Project Information

The Concept

Stolen Relations is a tribally collaborative project at Brown University that seeks to illuminate and understand both the role the enslavement of Indigenous peoples played in settler colonialism and its impact on the present. It was founded in 2015 by Associate Professor of History Linford D. Fisher in conjunction with the Center for Digital Scholarship. In 2019, in the project began officially collaborating with approximately thirteen regional Native nations in the Dawnland (New England). Our project seeks to recover the stories of individuals as well as educate the public on the reality of these processes. Although our sources are drawn from across the Americas, we have particular strengths in New England for now. This project is ongoing, with new research and entries for the database, as well as additional resources being added to the website.

Importance of Indigenous Enslavement

Long overlooked by scholars and almost completely unknown to the wider public, the enslavement of Indigenous peoples was a persistent and destabilizing aspect of settler colonialism that caused trauma and harm to communities and families even as it aided settler colonial expansion. The enslavement of Native Americans was a hemispheric phenomenon, perpetrated by every European colonial power during their invasion of the Americas. Scholars now estimate that between 2.5 and 5 million Natives were enslaved in the Americas between 1492 and the late nineteenth century—an astonishing number by any measure (even when compared to the approximately 10.5–12 million Africans who were brought as slaves from Africa in this same time period). These are hard realities and difficult histories, but they need to be told fully so we can start to be more honest about the history of this country and think more clearly about how to make amends moving forward. For additional resources on this history, including a concise summary of Native American slavery history, see this page.

Connecting Past and Present

While this project seeks to bring greater understanding to the past, it is important to recognize that these Indigenous nations are still here, in New England and all across the Americas, and have vibrant communities and cultural traditions. They, too, have oral histories regarding settler colonialism, displacement, Indigenous enslavement, and ongoing survival into the present that need to inform our understanding of the past; archival materials alone are insufficient. The documents, stories, interviews, artwork, and other resources will hopefully help historians, researchers, students, tribal members, and families use the information to reconstruct histories, chart networks, and make connections in ways that have never before been possible.

We are grateful for our partnerships with our Tribal Partners, as well as various Brown departments and centers listed below. Please see our Project Documentation page for more information regarding our collaborative editorial and technical decisions.

How to Contribute

We are looking to partner with individuals and institutions who are willing to send materials they have or join our research team to input materials directly. Please see our Get Involved page to learn more.