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PITTSFIELD — The Berkshire County Historical Society has received a $6,000 grant from the Berkshire County Education Task Force in support of a new…
Nearly $150,000 in federal grants, including a match by six Berkshire County nonprofit organizations, will fund interpretive programs and projects exploring the history and heritage of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Tribe. The indigenous community’s original 18th century homelands were in South Berkshire, northwest Connecticut and the Upper Hudson Valley of New York state.
The funds appropriated by Congress, based on National Park Service recommendations, were awarded by Housatonic Heritage, which has offices in Stockbridge and in Salisbury, Conn., as well as an Oral History Center at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield.
The projects supported by the grants, combined with funds raised by the local institutions on a minimum one-to-one match, include:
• Berkshire Historical Society, $1,875, for Trails and Tales at Arrowhead. The Interpretive walking trail focuses on Mohican history in the area and includes a Zoom presentation by the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Director of Historic Preservation Bonney Hartley.
• Berkshire Museum, $35,000, for Mo-he-con-e-ok: The People of the Waters that Never Stand Still, a major exhibition being curated by a Stockbridge-Munsee Community historian.
• Bidwell House Museum, Monterey, $7,300, for expanded programs related to its Native American Interpretive Trail, in conjunction with the Berkshire Museum exhibition.
• Hancock Shaker Village, $1,400, for The Shakers and Indigenous People: An interpretive signage project.
• Southern Berkshire Regional School District, $1,000 for a summer educational film documentary based on travel to Bowler, Wis., current home of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, and to various sites of significance after the Mohican-Munsee removal from their original homelands.
• Stockbridge Library Museum and Archives, $11,000, for Deeds of Our Past: The Stockbridge Indians and Colonial Bonds. The program acknowledges the Stockbridge-Munsee Community through artifacts and archival documents.
The projects are to be completed by June 30, 2022, said Dan Bolognani, executive director of Housatonic Heritage. With fundraising by the local nonprofits…
“Welcome home.”
That’s how Brian Cruey, the Trustees of Reservation Berkshires director, greeted Heather Bruegl, cultural affairs director for the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. It wasn’t just an act of kindness, but a recognition of history, as the pair helped to open “Mohican Miles,” a new exhibit at the Trustees of Reservations’ Mission House in Stockbridge. It includes artifacts and educational displays curated by the tribe’s museum in Bowler, Wis.
More than relics from the past, the exhibit is also a voice in the here and now — a real presence right on Main Street for a people who are part and parcel of the history of this land, but saw their own history systematically threatened by the expanding American empire. The Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians now resides in Wisconsin, a thousand miles from the South County town of their namesake after broken treaties and cruel dispossession forced them out of their ancestral homelands. Yet they still call this place home, a reverence for these Berkshire hills they have proudly carried through centuries of unimaginable hardship.
It is morally imperative to acknowledge this, but the Mohican Miles exhibit goes a crucial step further by not just recognizing history but allowing the tribe to tell it, relinquishing a settler-colonialist stranglehold on a rich history too often minimized in America’s founding mythos. “The whole exhibit is told in our own voice so we have a footprint on Main Street again,” Bonney Hartley, historic preservation manager for the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, told The Eagle.
The tribe has a five-year agreement with the Trustees to tell its story through the Mission House exhibit, a project made possible by the hard work and cooperation of local and tribal historians and advocates. At the exhibit’s opening, Ms. Hartley singled out former Stockbridge police chief and local history buff Rick…
STOCKBRIDGE — For descendants of the town’s original settlers, the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians, a return to their ancestral homelands always packs a powerful, emotional punch.
That was especially evident last week, as several tribal members dedicated a new public exhibit at the Trustees of Reservations’ Mission House at 19 Main St. Artifacts from the Mohican Nation’s archives went on display, curated from their museum in Bowler, Wis., in the area where the descendants have resided since the 1850s, after their forced exile from Stockbridge and a long westward journey, enduring tremendous hardship.
In the 1730s, after the 125-member tribe arrived from New York’s Upper Hudson Valley, Stockbridge — it originally was named Indian Town — was settled as a missionary community for the Mohicans and English to coexist and co-govern. The Rev. John Sergeant, an English settler, created a mission house in the town to promote Christianity.
The Stockbridge-Munsee Community now has a five-year agreement with the Trustees to tell its story through the Mission House exhibit, said Bonney Hartley, historic preservation manager for the tribe. “The whole exhibit is told in our own voice so we have a footprint on Main Street again,” she explained.
Stockbridge native Trudy Fadding, a rising junior at Williams College, worked with the tribe’s historical preservation office in Williamstown to help develop the exhibit.
Through a college internship with Hartley last winter, Fadding researched and prepared the content and text for the “Mohican Miles” exhibit panels.
1734: The 125-member Mohican tribe arrives at Indian Town (later named Stockbridge) from its ancestral homelands in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley.
1736: John Sergeant, a European settler, creates a mission house to promote Christianity.
1737: A land grant signed by Massachusetts Bay Colony “Governour” Jonathan Belcher, on behalf of King George II, gave 1/60th of the territory each to…
History is written by the victors — except in the rare instance when it is not.
In 1939, authors Christina Marquand and Sarah Sedgwick wrote, “The Stockbridge of today, swept clean of its original owners, the Indians, is what the Williams and the English families up on the hill built for us.”
In March 1736, the General Court in Boston granted six square miles (23,040 acres) on the Housatonic River north of Sheffield to the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of the Mohican Nation. In addition, six white families, “the English” — missionary John Sergeant, brothers Timothy and Joseph Woodbridge, Ephraim Williams, Ephraim Brown, and Josiah Jones — were granted 400 acres each. The Mohicans retained 90 percent, the English 10 percent of the settlement called Indian Town. Later, it would be renamed Stockbridge.
Col. John Stoddard, the surveyor, laid out 32 meadow lots along either side of the river for the Mohicans. The six “settling lots” for the English were on the hill. The Mohicans expressed concerns, even fear, but were assured by Stoddard that the law would protect them and their property.
In “The Red Man Dispossessed” (New England Quarterly, March 1994), Lion Miles traces the dispossession and ousting of the Mohicans from their land: “The Indians found the English were not content with [the land grants]. The Indians charged that the English claimed lands amounting to 4800 acres, twice the 2400 originally allocated.”
The methods of theft were various. With Williams in the lead and others following, many questionable practices were employed.
The whites purchased land from the Mohicans for outrageously low prices without first securing the approval of the General Court. The approval was required precisely to ensure fair prices.
To avoid involvement of the General Court, the English swapped land. The Mohicans did not understand relative land values and were duped. To…
Earlier this week, Xbox made the unexpected announcement that their console would be the “official console” of Battlefield 2042. This appeared to be the next step of a major partnership between EA, DICE and Microsoft. However, Xbox has now confirmed that this announcement does not mean that Battlefield 2042 will be exclusive to their console.
When Battlefield 2042 was first unveiled, during the Microsoft reveal event at E3, it was apparent that EA had partnered with Microsoft to some extent to market their upcoming release. Earlier this week, this partnership became clearer, when a new press release stated that the Xbox Series S and Series X consoles would be the; “official consoles of Battlefield 2042.”
The press release was somewhat vague, stating simply that this partnership would; “ensure that the next entry in the Battlefield franchise is the best one yet”. The statement did not offer any details as to how the game might utilise Xbox hardware in particular, receive extra support from Microsoft, etc. However, it appears to be one of five major partnerships which EA and DICE have entered into for Battlefield 2042. The other four partners are NVIDIA, Logitech, Polaris, and WD_BLACK. Once more, no firm details are yet available regarding what these partnerships will actually mean in practice.
Because of the vagueness of the press release, there was some confusion among fans, who took it to mean that Battlefield 2042 would now be Xbox exclusive. However, Xbox’s Senior Marketing Manager John Munsee has now said on Twitter that this will not be the case. Munsee clarified that the partnership is about; “marketing, branding, gameplay capture, etc.” rather than exclusivity….
The Mission House exhibit shares the history and culture of the Stockbridge–Munsee Mohican Nation. Photo: Brian Cruey
STOCKBRIDGE — From the banks of the Konkapot River to the cascading waters of Umpachene Falls, the history of the Stockbridge–Munsee Mohican Nation runs deep in Berkshire County. Conversations surrounding the origins of the federally recognized Tribal Nation in Wisconsin — which began in the Hudson and Housatonic River Valleys of the Northeast — have not always been as audible as the rushing bodies of water named for the leaders of two Housatonic Mohican villages in 1734.
Today, 165 years after The Nation was forcibly relocated to what are now the towns of Red Springs and Bartelme in Shawano County, Wisconsin (a result of the Treaty of 1856), a new exhibit at The Mission House Museum gives voice not only to Mohican history and culture, but to land as a source of traditions and identity, and tackles the repercussions of an entire group being forcibly uprooted from their ancestral home.
“We are excited that we have a place to call ours to tell our history, our way. The history that Mohican Nation has in Stockbridge is significant and we are grateful to be able to tell it,” said Heather Bruegl, cultural affairs director for the Stockbridge–Munsee Community, about “Mohican Miles,” the exhibit opening July 2 at The Mission House. Created through collaboration with The Trustees of Reservations, the exhibit covers a wide range of topics, including an overview of Mohican history, the Tribe’s historic relationship with The Trustees, information about the community today, the work…
Yesterday it was revealed that Xbox is the “official console of Battlefield 2042“, but we had no idea what that meant. It seems not many other people did either, considering the game’s not an exclusive. Somebody posed the question to an Xbox exec who revealed all on social media. Unfortunately, it’s not that exciting.
Josh Munsee, the senior marketing manager at Xbox, was asked on Twitter what it means by Xbox being the official console of Battlefield 2042. Munsee elaborated, revealing that all it essentially means is “marketing, branding, gameplay capture, etc.”
When asked if this was a usual practice, Munsee added: “It was part of a bigger series of announcements they made so maybe not “usual” but in context of listing full partnership announcements, not out of place.”
marketing, branding, gameplay capture, etc.— Josh Munsee (@joshmunsee) June 30, 2021
It was part of a bigger series of announcements they made so maybe not “usual” but in context of listing full partnership announcements, not out of place. I’ve seen maybe games do this.— Josh Munsee (@joshmunsee) June 30, 2021
Whether anything else comes out of this slogan remains to be seen, but it seems pretty tied down to being just simple marketing jargon – a theory we proposed when it came about. We’ll learn more about Battlefield 2042 in the coming weeks, especially with the EA Play Live event coming up on July 22, so maybe we’ll get further clarification there.
How do you feel about Xbox being “the official console of Battlefield 2042”? Let us know in the comments below.
In June 2020, Bruce Kettler, director of the Indiana State Department of Agriculture, saw a good challenge coming. He anticipated receiving roughly $4 million from the federal CARES Act passed to aid in COVID-19 relief.
“We considered ideas, and assisting meat processors in the state soon came to the top of the list of things we should do,” Kettler says. “Many smaller meat-processing operations in Indiana were adversely affected by the COVID-19 shutdown. This looked like an opportunity to help them recover, upgrade equipment, perhaps expand and, at the same time, improve conditions for worker safety.”
The money came from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, and in a few short months, the Indiana Meat Processing Expansion and Development Program through ISDA became reality. But it wasn’t an easy process.
“We had to put together a program, promote it and get the money actually spent by Dec. 30, 2020,” Kettler says. “That’s a large undertaking when you are talking about a grant program.”
Several divisions of state government played a big role, including the lieutenant governor’s office and the Office of Management and Budget, Kettler says. They also worked closely with the Indiana Meat Packers and Processors Association. Darla Dewig, whose family owns a meat processing facility in Gibson County, Ind., is the executive director.
“We were happy to come alongside and get this program going for our members,” she says. “There were real needs for more capacity, and for upgrading facilities to enhance worker safety.”
It was September 2020 before all the details were worked out for the grant program. Nevertheless, ISDA received 60 applications from Indiana meat processors, requesting $6,810,732. Forty projects were approved and completed, with the state investing $3,784,293.74. Indiana in turn received the money from federal funds through the CARES Act.
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