When Faries Gray considers the tangled history of the relationship between Massachusetts’ Indigenous peoples and the “colonists” whose descendants and inheritors now occupy the land, he sees, at best, a trail of broken promises and unfulfilled potential.
At worst, he sees a deliberate attempt at historical erasure, and an ongoing effort by those in power to make him, and those who look like him, feel like they are less than fully human, and not deserving of equal protection under the law.
He sees it in the ongoing acceptance of school mascots that cartoonishly render native peoples, obscuring and minimizing their culture and achievements…