Joining reinterpretation to reparations

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1752, on land cultivated by Nonotuck and other Indigenous people for millennia, Moses and Elizabeth Porter established a farmstead along the Connecticut River in Western Massachusetts. This property remained in the family for 200 years, becoming a museum in 1949. A traditional historic house museum for decades, more recently the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum has shifted focus to the site’s enslaved, indigenous, and hired laborers. More inclusive storytelling is necessary, but the museum also seeks more direct impacts. In spring 2021 the museum collaborated on a Reparative Farming project enabling Somali refugees to grow their own crops. The museum plans to expand this pilot-project into a permanent program for communities of color – enacting links between racial and environmental justice. This co-authored provocation situates this fledgling project within larger interpretive genealogies, suggesting ways small museums can begin to confront the histories of colonization, enslavement, and displacement they narrate.