Down to the wire, don't let us down!

As many of you know Wes Ennis and I have been working on a documentary about the Mashpee Nine, a story of injustice, outrage, activism, and vindication that emboldened cultural pride and integrity for the Mashpee Wampanoag in 1976.

Wes and I posed in front of the green screen with
Bruzzy Hendricks interviewing him about his experience.

Over the weekend donations to our Kickstarter campaign that began on May 15 put us over the $10,000 mark toward our $12,000 goal. Wes and I want to thank everyone who has pledged in amounts that range from $10 to $1,000. Each of you represents a desire to shine a light on social justice and preserve this story for the next generation.

But as of today, with six days to go, we are nearly $2,000 shy of our goal.  If you are unfamiliar with this kind of crowd source online backing for entrepreneurial projects, a pitch is made and the goal must be reached by the end of the campaign - in our case June 15 - or nothing is awarded.

Some of you have asked a very legitimate question. What is the money needed for?

I am a freelance journalist and scholar of Wampanoag history and principal owner of SmokeSygnals. Wes is a freelance photojournalist and filmmaker with Wes Ennis Films. We have teamed up with help from the Indian Spiritual and Cultural Training Center Inc. to produce a half hour film to be distributed in 2016 in time for the 40^th anniversary of the raid on 12 Acres on Mashpee Pond that inspired this story. You can learn more about the project on the website for Mashpee Nine: The Beat Goes On.

The cost to produce even a low budget documentary film ranges anywhere between $1,000 per minute to $3,000 per minute depending on the scope of the story and scale of production. The research, writing, scheduling locations and interviews, and gathering consents has been largely my job.

Wes has been collecting and editing video of interviews and events with his team and equipment that bills out at up to $3,000 per day on commercial projects.

Each of us have donated countless hours to this project to date, time we know we will never be paid for. As committed as we are to finishing we cannot afford to neglect our professional bottom line indefinitely. We each need to support ourselves, pay employees, and finance support services.

At the end of the day the finished product, Mashpee Nine: The Beat Goes On will be debuted in Mashpee for our home audience, shown at film festivals, shared with tribes nationally, and with any luck at all will be aired on public television.

An initial donation of $10,000 from our Friend and generous supporter Rachel Carey Harper who is also passionate about justice got us on our way. In addition I have also submitted two grant proposals and am working on a third.

The success of this Kickstarter campaign will keep this dream alive as we seek the remaining funding to finish the film.

Thanks to everyone for all your support and consideration. 

*In order to count toward our goal all donations must be made on the Kickstarter site. Anyone having difficulty can contact me directly and we will find a way to facilitate your donation online. 

19th Annual Wampanoag Ball: A fun time had by most

A week ago I was pretty excited to put on the new cat dress my daughter insisted I buy for the Wampanoag Ball. Not exactly satin and tulle but fun. I was a little afraid it might seem like I didn't take the dress code seriously but both the dress and the ball were perfect and I had an amazing time dancing with my husband who wore his tuxedo. Too bad the headlines didn't reflect what a great event it really was. I wrote the following response to set the record straight that appeared in the Cape Cod Times this morning.

~ ~ ~

Nineteen years ago with a small group of Wampanoag women I started the Mashpee Wampanoag Winter Ball with the intention of having an event that celebrated our pride in our heritage and honored our families and community friendships. It was an instant success. After 10 years on the ball committee I stepped aside to allow a new generation of party planners and fundraisers to manage the event, and they have done an outstanding job.

Those inside the ballroom at the Sea Crest Resort Hotel in North Falmouth on March 21 night enjoyed what I believed was the best Wampanoag Ball ever, and I have attended every one.

From our humble beginnings at the old Sons of Italy, where members of the ball committee shucked oysters in our fancy ball gowns, gave out our first set of awards, danced the night away to music spun by my disc jockey brother Robert Peters, this year’s event had the same original intent with a upscale flair.

The hall was beautifully decorated with floral and balloon arrangements. The food was plentiful and amazing. The ceremony opened with our traditional drummers who performed an honor song for our awardees. A live band shared the stage with my brother, who was back with new tunes and his classic closing rendition of Earth Wind and Fire’s “Brazilian Rhyme.”

How terribly unfortunate that a few bad actors had to steal the spotlight. There is no excuse for that.

The March 23 headline about the Mashpee Wampanoag should have been about money raised at the ball for a playground and a charity event at the Tribal Government Center, where a sold-out crowd was entertained by the Harlem Rockets and raised money to support our elders. Instead, the Page One story was about fights, an overcrowded elevator and four people arrested. I do not blame the media for that: I blame a lot of poor decisions and actions both on the part of those involved in the supposed “melee” and on an overzealous law enforcement response that was both insensitive and inflammatory.

After the last dance I exited the ballroom escorting my elderly neighbor, who happens to have multiple sclerosis, to meet my husband at the hotel entrance with the car. I could not help but notice a large police and security presence but didn’t see or hear any sign of a fracas. Instead of finding my husband and the car in front of the hotel I was met by about a dozen officers and security and found the otherwise easy flow of the pickup circle completely blocked with at least half a dozen police cars. The officers seemed to be milling about waiting for something to happen and had no interest in the obvious obstruction they had created to the drive-up circle function as an orderly exodus from the event. As a result I had to pace around in the cold and search for my husband with my elderly disabled neighbor for about 15 minutes while police ignored us. I’m sure all of this can be confirmed on the hotel security video. Finally, a member of the ball committee came to assist me and told me that there was a disturbance on the second floor among some who had rooms and that it had been made even more contentious with police who asked why the Wampanoag don’t have their events in Mashpee, the implication being we are unwelcome in Falmouth.

While even the hotel manager said the police response was overblown, police insensitivity to the large majority of attendees and provocative remarks to an already insurgent group on the second floor made matters worse. Police also complained that the majority of those trying to get to hotel rooms were intoxicated. It should not be lost on anyone that many got rooms because they knew they would be celebrating and wanted to avoid drinking and driving.

At the end of the day, the resulting stain on the Wampanoag Ball is undeserved. A lot of lessons are to be learned, not the least of which is that we as a tribal community need to determine who is responsible for bad behavior, hold them accountable and teach them the value of being respectful.

Ironically, I have the same advice for the responding law enforcement who ignored the needs of law-abiding and cooperative guests, unnecessarily encumbered those trying to leave, and made derogatory and inflammatory comments to an already angry and unruly group.

I personally look forward to the 20th Annual Wampanoag Ball next March at the Sea Crest Resort.

Cow tipping and cotton picking: revolutionary concepts in social justice

It appears the United States has itself in quite a kerfuffle with racist Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy. Seems Bundy, who by the way believes Negroes should never have been emancipated, has ignored his responsibility to pay grazing fees on federal land where his cattle have roamed for more than 20 years.

We Mashpee Wampanoag can relate to this story having set precedent in 1833 and perhaps can provide some guidance to the government. You see the tribe was in possession of hundreds of acres of well-stocked woodlands that were pretty attractive to our neighbors in Cotuit. Those white neighbors cut a deal with a white minister to harvest Mashpee trees for fuel over the objections of the tribe which got nothing out of the deal.

The tribe made several polite requests to the Cotuit interlopers, namely Will and Joe Sampson, to get out of Mashpee and go cut their own trees but the brothers were persistent and ignored the ultimatum to cease and desist as of July 1, 1833. On that day a group of Wampanoag men confronted the Sampsons, tipped their carts of timber over and ran them out of town.

So here is what I recommend the government do, engage in a bit of sophomoric cow tipping. That will teach him right?

But no, hold your horses. True to form far to the rightteabaggers have jumped on Bundy’s flag waving bandwagon upholding his right to do what ever the hell he wants on federal land.

Oh, did I mention we had that problem here in Mashpee back in 1833?

Those fine upstanding citizens of Cotuit, the Sampson brothers, and Reverend Phineas Fish, paid by Harvard University to minister the gospel to the Indians all assumed they had the right to overrule the tribe’s wishes because the Plantation of Mashpee was essentially federal land.

Ironically Bundy also argues his constitutional right to federal land even while the flag waving bigoted moron also proclaims the US government does not exist.

Especially when it
really is hate speech.

And while defending his right to be lawless on land he claims as his personal manifest destiny, Bundy has reintroduced the concept of slavery as a modern day solution to the social ills that apparently only plague “negroes.”

Really?! When all else fails, apply the rule of racism and oppression to somehow elevate your integrity? What an interesting albeit revealing non sequitur that has many of Bundy’s conservative confederates now running for the hills.

(Cant you just see Senator Dean Heller’s press secretary now, pointing fingers and asking who didn’t check Bundy’s background for obvious Klan connections or possible kinship to Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson?)

But as they scramble to deflect any association with this imbecile, they hold tight to the ideal that somehow patriotism is linked to a God given right to take land by adverse possession. A concept characterized in Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot’s statement about Bundy’s stand.

"I am deeply concerned about the notion that the Bureau of Land Management believes the federal government has the authority to swoop in and take land that has been owned and cultivated by Texas landowners for generations," 

Hmmm, did he really suggest that the government has no right to take land owned and cultivated by indigenous landowners? What a novel interpretation of the law. 

Oh, by the way, the Indians involved in the 1833 revolt were thrown in jail. Cow tipping might not be a good idea.