Please join the Mattapoisett Museum, 5 Church Street, on September 4, from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm for its Annual Meeting. After a brief business meeting, noted historian and author, and member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag, Linda Coombs, will speak on the subject of historical erasure – the systematic reduction or elimination of the presence of a people when history is being related by their colonizers of the original people. She will also discuss the Mattapoisett Museum’s upcoming permanent exhibit about the Wampanoag, of which she was the primary author.
The upcoming exhibit, titled “From the Land to the Shore: The Wampanoag of Mattapoisett” will explore the history and culture of the Wampanoag People who have continuously inhabited this part of New England for at least 12,000 years. Told from the Wampanoag perspective, in Coombs voice, it follows the story of the Early Contact Period and Colonization through King Philip’s War and its outcomes to the Wampanoag culture and community as they exist today. The exhibit weaves in local, Tri-Town-Area-related examples of broader historical narratives whenever possible. However, the scarcity of these examples may actually be pointed to as an example, in and of itself, of the thorough nature of historical erasure.
Coombs began her museum career in an internship at the Boston Children’s Museum, and later worked there in the Native American Program. Coombs also worked for 30 years in the Wampanoag Indigenous Program (WIP) of Plimoth Plantation, now called Plimoth Patuxet, including 15 years as WIP’s Associate Director; and 9 years at the Aquinnah Cultural Center. Presently she does independent museum consulting and cultural presentations.
In her latest book, Colonization and the Wampanoag Story, Coombs aims to educate students about the Wampanoag perspective of the European colonization of New England. It was published in September of 2023, as one of five titles in Penguin Random House’s Race to the Truth series of similarly themed stories intended for middle grades. She is also co-author (with Mark Skipworth) of The Massachusetts Chronicles: The History of Massachusetts from Earliest Times to the Present Day, published in 2020 in partnership with Plymouth 400. It aims to provide a new way of looking at Massachusetts history, incorporating perspectives from both the English settlers and the Indigenous peoples.