A Virtual Talk with Author David Silverman

The Eastham Public Library presents, No Refuge: Colonialism and the Wampanoags of Cape Cod; A Virtual Talk with Author David Silverman

This lecture will explore colonialism in the lives of the Wampanoags of Cape Cod across the centuries. Though Cape Cod managed to escape the violence of King Philip’s War of 1675-76, that should not overshadow how the English and their successors exploited Cape Wampanoags over the long term.

Together we will trace how the Wampanoags both suffered under and mitigated colonial landed expansion, Christian evangelism, debt peonage, court-ordered servitude, and racism. The fact of Wampanoag survival speaks less to the absence of destructive colonial influences on the Cape, than Wampanoag resourcefulness and certain benefits of geography.

David J. Silverman (Ph.D., Princeton, 2000) specializes in Native American, Colonial American, and American racial history. His most recent book is This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. He is also the author of Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America; Red Brethren: The Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians and the Problem of Race in Early America; and Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community among the Wampanoag Indians of Martha’s Vineyard, 1600-1871.

Register at easthamlibrary.org

This program is part of the Eastham 400 Commemoration.