A long, winding, dirt path through Plimoth Patuxet Museums leads visitors to the Historic Patuxet Homesite, where they can find a traditional, indigenous hickory bark-covered wetu, a cooking arbor and replicas of customary mishoon canoes.
Plimoth Patuxet, a living history museum, invites guests in a video to interact and learn from Wampanoag and other Native American tribal members throughout the homesite, as they cook traditional food over a fire; tend to deer hides and furs that line the inside of the wetu; or scrape and maintain the inside of a mishoon with a quahog shell.
Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe member Alex Pocknett discusses the life of tribe members as she sits at the Wampanoag Homesite at Plimoth Plantation, in 2008. The museum, in Plymouth, has been renamed Plimoth Patuxet. But in July, Camille Madison, a Gay Head (Aquinnah) Wampanoag tribal member, announced on Facebook a boycott against the museum, unhappy over the direction of its programs and approach to Native American history.
"Plimoth Patuxet has been trying to erase their Wampanoag Indigenous Program — they want to erase 40 years of work that Wampanoag people have done for them," Madison said in a phone interview.
Other Wampanoag people are equally unhappy.
"They wanted to move in a way where they were making money," said Tia Pocknett, a Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe member who once worked at the museum. "They wanted to be the Wampanoag Pilgrim Disney."
One tribe leader is now asking Plimoth Patuxet executives to reach out to Wampanoag tribes to consult with tribal leaders. Another leader wants the museum to stop sharing any aspects of Wampanoag culture.
"There's a level of understanding and respect that should be paid to us," said Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, chairwoman of the Gay Head (Aquinnah) Wampanoag Tribe. "That is a minimum threshold that these entities should be doing."
Cheryl Andrews-Maltaise is chairwoman of the Aquinnah (Gay Head) Wampanoag Tribe.
The homesite has been open during the summer at the museum since 1971, according to the museum website.
The nonprofit museum, founded in 1947, also features a 17th century English village; the Mayflower II, a replica of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth; and the Plimoth Grist Mill. The Mayflower II recently underwent an $11.2 million restoration.
The museum receives grant support from organizations such as the Mass Cultural Council.
Ann Petruccelli Moon, public relations and events manager for Mass Cultural Council, said in an email that the organization hasn't been involved in conversations between Plimoth Patuxet Museums and the Wampanoag Tribe regarding the boycott.
A change of name from Plimoth Plantation to Plimoth Patuxet
Madison, a language teacher at the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe's Immersion School, said tribal support for the museum has been waning for years, but declined sharply after the museum changed its name from Plimoth Plantation to Plimoth Patuxet in June 2020.
A traditional Wampanoag canoe looks out across the Eel River at Plimoth Patuxet in Plymouth.
Patuxet is an Algonquian word for the area where Mayflower passengers first established a home base in 1620, Madison said.
Algonquian refers to a widespread Northeast language group that includes the Wampanoag Tribes in southeastern Massachusetts.
The name change, said Madison, was part of the museum's overall promise to expand the museum's Wampanoag Indigenous Program, and to invest financially in the homesite.
"Plimoth Patuxet is viewed as this wonderfully engaging socially aware organization," she said. "But, we are a community of people saying Plimoth Patuxet is not who they say they are."
A response from Plimoth Patuxet states a goal of fostering relationships
Ellie Donovan, Plimoth Patuxet executive director, declined requests for an interviews, but released a statement to the Times.
"We recognize how important it is to reflect the history of local and regional Indigenous people. In this regard, Plimoth Patuxet has been a leader for decades," Donovan said in the statement.
"While the museum strives to do so via our hiring practices, exhibits, digital content, educational programs and engagement efforts, there’s always room for improvement. Our goal is to foster positive and productive relationships with the Wampanoag and other indigenous individuals and communities throughout the region.”
Wampanoag alliance formed to ask questions
To address their concerns with Plimoth Patuxet, as well as other Indigenous issues throughout the state, Madison and tribal members from the Mashpee, Gay Head (Aquinnah), and Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribes, formed the Wampanoag Consulting Alliance.
Native American Tim Turner greets visitors in the Wampanoag winter house at Plimoth Patuxet, in 2020.
Originally called the Wampanoag Advisory Council, group members came together in 2012 during the planning of the Plymouth 400. Plymouth 400 was planned for 2020 as a commemoration of the anniversary of the Mayflower voyage, the founding of Plymouth Colony and the historic interaction between the Wampanoag and English peoples, according to the website.
After alliance member Paula Peters, a Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe member, left her job at the museum in 2011, she said in a recent interview that Plimoth Patuxet officials began moving away from a bi-cultural approach to programming — and eliminated the word "Wampanoag" from much of its museum applications.
Recently, Peters visited the homesite.
The area looked like it hasn't been maintained, she said.
She theorized that a lack of maintenance was due to a lack of investment, upkeep and the Indigenous boycott.
"It doesn’t look like it’s even lived in," Peters said.
Pocknett, who worked at Plimoth Patuxet between 2010 and 2012 as an interpreter, and later as a manager and site supervisor, said she attended meetings with directors and museum officials where, she said, there was a direct intention to eliminate bi-culturalism at the museum.
The last Wampanoag Indigenous Program director moved out of the job
"The year 2021 would have been the 50th anniversary of the Wampanoag Indigenous Program," said Kerri Helme, a Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe member who resigned from her job at the museum in 2020.
Around 2016, museum officials moved Darius Coombs, the last Wampanoag Indigenous Program director, out of his position, Helme said. Without Coombs, a Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal member, interpreters such as herself were often reprimanded by museum officials when they shared historical facts from an Indigenous perspective.
"We would inform (visitors) that the first Thanksgiving was actually celebrated by the English in 1636, after the massacre at Mystic," Helme said. "Things like that would get people written up."
Coombs' absence degraded the quality of historical accuracy and cultural competence at the museum, Peters said.
"They really bounced him around in his last few years and that was a mistake," she said. "He was the last thread holding that place together."
The Times was unable to obtain contact information for Coombs.
Gay Head (Aquinnah) Wampanoag Tribe member hired to direct exhibits
In June, the museum hired Brad Lopes, a member of the Gay Head (Aquinnah) Wampanoag Tribe and a former high school faculty member in Maine, as director of Algonquian exhibits and interpretation, according to the museum's announcement.
Lopes will lead the further development of the museum’s "well-established Indigenous programs, exhibits and interpretation of the region’s Indigenous homeland, history and culture," according to the announcement.
Lopes is a member of her tribe, Andrews-Maltais said, but he lacks a long-running connection to his community.
He didn't participate in cultural aspects of the tribe until recently, she said.
"People need to learn from those who have first-hand experience of learning our traditions and cultures at the knees of their grandparents and great-grandparents," Andrews-Maltais said.
A request to a museum spokesperson to speak with Brad Lopes did not elicit a response.
Plimoth Patuxet was once ahead of the curve, a Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe leader said
Andrews-Maltais was also an interpreter for several summers between 1975 and 1980. During that time, she said, James Deetz, who was an anthropologist, ran the Wampanoag Indigenous Program, along with Ella Wilcox-Thomas Sekatauan, a Narragansett knowledge keeper.
The duo ensured interpreters were immersed in research projects, and they traveled "far and wide" to find traditional materials to create structures such as wetu's, longhouses and wigwams, she said. He didn't participate in cultural aspects of the tribe until recently, she said.
"They were strict about our presence, our oratory, as well as the materials used," she said. "They knew our traditional values and history and there was an all-out effort to ensure that Wampanoag contact history was not only clear but it was accurate."
David Weeden, tribal historic preservation officer for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, agreed with Andrews-Maltais and said, in the past, Plimoth Patuxet was ahead of the curve on racial equity and inclusion efforts with Wampanoag leaders at the museum's helm, such as Nanepashemet, a deceased Wampanoag scholar, who founded much of the Wampanoag Indigenous Program; Linda Coombs, an author and historian from the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), who Weeden said worked at the museum for roughly 30 years; and Coombs.
While tribal members from Indigenous communities like the Nipmuc Nation, and the Narragansett Tribe, have also been interpreters at the museum, he said the museum's focus should always revolve around Wampanoag history.
"The Plimoth story is unique to Wampanoag people. To change the name of the program and dismantle internal staffing and management is horrible," Weeden said.
Layoffs hit the homesite interpreters in 2020
In 2020, just after the museum announced its new name, Helme was asked to change the Historic Patuxet Homesite layout from a hodgepodge of different structures, arbors, and a garden plot, to a seasonal layout where visitors could view what a Wampanoag homesite would look throughout the seasons, she said.
Part of Helme's task was to design new text panels to teach visitors about traditional Wampanoag clothing, what Wampanoag people grew, and information about the collection of structures, she said.
But directly after Helme finished the text panels, the museum laid off all homesite interpreters for the winter of 2020. At the time, she said, interpreters were making roughly $1 over minimum wage, or about $13.75 an hour.
"The real reason for the panels was to replace us living interpreters," Helme said.
Never before, she said, had interpreters been let go for the winter. Usually, the winter was spent in professional development, making and repairing artifacts for the museum and other tasks, she said.
In addition, between 2010 and 2020, Helme said interpreters held fundraisers for new staff facilities, and repairs to the homesite.
Since the early 1990s, she said, interpreters and program directors had worked, changed, and eaten lunch out of a dilapidated trailer and adjacent garage. She said the space was akin to "potting shed."
"We were eating our lunch in filth, washing dishes in a bathroom, while interpreters from the Pilgrim side had a beautiful break room," she said. "We raised a bunch of money through a lot of donations but I suspect they used all that money for the Mayflower II repairs."
Ray Byrnes, a former interpreter at the 17th Century English Village, said he didn't get to the Wampanoag side of the museum often, but knew about the uncomfortable conditions Historic Patuxet Homesite interpreters were forced to work out of.
"They had this trailer — I would call it a dump," he said. "They had offices on the second floor of what I would call a garage and I think they were treated almost like second-class citizens there. We were much better accommodated."
Pocknett said similar promises to upgrade facilities were made in 2012, when museum officials said they would create a Wampanoag-focused, year-round, arts and cultural center, which would include improved facilities for indigenous interpreters, managers, and directors.
"I saw colored sketches of the plans — blue prints," she said. "They presented the plans to us during the winter and then that never happened."
There were problems for a long time at the museum, said Helme, but the employees who hung on for years, stayed because they were fearful of how Wampanoag people would be portrayed.
"We were afraid of how our story was going to be told if we weren’t there to tell it," she said.
For Helme, the tribe's break with Plimoth Patuxet was traumatic and created unrest throughout Wampanoag communities. It was a great place to be, she said, when programming was run by Wampanoag people.
"We stayed after work, we brought our own food to cook, we had ceremony there, we brought our babies there," Helme said. "I can't see it ever being like that again until things drastically change."
Pocknett said without Wampanoag support, the museum should stop sharing any aspects of Wampanoag culture.
This is a fight of intellectual property," she said. "It might feel uncomfortable to have these conversations, but if they want to make it better, then they need to listen."
By Rachael Devaney Cape Cod Times
