HISTORY, AS THE APHORISM goes, is written by the winners. So are the tourism ads celebrating the victories 250 years later.
Massachusetts tourism officials launched an ad campaign in September, highlighting the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, and the Bay State’s historic role in a series of firsts, from the first battle in the war between the colonists and the British, to the first basketball game and being the first state to legalize same-sex marriage.
The launch of the $5 million ad campaign could be seen in Times Square and inside local Boston publications, largely focused on Paul Revere on his horse, and in an accompanying image, and Boston Dynamics’ robot dog known as “Spot.” “From the first ride to learning to walk. Our First 250 was Revolutionary,” the ad said.
But Massachusetts, as well as other states celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence, are trying to delicately grapple with how to both commemorate those anniversaries without overlooking the long-running destruction of the tribes whose existence predates US history.
The focus on firsts has largely left out the people who were here first, thousands of years before the colonists. Native Americans fought on both sides of the war, and members of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe took up arms to help the colonists, including at the Battle of Bunker Hill. The state’s name comes from the Massachusett Indigenous people, who lived by the Blue Hills, as the MA250 Instagram page noted in one post last year.
When state tourism officials were working on the ad campaign with an outside company last August, they were going over potential images to use in the overall campaign. A Native American statue on the state’s Mohawk Trail was initially in the mix, before officials opted against using it, as one of the earlier ideas proposed involved the phrase, “Our First 250 was Monumental.”
“The Native American statue is beautiful, but we have sensitivities to using this image on our launch ads given the sensitivities with the indigenous community,” wrote Sheila Green, a public relations veteran hired to coordinate the MA250, wrote in a note to colleagues and the agency handling the campaign, Proverb. “This may be something to use at a later time.”
She added: “We like the direction this ad is going. One thought is to replace this image with the attached of statues of revolutionary women including Abigail Adams and Phyllis Wheatley. There are probably other images of these statues in Boston on the Commonwealth Mall.”
Steven Peters, a citizen of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe and a marketing expert, said the company he co-owns, Smoke Sygnals, was heavily involved in another high profile celebration, Plymouth 400. The 2020 celebration focused on the founding of the colony, but also had an exhibit on the tribe that met the Pilgrims. Engagement started back in 2011, leading to programming, events, traveling exhibits and an education curriculum, he said.
He also mentioned Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s office has worked to reach out to Native American communities for Un-Monumenting, a public arts project focused on diversity.
“With the 250th, I don’t know what process has been laid out for that. I haven’t seen any engagement or outreach at this time,” he said. “I don’t know how you tell the 250th without the Wampanoag story.”
Gov. Maura Healey at the launch event outside the State House in September, nodded to Indigenous people, saying they “continue to ground us in respect for the lands and the waters, and for their stewardship over centuries. They preceded us here and we honor our Indigenous people.”
State tourism officials say they are planning programming, featuring “untold stories,” and they’ve reached out to several tribes. On the MA250 website, they’ve highlighted a March 28 event in Concord that focuses on “experiences of enslaved people and Indigenous communities to examine questions of liberty, sovereignty, and protest during the period.” Another event later this year will feature a spokesperson from the Wampanoag tribe as a part of a Plimoth Patuxet Museums collaboration.
“The Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism is committed to uplifting the stories of all communities that played a role in the American Revolution, including the Indigenous community,” Kate Fox, executive director at the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism, said in a statement. “Thoughtfully sharing these stories is essential to understanding and honoring Massachusetts’ past and present.”
Simon & Garfunkel at the Supreme Judicial Court
A recent deep-in-the-weeds ruling out of the state’s highest court, dealing with an energy facility siting issue on Cape Cod, started off on a musical note.
“’And no one dared / Disturb the sound of silence,’” began this Thursday’s opinion, written by Justice Dalila Wendlandt. “Comprised of multiple cacophonous industrial components, including two particularly loud step-up transformers, the substation at the center of the present dispute, which will connect an offshore wind farm to the New England electric grid, indubitably will not be silent.”
As all good legal scholars and law students know, it’s important to cite all your references, even well known ones from pop culture. Wendlandt dutifully did so, in a footnote, “Simon & Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence, on Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. (Columbia Records 1964).”
The unanimous court, considering a challenge by abutter Jacqueline Johnson to the Energy Facilities Siting Board’s approval of the substation, decided not to overturn the board’s decision. Johnson was able to participate fully in the three-year administrative process, the court noted, which ended with conditions including that the substation does not exceed a specific noise level at Johnson’s home.
Johnson said the promises of noise reduction could not be met, but the court determined that she did not show that the board’s decision was unsupported by substantial evidence, and so did not meet the high bar needed to prove that the decision should be overturned.
Since its approval, the project now known as New England Wind 1 has weathered tumultuous financing winds. It is now back on track, after Avangrid terminated the project in 2023 when economic conditions shifted.
The concerns of people like Johnson, affected by major power infrastructure projects, are taken into consideration under a new fund to help people and groups intervene in the long and costly energy siting process. The outcome in this case, though, supports the Healey administration’s contention that the inclusion of more voices in the process is not necessarily a death knell, or a silencing, for these green energy substations.
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