The Stolen Relations project is a tribally collaborative initiative to recover, interpret, and share with the public the long-hidden history of Native American enslavement. Developed over the past decade and formally launched in May 2025 (www.stolenrelations.org), the project brings together a growing database of individual records alongside contemporary Native perspectives, artwork, music, and other resources for tribal and public use.

Join us for a presentation and discussion with two of the project’s originators – Brown University’s Linford D. Fisher, Principal Investigator, and Lorén M. Spears, founding member of the Tribal Advisory Board. Together, they will trace the history of Native enslavement and reflect on how the Stolen Relations project invites larger questions about decolonizing archives, confronting the erasure of Native histories from our national narratives, and reconnecting with this buried history.

Watercolor pictured above: “What It Was Before” by Dawn Spears

Participants

Linford D. Fisher is an Associate Professor of History at Brown University. He is the author of The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America (2012), the co-author of Decoding Roger Williams: The Lost Essay of Rhode Island’s Founding Father (2014), and the co-editor of Reading Roger Williams: Rogue Puritans, Indigenous Nations, and the Founding of America – A Documentary History (2024), as well as more than a dozen articles and chapters. Fisher is the Principal Investigator of a digital project titled Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas, which is a community-centered, tribal-collaborative project that seeks to broaden our understanding of Indigenous experiences of settler colonialism and its legacies through the lens of slavery and servitude. He has just finished a book called Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History, which will be out with Liveright/Norton in April 2026.

Lorén M. Spears, enrolled Narragansett Tribal Nation citizen and Executive Director of Tomaquag Museum, holds a master’s in education and received a Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa in 2017, from the University of Rhode Island and Doctor of Education, Honoris Causa from Roger Williams University in 2021. She is an author, artist and shares her cultural knowledge with the public through museum programs. She has contributed to a variety of publications such as Dawnland Voices, An Anthology of Indigenous Writing of New England and From Slaves to Soldiers: The 1st Rhode Island Regiment in the American Revolution. Spears co-edited a new edition of A Key into the Language of America by Roger Williams; and recently co-authored “As We Have Always Done: Decolonizing the Tomaquag Museum’s Collections Management Policy,” published in Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archive Professionals. Under her leadership Tomaquag Museum received the Institute of Museums and Library Service’s National Medal in 2016 and she has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors. Spears has served as a founding member of the Tribal Advisory Board for the Stolen Relations project.