about Indian ways
By MARY PICKETT
Of The Gazette Staff
Casey Figueroa is not a Wampanoag who met the Pilgrims soon after they stepped off the Mayflower.
But he portrays one on television.
Figueroa, now an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer in Billings, can be seen several times in nonspeaking roles in the History Channel's "Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower," including in a scene of a Wampanoag round dance.
The program was shown Sunday and will air again this evening. Figueroa, whose ancestors include White Mountain Apache from Arizona, Zapoteca from Mexico and Irish from Boston, portrayed a 17th-century Wampanoag for 14 years as an interpretive artisan at the Plimoth Plantation near Plymouth, Mass.
The plantation re-creates what life was like in 1627. Visitors watch English colonists work in a small village of thatched cottages. Nearby is a homesite of Hobbamock, a Wampanoag American Indian who lived near the Pilgrims for many years.
Although less well-known as Squanto, Hobbamock was a guide, interpreter and ambassador to the Pilgrims.
Starting when he was a teenager, Figueroa worked at the Hobbamock home site for 14 years, wearing traditional American Indian clothing of the era and talking with visitors about what how Wampanoags lived in the early 1600s.
Figueroa and others made traditional Wampanoag clothing, jewelry and sapling-framed homes covered with bark or reed mats, depending on the season. He also made at least 20 canoes, called mishoon, by burning out the center of large logs.
Figueroa's parents also had worked at the plantation.
The experience shaped who he is today, he said, by helping him understand what his own American Indian ancestors went through and the connections and differences among native peoples.
Meeting people from all over the world, he learned how to deal with the public and its stereotypes of American Indians.
When Figueroa and other interpreters talked about local history from a native point of view, some visitors took offense. People from outside the United States tended to be more receptive because cherished myths weren't on the line, Figueroa said.
Figueroa, 30, graduated from the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth with a bachelor's degree in art this spring. He came to Billings this summer as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer to work with a dropout-prevention program that pairs Rocky Mountain College students with local American Indian high school and middle school students.
He works out of Rocky Mountain College's American Indian Affairs office.
He receives a small stipend to live on during the year. At the end of the year, he will receive an education award that he can use to pay off student loans or apply to tuition.
Figueroa says he may go on to get a master's degree in Native American studies at Montana State University.
After working at the Plimoth Plantation, he has a perspective of Thanksgiving that differs from traditional views.
The gathering of Pilgrims and American Indians in 1621 wasn't the "lovely dovey" event as popularly portrayed, Figueroa said.
The real story is more complex. For one thing, the traditional version doesn't give enough credit to local native peoples for saving the Pilgrims' lives.
Not only did they give the Pilgrims food and teach them how to grow local crops, the Wampanoags under the leadership of Massasoit militarily allied themselves with the English colonists against the Naragansetts, who lived in what is now Rhode Island and western Massachusetts.
The three-day gathering of Pilgrims and Wampanoags in the fall of 1621 was a harvest festival rather than a Thanksgiving event, which for the Pilgrims would have had religious meaning.
Thanksgiving observances were universal among Europeans of the day as well as native peoples who daily gave thanks to the Creator to be alive, Figueroa said.
Figueroa also likens the 1621 feast to a business or political meeting that affirmed the treaty of mutual protection made earlier in the year.
While paintings done centuries after the event often portray more Pilgrims than Indians at the feast, the opposite was true. Sketchy written accounts of the event say that Massasoit and 90 of his men attended. At the time, Pilgrims may have numbered no more than 50. About half of the 102 Mayflower passengers had died during their first winter at Plymouth.
"It must have made the English nervous," Figueroa said about the disproportionate number of native guests.
Wampanoag women and children were not mentioned as attending, either because they weren't present or because they weren't considered by the Pilgrims to be important, Figueroa said.
The Indians provided deer, turkey and ducks, and there was "no pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce or stuffing," Figueroa said wryly.
The Pilgrims did declare a Thanksgiving in 1623 to give thanks that a drought had broken. That was a fast - not a feast - during which Pilgrims spent the day in religious services.
Thanksgiving traditions and many of its myths familiar to everyone developed later, Figueroa said.
Abraham Lincoln set the last Thursday of the year as Thanksgiving. Franklin D. Roosevelt specified the fourth Thursday of November for the holiday, a date later approved by Congress.
Thanksgiving Day can be difficult for native peoples because it rarely acknowledges their important role in history of the United States and the racism that still exists, Figueroa said.
At the same time, he doesn't want it to be a time to criticize white culture and traditions. Rather, it can be an opportunity to look back to an era when many whites worked with native peoples and when there were complex interactions among many different peoples.
He'd like to see the holiday separated from myths that are shallow and one-dimensional and, instead, be celebrated as a day of feasting and giving thanks.
Contact Mary Pickett at mpickett@billingsgazette.com or 657-1262.
Volunteer spent much of life educating about Indian ways
By MARY PICKETT
Of The Gazette Staff
Casey Figueroa is not a Wampanoag who met the Pilgrims soon after they stepped off the Mayflower.
But he portrays one on television.
Figueroa, now an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer in Billings, can be seen several times in nonspeaking roles in the History Channel's "Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower," including in a scene of a Wampanoag round dance.
The program was shown Sunday and will air again this evening. Figueroa, whose ancestors include White Mountain Apache from Arizona, Zapoteca from Mexico and Irish from Boston, portrayed a 17th-century Wampanoag for 14 years as an interpretive artisan at the Plimoth Plantation near Plymouth, Mass.
The plantation re-creates what life was like in 1627. Visitors watch English colonists work in a small village of thatched cottages. Nearby is a homesite of Hobbamock, a Wampanoag American Indian who lived near the Pilgrims for many years.
Although less well-known as Squanto, Hobbamock was a guide, interpreter and ambassador to the Pilgrims.
Starting when he was a teenager, Figueroa worked at the Hobbamock home site for 14 years, wearing traditional American Indian clothing of the era and talking with visitors about what how Wampanoags lived in the early 1600s.
Figueroa and others made traditional Wampanoag clothing, jewelry and sapling-framed homes covered with bark or reed mats, depending on the season. He also made at least 20 canoes, called mishoon, by burning out the center of large logs.
Figueroa's parents also had worked at the plantation.
The experience shaped who he is today, he said, by helping him understand what his own American Indian ancestors went through and the connections and differences among native peoples.
Meeting people from all over the world, he learned how to deal with the public and its stereotypes of American Indians.
When Figueroa and other interpreters talked about local history from a native point of view, some visitors took offense. People from outside the United States tended to be more receptive because cherished myths weren't on the line, Figueroa said.
Figueroa, 30, graduated from the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth with a bachelor's degree in art this spring. He came to Billings this summer as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer to work with a dropout-prevention program that pairs Rocky Mountain College students with local American Indian high school and middle school students.
He works out of Rocky Mountain College's American Indian Affairs office.
He receives a small stipend to live on during the year. At the end of the year, he will receive an education award that he can use to pay off student loans or apply to tuition.
Figueroa says he may go on to get a master's degree in Native American studies at Montana State University.
After working at the Plimoth Plantation, he has a perspective of Thanksgiving that differs from traditional views.
The gathering of Pilgrims and American Indians in 1621 wasn't the "lovely dovey" event as popularly portrayed, Figueroa said.
The real story is more complex. For one thing, the traditional version doesn't give enough credit to local native peoples for saving the Pilgrims' lives.
Not only did they give the Pilgrims food and teach them how to grow local crops, the Wampanoags under the leadership of Massasoit militarily allied themselves with the English colonists against the Naragansetts, who lived in what is now Rhode Island and western Massachusetts.
The three-day gathering of Pilgrims and Wampanoags in the fall of 1621 was a harvest festival rather than a Thanksgiving event, which for the Pilgrims would have had religious meaning.
Thanksgiving observances were universal among Europeans of the day as well as native peoples who daily gave thanks to the Creator to be alive, Figueroa said.
Figueroa also likens the 1621 feast to a business or political meeting that affirmed the treaty of mutual protection made earlier in the year.
While paintings done centuries after the event often portray more Pilgrims than Indians at the feast, the opposite was true. Sketchy written accounts of the event say that Massasoit and 90 of his men attended. At the time, Pilgrims may have numbered no more than 50. About half of the 102 Mayflower passengers had died during their first winter at Plymouth.
"It must have made the English nervous," Figueroa said about the disproportionate number of native guests.
Wampanoag women and children were not mentioned as attending, either because they weren't present or because they weren't considered by the Pilgrims to be important, Figueroa said.
The Indians provided deer, turkey and ducks, and there was "no pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce or stuffing," Figueroa said wryly.
The Pilgrims did declare a Thanksgiving in 1623 to give thanks that a drought had broken. That was a fast - not a feast - during which Pilgrims spent the day in religious services.
Thanksgiving traditions and many of its myths familiar to everyone developed later, Figueroa said.
Abraham Lincoln set the last Thursday of the year as Thanksgiving. Franklin D. Roosevelt specified the fourth Thursday of November for the holiday, a date later approved by Congress.
Thanksgiving Day can be difficult for native peoples because it rarely acknowledges their important role in history of the United States and the racism that still exists, Figueroa said.
At the same time, he doesn't want it to be a time to criticize white culture and traditions. Rather, it can be an opportunity to look back to an era when many whites worked with native peoples and when there were complex interactions among many different peoples.
He'd like to see the holiday separated from myths that are shallow and one-dimensional and, instead, be celebrated as a day of feasting and giving thanks.
Contact Mary Pickett at mpickett@billingsgazette.com or 657-1262.