Brown Bag Webinar feat. Dr. David Weed, Sowams Heritage Area Project

Dr. David Weed, Coordinator, Sowams Heritage Area Project
Creating a New National Heritage Area in East Bay, RI and nearby Massachusetts

Sowams, the homeland of the Pokanoket Tribal Nation and their leader, the Massasoit Ousamequin, is the setting for one of our nation’s origin stories. It is the critical alliance that established 50 years of peace between the Indigenous tribes that had farmed, fished, and hunted the region for millennia – and the English settlers arriving on the Mayflower. Sowams is also ground zero for the fracturing of that alliance during King Philip’s War, a devastating conflict that ultimately encompassed Indigenous and colonial communities throughout New England. Dr. David Weed, who is leading an effort to create a new National Heritage Area in East Bay RI and nearby Massachusetts, will describe the events in the 17th century that has shaped the complex history of the region up to the present day. (He says the story about this is best told by author Nathaniel Philbrick in Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War.)

Dr. David Weed is a retired clinical psychologist living in Warren, RI, who became interested in the history of the 17th century in and around his community starting in 2007 with a widely accessed web site about King Philip’s War.