Reparations for Chaubunagungamaug Nipmuc

UPDATE!  On April 27, 2024  Chaubunagungamaug Band of Nipmuc entered into a relationship with the Reparations Collective to receive reparations payments.   

On Saturday, April 27, I had the honor of accompanying my friend and colleague Teegrey Iannuzzi to a meeting with the tribal council of the Chaubunagungamaug Band of the Nipmuc in Dudley, MA. Teegrey, who lives in Shutesbury, is a founding member of the Franklin County-based Reparations Collective. We were invited to the council meeting to discuss The Collective’s proposal to establish a direct way for people living in this part of the Connecticut River Valley to give voluntary reparations to the Chaubunagungamaug Band, one of the state recognized tribal nations living closest to us geographically.

Last year, the Reparations Collective began collecting and distributing funds to two Black-led organizations: Kibilio (Refuge) Community and Farm & Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust

Recognizing that the relative wealth and privilege of white people in our society has been built over generations and derives not only from the forced labor of millions of enslaved African Americans but also from the violent dispossession of 98% of the land in America from its original inhabitants, the Indigenous Nations of this continent, the Reparations Collective has decided to expand its focus this year to include local reparations to the Chaubunagungamaug Band, if their tribal council were willing to accept them.

For many years, tribal council member Liz Coldwind Santana Kiser has been returning to this part of the Nipmuc’s original homelands to build relations with people who live here now through cultural events sponsored by Franklin County’s own Nolumbeka Project. At the tribal council meeting, she reminded us that her ancestors were also – like Black Africans – forcibly enslaved, their families broken up, and their relatives shipped overseas to work in infernal conditions on plantations in the West Indies, building wealth for colonial settlers and their descendants.

Teegrey emphasized that the essence of the word ‘reparations’ is the concept of repair. “It might take 500 years to repair the violence that has been done to your people,” she told the tribal council. “But we are taking a first step,” she said. “We are planting a seed.”

We are very thankful that the tribal council agreed with The Collective’s proposal, and that now, voluntary reparations can be made easily to the Chaubunagungamaug Band of Nipmuc via the Reparations Collective’s website.

This year the Reparations Collective will focus contributions for two groups-- in addition to the Nipmuc band mentioned, they are inviting people to contribute to Crossing the Waters Institute for Cultural Exchange, an international, Black-led non-profit organization dedicated to healing the wounds of slavery, which maintains a local base in Amherst, MA.

If you would like to make a contribution to this growing effort of repair, please go to: thereparationscollective.org/reparations-you to learn more, and, if you are so moved, make a contribution today.

-David Detmold, Montague, Massachusetts