Native Providence: Memory, Community, and Survivance in the Northeast

In the early 20th century, Providence, Rhode Island, had the third-largest Native American population in the US. "Native Providence" explores the stories of these Native residents during a time when European Americans claimed they had vanished, revealing their diverse routes to the city and the creation of urban homelands.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 464 pages
Publication date: 01 September 2023
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

In the early 1900s, Providence, Rhode Island, a city of modest size, boasted the third-largest Native American population in the United States. This remarkable community, known as Native Providence, weaves together the stories of its Native residents during a pivotal period in history. It explores the challenges and complexities they faced as European Americans claimed that Northeast Natives had largely vanished. Despite being denied their rightful place in modernity, men, women, and children from Narragansett, Nipmuc, Pequot, Wampanoag, and other ancestral communities embarked on diverse and intricate journeys to establish their homes in Providence. They formed connections, carved out livelihoods, and created vibrant neighborhoods that became their urban havens—new places filled with meaningful attachments. Historical and anthropological research, conducted in archives, government offices, historical societies, libraries, and museums, as well as community memories, geography, and landscape, provide a rich tapestry of accounts of individual lives and family histories.

Patricia E. Rubertone delves into the resilience of the Native people who either remained, left, or briefly called Providence home. They faced involuntary displacement due to urban renewal and made their presence known in the city and the broader Indigenous and settler-colonial worlds. Through their everyday experiences, Rubertone reimagines Providence's past and sheds light on the documentary and spatial tactics of inequality that erased Native people from the majority of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century history.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781496236869