2024 Faith and Land-Based Upstander Academy
Background
The Upstander Academy is an immersive learning experience for educators, museum professionals, and community members who seek a deeper understanding of the history and contemporary reality of the original peoples of the place now called the United States. Our focus is on the Native Northeast.
The Upstander Academy was founded in 2016 by Upstander Project, in partnership with the University of Connecticut’s Dodd Research Center and the Mashantucket Pequot Museum, in response to repeated teacher demand for a deeper dive into the history of the Native Northeast. With its predominantly Native faculty and a participatory, generative approach to learning and unlearning, the Upstander Academy has supported hundreds of educators to reflect deeply on the history of the land we occupy and the people who have lived here for thousands of years. Faculty are co-learners when not presenting. The Upstander Academy touches the mind, body, heart, and spirit of those who participate. While most participants in the Upstander Academy have been classroom teachers, school administrators, and museum educators, superintendents and rangers from the National Park Service have attended several academies and thereafter participated in academies to meet the unique needs of their regional staff and national leadership team.
The history of the place now called Massachusetts, being deeply rooted in the genocide and erasure of Indigenous peoples, is at the center of our inquiry during the Upstander Academy. While the origin story of the United States is often told according to events that happened here, much of what we learn is referred to as “twistory” in Indian Country. Most of us do not know about the kidnappings, enslavement, banishment, indentured servitude, and forced removal of Native youth and children across four centuries. Most of us do not know that 80 colonial laws were passed in this region that terrorized the original peoples -- children, women and men -- by placing a bounty on their scalps. Some of those who promulgated these laws worshiped in churches that still exist today. In the mid-1700s, in Portland, Maine, Reverend Thomas Smith of First Parish Church organized a scalp posse and profited from scalp bounties. Most of us do not know about fraudulent land deals that led to the dispossession and impoverishment of those who trace their ancestry back thousands of years. Most of us do not know that Native children in Massachusetts classrooms have been repeatedly told they are lying when they claim Native heritage. What does this mean for us today? At the Upstander Academy, participants learn this history from Native and non-Native faculty and have a chance to think together about strategies they can use to help their communities so we can all move forward together.
In 2023, Upstander Project was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to offer a 13-day academy, which was a resounding success. The program took place in Boston in the territory of the Massachusett tribe, in Narragansett country, in the homeland of the Mashpee Wampanoag, and at a rural retreat center in Essex, Massachusetts.
2024: a Five-day Upstander Academy in Cambridge, Massachusetts
The 2024 Faith and Land-Based Upstander Academy will take place in-person in Cambridge from June 24-28, 2024. The five-day event will be open to twenty-five people and is being designed in close consultation with faith and community leaders in Cambridge. The academy will be based at First Church in Cambridge where we will delve into the history of the land, its people, and the trauma that still resonates today for descendants of the original peoples. We will practice a somatically-informed approach to learning and unlearning the history of place. On most days, we will begin at 8am and wrap up at 5pm. Participants can either bring their own food or purchase lunch during an hourlong mid-day break. Water, coffee, tea, and snacks will be provided.
The tuition for those attending the academy will be determined by each participant according to a sliding scale: $400 - $1,000. Tuition covers the time and expertise as well as the emotional labor of Indigenous faculty and Upstander Project staff who are planning and will co-lead the event. It also covers the cost of a community meal. Those who are able to contribute more will make it possible for others to attend regardless of what they are able to pay. The full cost of running the academy comes to $1,900 per person.
The 2024 Upstander Academy is co-directed by Dr. Mishy Lesser and Roger Paul (Passamaquoddy, Wolastoq).They will be joined by others Indigenous knowledge-keepers. The academy is staffed by Jarah Botello, Upstander Project’s learning program manager.
For more information, please reach out to jarah@upstanderproject.org.
Important dates and deadlines:
January 15, 2024: applications open
March 3, 2024: application deadline
April 3, 2024: participants will be notified
April 8, 2024: selected participants must accept or decline, and pay the tuition to hold their spot
Mishy Lesser, Ed.D., (she/her) is the learning director for Upstander Project and an Emmy® award-winning researcher. She codirects the Upstander Academy. She is also a Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies Affiliate and was an Education Fellow at the Dodd Human Rights Impact at the University of Connecticut. Mishy has authored Upstander Project’s many learning and viewer guides. She is a Circle Keeper and has been featured on WBUR (Boston) and PRI/BBC’s The World. Mishy was a Fulbright Scholar in Ecuador and spent 12 years learning and working in the Andes. She is a descendant of Ashkenazi Jews whose ancestral language is Yiddish.
Roger Paul (Passamaquoddy, Wolastoq) (he/his) was born to a Passamaquoddy mother who, soon afterward, walked on to the spirit world. His father, who was Wolastoq, went to great lengths to protect him from state “child welfare” officials who wanted to send him away to a boarding school or place him in the foster care system. Thus, Roger grew up on various reservations throughout Maine and New Brunswick. His older brothers and sister were not as fortunate. They were taken and sent to the residential school at Shubenecadie. Roger holds a master’s degree in linguistics from MIT and works as a Wabanaki Languages teacher with the Penobscot Nation, the University of Maine at Orono, and the University of Southern Maine. He takes an active and diligent role towards the preservation, continuing growth, and prosperity of the Wabanaki language, culture, and people. He co-directs the Upstander Academy.
Elizabeth Solomon is an enrolled member of the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag and volunteers to represent the Massachusett Tribe in a variety of public, educational, and cultural spaces. Ms. Solomon is a frequently sought after speaker on local indigenous history and contemporary issues. She has a long-standing commitment to human rights, diversity, inclusion, and community-building.
Elizabeth E. Solomon was one of the first local Indigenous students to graduate from Harvard College ('79) after Cheeshahteaumuck and Iacoomes enrolled in 1661. She recently retired as Director of Administration at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Ms. Solomon recently completed a master’s degree in museum studies and has a strong commitment to work with Native communities and others that are currently underrepresented in museum exhibits and public history programs to assist them with bringing their voices and stories to the forefront.
gkisedtanamoogk (key-said-TAH-NAH-mook) (Mashpee Wampanoag) (he/his) is from the community of Mashpee located on what is currently called Cape Cod in Massachusetts. He served as co-chair of the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Previously, he was an adjunct instructor with the Native American Studies Program and the Peace and Reconciliation Programs on the Orono campus of the University of Maine for more than a decade.
Jarah Botello (she/her) brings more than 17 years of education experience to her role as learning program manager. Botello began her career as an actress and theater instructor in Denver. She moved to Selma, Alabama, in 2007, where she taught high school and college English and drama for eight years. In Selma, she also cofounded New Expression, an art program for students of all ages that centers on community service, activism and self-expression. From 2015 to 2018 Botello served as a Teaching and Learning Specialist for Learning for Justice, a program of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Botello and her family live in Georgia on the land of the Muscogee people.