Middletown CT, 24 July 2024 – a group of independent community historians and academic scholars met at Russell Library to form a Wangunk Studies Working Group, a body of individuals working together to focus on research and scholarship about the Wangunk, the Native people indigenous to a large portion of central Connecticut. Founding convenor J. Kēhaulani Kauanui approached Wangunk elder Gary Red Oak O’Neil with the idea of forming a group that could serve as a network to share research-related resources, workshop scholarly writings, and eventually institutionalize a structure along the lines of a Wangunk Studies Research Council. 

The project is one Kananui had dreamed of years earlier when she collaborated with O’Neil on a service-learning course she taught in partnership with the Middlesex County Historical Society, called “Decolonizing Indigenous Middletown,” at Wesleyan University. O’Neil – who is a direct descendant of Jonathan Palmer (erroneously referred to as “the last Wangunk”) – wholeheartedly supported the plan. Excited by the energy at the initial meeting, he noted: “This is a unique group, a healthy cross-section of individuals engaged in Wangunk historical research as well as related Native and Black history…and that really came through in our collective vision already.” Among other projects, including the development of a Wangunk archive, O’Neil hopes that the working group will assist in developing a curriculum focused on the Wangunk to be adopted in elementary and middle schools throughout the region. Members agreed on the importance of broad education for the general public along with several other tangibles to prioritize, including a website that would include a digital archive of primary and secondary source materials.

Another participant, Paul Grant Costa, the Executive Editor and Director of the Native Northeast Research Collaborative, which has a growing collection of Wangunk digital heritage items, highlighted the goal of providing information about the Wangunk, their presence on the land, and the diaspora of Native communities in the late 18th Century.  “This collaborative effort,” he said, “may help us understand how Indigenous people along the Connecticut River survived when their reservations did not.” Katherine Hermes, the publisher of Connecticut Explored and professor of history, emerita, at Central Connecticut State University, reflected: “The working group will ensure that the Wangunk are restored to their rightful significant place in Connecticut’s history. I’m excited for this opportunity because people are putting together pieces of a historical puzzle: who was this numerous, federated tribe with diplomatic ties throughout the northeast and why were they written out of our history?” As Timothy Ives, an archaeologist working in the field of cultural resources management, put it: “This exciting and intellectually diverse group is sure to open many doors to the past.”

Besides Kauanui (who will be leaving Wesleyan for Princeton University in the Fall), O’Neil, Grant-Costa, Hermes, and Ives, other scholars who took part in the founding meeting included: Khalil Anthony Johnson, Jr., Lucianne Lavin, Jeffers Lennox, Alexandra Maravel, Jesse Nasta, Jim Sarbaugh, Deborah Dickson Shapiro, Vicki Welch, and Tom Wickman.