Indigenous Perspectives

This month, Primary and Lower School students learned what it means to be “indigenous” with a presentation from Silvermoon LaRose, a member of the Narragansett Tribe and Assistant Director of the Tomaquag Museum in Exeter, Rhode Island. Silvermoon explored some of the history and traditions of the Narragansett, and she even taught students how to count to ten in the Narragansett language!

Archeological evidence places the Narragansett in Rhode Island for at least 20,000 years. They are an eastern woodland coastal people, traditionally living in forests by the water. Their language, also called Narragansett, is an Algonquin dialect that they share with other tribal communities in the area. Silvermoon explained that plants, animals, and people can all be indigenous or native to a particular place and that, as a native person, she can teach about the Narragansett Tribe from the first-person perspective. She highlighted the importance of perspective, noting the difference between a person’s story about their own community and experience and a third-person account.

Silvermoon asked students to share their thoughts on the difference between something traditional and contemporary. She showed the students traditional Narragansett items that she had brought from the museum and talked about the historical homes and habits of the tribe members and how they constructed their clothing and homes to adapt to the changing New England seasons. The Narragansett foraged, hunted, and fished for their food and used the natural resources in multiple ways so that very little was wasted. In the Narragansett tribe, children learned by doing, with parents and family members as the teachers. Silvermoon noted that the young Narragansett learned lots of science, or “traditional ecological knowledge,” about the environment, plants, and animals in the world around them.  

The Fay students learned how to count to ten in Narragansett and that many familiar words originated in the Narragansett language and have since become part of American English. Some of those words include squash, quahog, and moose!