Penobscots don’t want ancestors’ scalping to be whitewashed
“In “Bounty,” the three participants describe having nightmares of Penobscots being chased through the woods, and discuss the dehumanization and massacre of their people.
“When you learn about a people’s humanity, that affects how you treat my kids, how you vote on public policy, how you may view my people,” Dana said.”
“Most Americans know about atrocities endured by Native Americans after the arrival of European settlers: wars, disease, stolen land. But they aren’t always taught the extent of the indiscriminate killings.
Members of the Penobscot Nation in Maine have produced an educational film addressing how European settlers scalped — killed — Indigenous people during the British colonial era, spurred for decades by cash bounties and with the government’s blessing.
“It was genocide,” said Dawn Neptune Adams, one of the three Penobscot Nation members featured in the film, called “Bounty.”
She said the point of the effort isn’t to make any Americans feel defensive or blamed. The filmmakers say they simply want to ensure this history isn’t whitewashed by promoting a fuller understanding of the nation’s past.”
Continue reading at Associated Press Maine.
New documentary explores gruesome details of death warrant for Penobscot people
“According to filmmakers, there were more than 100 government-issued scalp bounties like the one signed in 1755 in Boston. Those bounties were issued in the U.S. from 1675 to 1885 and resulted in settlers claiming at least 90 bounties in the New England area.”
“The poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou said, “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”
Dawn Neptune Adams understands and has been exploring history’s wrenching pain against her people in a new documentary. Adams and other filmmakers at Upstander Project are trying to teach others through a short documentary called "Bounty."
Three families in Maine — all members of the Penobscot Nation — brought their children to the Old State House in Boston, to the room where a proclamation was signed close to 250 years before. Issued by the government, the proclamation promised to pay settlers to kill Native Americans.
The film takes place here. “
Continue reading at News Center Maine.
The erasure of Indigenous People’s history
An opinion piece written by Dawn Neptune Adams, Maulian Dana, and Mishy Lesser for the Boston Globe. This writing focuses on how false narratives are the foundation upon which big lies are built. Instead, let us acknowledge history and celebrate what our presence here today signals.
“It has been said that Indigenous People are vulnerable. We can say unequivocally that we are not. We are targeted, marginalized, and silenced.
As citizens of Penobscot Nation, our children are not free to care for the land and river that shares our name. We were not free to live with our parents without fear of the state taking us. Our parents were not free to participate in our traditional ceremonies. Our grandparents were not free to learn our ways without fear of the state kidnapping them to internment camps, euphemistically called boarding schools. Our great-grandparents were not free to vote or be US citizens.”
Continue reading at The Boston Globe.
'Bounty' reveals government-backed scalp bounties on Maine's indigenous people during 1700s
Read a review based on a conversation with filmmaker Dawn Neptune Adams.
“A documentary produced by members of Maine’s Penobscot Nation is bringing attention to atrocities committed against Native Americans.
The film “Bounty” brings to light the government-placed scalp bounties placed on the Penobscot people in the 1700s.
“I'd like you to know that history is not what you were taught, and there is a lot more to know,” co-producer Dawn Neptune Adams said.
Adams cautions that the lessons the film teaches could be disturbing to some.
“Film contains potentially upsetting conversation,” Adams said. “Viewers are going to be introduced to information that they've probably never heard before,” Adams said.
In addition to being Bounty’s co-producer, Adams is one of the film’s key Penobscot figures, along with her son.”
Continue reading at WMTW.
266 years ago, New England colonists were legally allowed to kill Penobscot people
“Things like this live in the collective consciousness of the community,” Adam Mazo said. “We deserve to know the full truth of our history.”
“Difficult conversations are exactly that — difficult. But, more often than not, they are vital to have, so that all parties involved can learn, atone, heal and grow.
That’s one of the reasons why Maulian Dana, Dawn Neptune Adams and Tim Shay, all members of the Penobscot Nation, decided to collaborate with the filmmakers at the Upstander Project on a short film, “Bounty,” that details one of countless painful chapters in the history of Indigenous people in North America.
“Bounty,” available to watch for free online at bountyfilm.org, shows Dana, Adams and Shay reading aloud to their children the Phips Proclamation of 1755, one of the dozens of government-issued bounty proclamations that directed colonial settlers to hunt, scalp and kill Indigenous people for money.”
Continue reading at Bangor Daily News.
The View From Here: Native history is American history
“In “Bounty,” Dawn Neptune Adams, another co-director, tells about the scientific research that suggests that traumatic events can change DNA, leaving traits that are passed from one generation to the next. The terror of being hunted like an animal could be part of their descendants’ consciousness, whether they know the story or not.”
“When you walk on the Freedom Trail in Boston, the line between the present and the past can get hazy.
Stand on the corner where British soldiers fired on an angry mob, or sit in a pew at the Old North Church, you realize that the Boston Massacre and the midnight ride of Paul Revere are not just stories in books, but also messy events involving real people whose choices still affect our lives today.
One stop on the tour is the Old State House, which the guides will tell you is the oldest public building in Boston and was once the seat of power for the king’s vast New England holdings.”
Continue reading at Central Maine and The Portland Press Herald.
Required Reading
A shout out to a recent article about Bounty featured in The Guardian.
“Contrary to Thanksgiving mythology, two Penobscot Nation citizens and their collaborator/co-writer (Dawn Neptune Adams, Maulian Dana, with Adam Mazo) explain in the Guardian how the settler government actually offered cash for dead Native American children:
According to our research, there were at least 69 government-issued scalp edicts across the Dawnland from 1675 to 1760, and at least 50 scalp edicts issued elsewhere in the United States until 1885. The proclamations targeted specific tribes by name – and occasionally marked specific tribes safe because they were “allies” of the authorities. But neither scalpers nor authorities had much way of knowing the tribal affiliations of the people whose scalps they took, so for centuries bounties were a license to kill all Indigenous people.”
Continue reading at Hyperallergic.
Documentary film 'Bounty' confronts government-issued scalp bounties against Indigenous people
Maulian Dana and Dawn Neptune Adams are interviewed by Maine Public Radio’s Robbie Feinberg about Bounty.
“In the new short film, "Bounty," three Penobscot Nation families highlight a disturbing and little-known chapter of colonial-era history: the bounty system used to reward white settlers for the scalps of indigenous men, women and even children who had been declared their enemies.
To make the film, co-directors Maulian Dana and Dawn Neptune Adams took their children and other family members to Boston's Old State House to read the death warrant that was issued for their Penobscot ancestors in 1755. Their research has found that there were nearly 70 government-issued bounties for indigenous people in what is now New England.”
Continue reading and listen at Maine Public Radio.