R.I. museum urged to rethink historical exhibit
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The name of the gallery, 'Coming to Rhode Island,' is problematic in and of itself. It suggests the area we know today as the State of Rhode Island has always been called such. Of course, this isn't true. It wasn't even true for the first Europeans to make contact.
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The Wampanoag, Narragansett, and other Algonquian-speaking peoples called the large island at the mouth of Narragansett Bay 'Aquidneck.' After Puritan leader Roger Williams established Providence Plantations in 1636, European settlers consolidated their neighboring communities under the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. By the mid-1640s, Europeans
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The Colonial English disrupted Indigenous trade networks, dismantled political structures, and waged war on local tribes and nations. They
By calling the gallery 'Coming to Rhode Island' and foregrounding the English as the earliest inhabitants of the land, Providence Children's Museum perpetuates a remarkable power imbalance. 'Coming to Rhode Island' makes only passing mention of the non-white people who occupied the area since time immemorial. It also makes no reference to Aquidneck.
In addition, 'Coming to Rhode Island' neglects the Africans who were bound and trafficked to New England as slaves in the early 17th century. By the 1640s, Rhode Islanders were
They prohibited slavery as bondage for life and implemented a 10-year limit on their bondage, but the law went largely unenforced. Other measures like taxes on imported enslaved people and strict customs inspections were enacted but likewise went unenforced. By the mid 1700s, the community of
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Rhode Island's posture toward Indigenous, African, and enslaved peoples is a dark chapter in its history, but it's hardly unique. Indigenous dispossession of land and the institution of slavery helped generate great wealth and prosperity around New England. It's a complex dynamic that poses a number of challenges and questions about who lived here, when they lived here, what happens when different cultural identities collide, and whose story ultimately gets told. There's no better place to consider these questions than a learning environment like that at the Providence Children's Museum.
The museum made positive strides when it included stories of local Hispanic communities, but its work is not finished. If it's going to interpret the history of immigration in Rhode Island – which is a worthy topic of exploration, and an important one for youths to grasp – it needs to include the bad and the ugly along with the good. To round out the contours of the narrative, it needs to shed light on the darkness. To tell the full story, it must
Nick DeLuca is a public historian from New England, resident of Rhode Island, and experience coordinator at the Providence Children's Museum.
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