For centuries, Europeans and Euro-Americans have wielded legal mechanisms to exert control over Indigenous territories in Massachusetts. These laws were instrumental in stripping the Nipmuc people of all but 3.5 acres of their ancestral lands. The year 1627 marked the onset of colonial dominance over the natural “resources” of present-day Massachusetts. By the 1950s, the implementation of conservation laws and regulations commenced in response to the relentless exploitation and degradation perpetrated by the colonizers and their descendants. A study of Indigenous history in Massachusetts will find no evidence of the wanton destruction of ecosystems; rather, such actions are distinctly associated with Europeans and Euro-Americans. Within Euro-American culture, a prevailing belief endures that land, and its inhabitants, exist solely for human exploitation, denying their reality as living beings.

Today, Indigenous communities in Massachusetts, including the Nipmuc, face significant barriers to land acquisition due to the lingering fear and prejudice harbored by Euro-Americans. Unlike their Euro-American counterparts, the Nipmuc did not engage in wholesale deforestation, drive animal populations to extinction, or destroy ecosystems. They did not contaminate waterways, pollute the air, or encroach upon every available inch of land with structures. These destructive actions are distinctly characteristic of Euro-American practices, in stark contrast to Nipmuc history, culture, values, and beliefs. The refusal to sell land to the Nipmuc people, predicated on apprehensions about their stewardship, reflects a projection of Euro-American behaviors and attitudes onto Nipmuc culture.

This reminder serves a dual purpose: firstly, to deter future Nipmucs from adopting a Euro-centric approach towards our non-human counterparts, and secondly, to reassure landowners and others that the Nipmuc people have no intention of treating the ecosystems within our ancestral lands in a manner aligned with Euro-American practices.

Finally, decisions made today should result in a sustainable world seven generations from now.

Aquene, Cher