Content Warning & Context for Educators:
The Upstander Project Learning Hub contains 17th- and 19th-century documents and archival materials that provide evidence of colonial encounters in the place we now call New England as well as other regions in what is now known as the United States. Many of these sources recount acts of war, displacement, enslavement, and land theft, and reflect deeply harmful worldviews held by English and other European settler colonists. These materials include racist and dehumanizing language; portrayals of Indigenous peoples as savage, inhuman, or incapable of self-governance; and justifications for violence rooted in the Doctrine of Discovery, settler colonialism, and emerging racial hierarchies that upheld white domination.
These records are preserved to help users critically examine how settler colonial power operated throughout North America and how violence and genocide were normalized and legitimized in historical discourse and texts. Engaging with these sources offers students an opportunity to examine how violence and inequality were normalized in the past, how historical narratives are constructed by those in power, and how these ideologies continue to shape the present. Here, it is important to foreground Indigenous presence and survivance, to contextualize harmful language and ideas, and to support students in reading these materials critically, ethically, and with care for themselves and others.