Gathering and Giving at Casey Farm

Gathering and atGiving

Casey Farm

by JANE HENNEDY Site Manager, Southern Rhode Island

Historic New England’s farm properties are excellent places to delve into what we owe to and what we need to own up to in our relationship with Indigenous peoples. The land we now cultivate at Casey Farm in Saunderstown, Rhode Island, had been cultivated by the Narragansett people for millennia until colonizers took it by force and unfair transactions. Historic New England benefits from this history of cultivation, a history that is tied to oppression, even as we strive to enlighten ourselves as well as visitors.

In 2018, we improved our museum gallery with the addition of artifacts found over the years at the farm to better reflect the story of the land. Lorén Spears, executive director of the Tomaquag Museum in Exeter, Rhode Island, led us to see how we could expand that story by adding contemporary pieces that convey the continuity and creativity of Rhode Island’s Indigenous community.

Recently, we added images of these

works of art to Casey.Farm, a new online experience. When Historic New England was awarded a $300,000 grant from National Endowment for the Humanities through the federal government’s Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to create a virtual tour in each New England state, we chose Casey Farm as the Rhode Island site. Serving more than 50,000 people annually in pre-pandemic times through our organic farm’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, farmers market, field trips, summer camps, and educational programs, we already had a store of content for the web app. Historic New England staff photographer Neil Dixon added more to the project by transforming his dynamic images into a 360-degree experience in the gallery and beyond.

We wanted to transmit original voices and images with as little filtering as possible to let the audience connect with the content. Sometimes this approach took the form of bringing the audience along virtually to pick up a CSA share or visit the animals, sometimes it meant quoting from sources and showing authentic materials. When it came to presenting an Indigenous perspective, it meant asking Spears to be our guide and partner once again.

Spears explained that her tradition is a spoken one and that she would be inspired by what she saw around her, so videos taken on site would convey her thoughts and culture better than essays or off-site videos. We developed questions for Spears so that we could add her knowledge to several parts of the virtual tour. For example, we wanted to know how she would interpret the name that Thomas Lincoln Casey gave the farm in the 1890s, “Namaukut.” We asked how we could expand on our partnership in the gallery. We asked about how Narragansett people cultivated the land traditionally. Spears answered those questions and more.

Starting in the gallery, Spears gave details and context for the Indigenous artworks, ending with the profound statement that “there is no Rhode Island history without Narragansett/Niantic history, and no U.S. history without Indigenous peoples’ history. We are the land and we are connected to this place.”

We moved outside to woodland areas and then to a stone wall, at Spears’s request. She expanded on the interdependent nature of Indigenous lifeways, explaining how all the growing things, animals, and what people often think of as inanimate objects were gifts to her ancestors and today are gifts to Spears and her family. “We think of everything in this ecosystem in a holistic way,” she says. “What is edible, what is medicinal, what is useful, and what is spiritual, and our ancestors looked at this in this way and they gave thanks daily for the gifts from the Creator. This ecosystem is full of bounty.”

Spears explained her people’s way of giving thanks for these gifts and how they have endured and thrived

PAGE 16 Sculptor Allison Newsome and artist Deborah Spears Moorehead collaborated to make “Three Sisters” Rainkeep on display here in Providence, Rhode Island. Historic New England purchased the sculpture for its Three Sisters planting bed in the Education Garden at Casey Farm in Saunderstown, Rhode Island. above: Lorén Spears, executive director of Tomaquag Museum in Exeter, Rhode Island, shares some of the history of the Casey Farm area, which is located within the ancestral homelands of the Narragansett Nation.

The Three Sisters crop at Casey Farm. The name pays homage to a Native American agricultural tradition of growing the dietary staples corn, beans, and squash—the Three Sisters.

through centuries of oppression. “As we think about this space today and how we’ve been dispossessed of this place, part of the reason we did the partnership with Casey Farm was to decolonize the space, and to remind people that, not only were we here, but we’re still here, and that Indigenous people are connected to this place, even as it’s occupied by others,” she says. [“Decolonize” refers to the work that some museums and other institutions are undertaking to reevaluate the Western/ Eurocentric dominance in their ideology and practices concerning artifacts and works of Indigenous cultures and people of color.]

We have a new opportunity to honor Indigenous lifeways through a contemporary sculpture of a rain collector titled “Three Sisters” Rainkeep. Sculptor Allison Newsome and artist Deborah Spears Moorehead, who is of Wampanoag descent, show the Eastern Woodlands story of the Sky Woman falling to earth and giving people her daughters—corn, beans, and squash—to sustain them. The artists made it for the 2020 PVD Fest in Providence, Rhode Island. Historic New England purchased it for Casey Farm’s Education Garden, which features a Three Sisters planting bed.

Gathering and then sharing the harvest is what we do at Casey Farm. By taking in what Spears and others teach us, we are brought farther along on the journey of understanding and are better able to share the manylayered stories that the land now called Casey Farm holds. You are invited to come with us and share your perspectives, too.