Honoring the Original Stewards of the Land: Acknowledging the Past, Looking Toward a Shared Future

Indigenous people lived on this land we now call coastal New England over 10,000 years before Europeans arrived and seized their ancestral homelands. The Society of Companions of the Holy Cross purchased Adelynrood a century ago. These 15-plus acres of beautiful land in northeastern Massachusetts included apple trees and a view toward the salt marsh, the Parker River, and the ocean beyond. During this conference, Indigenous presenters whose people have called this land their home for generations will help us examine the past and look with hope toward a shared future of right relationship of the land and its people. Bishop Carol Joy W.T. Gallagher is the assistant bishop in the Diocese of Massachusetts and an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation. She has served as assistant bishop in the Diocese of Montana, developing relationships with Native leaders and congregations, educating and training clergy and lay leaders in issues of race, gender and inclusion, and leading the Task Force on Native Issues. Emily R. G. Pollock is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. As an author, consultant, artist and potter, Emily works at the intersection of the arts and public policy. At the heart of her work is a passion for storytelling, reconciliation, laughter and healing. She has a Master’s in Public Policy from The Johns Hopkins University. Paul W. Pouliot has been the Sag8mo (Chief Speaker) for the Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook and Abenaki People and president of COWASS North America and the Abenaki Nation of Vermont since 1990. Paul is an Indigenous historian, lecturer, federal religious advisor, and a founding member of the Indigenous New Hampshire Collaborative Collective and the New Hampshire Commission of Native American Affairs. Denise K. Pouliot is the Sag8moskwa (Female Head Speaker) of the Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook Abenaki People and traditional artist. She is president of New Hampshire Public Health Association, serves on the New Hampshire Commission on Native American Affairs and is a federal religious advisor for the Bureau of Prisons. She is the treasurer for COWASS North America and the Abenaki Nation of Vermont, and a founding member of the Indigenous New Hampshire Collaborative Collective. She is an affiliate faculty member of the University of New Hampshire Native American and Indigenous Studies Minor.