Q&A: Lorén Spears Previews Major Expansions for the Tomaquag Museum

Photograph by Jesse Burke

The Tomaquag Museum has always been a part of life for Lorén Spears. A member of the Narragansett Indian Tribe, Spears grew up frequenting her grandparents’ Dovecrest Indian Restaurant on the same Exeter property where the museum sits today. Her mother was a volunteer director in the 1970s, and Spears served as a board member long before the museum had any paid staff.

In 2003, Spears became Tomaquag’s first paid director, now overseeing a staff of fifteen. Under her watch, the museum has formalized its Indigenous Empowerment Center, expanded its outreach programs and received the prestigious National Medal for Museum and Library Service. Next year, museum staff anticipate breaking ground on a new, state-of-the-art facility at the University of Rhode Island to ensure its reach for generations to come.

With the new location projected to open in the next couple years, Spears reflects on the organization’s history and the importance of maintaining a voice for Indigenous peoples today.

Can you tell us about your background and how you came to this work? I’m Narragansett, which is Rhode Island’s only federally recognized tribal nation. My grandparents owned and operated Dovecrest Indian Restaurant from 1960 to 1984. Being a young child at that time, in the early 1970s is when Tomaquag Museum moved from Hopkinton in a place called Tomaquag Valley, which is how we got our name, to Arcadia here in Exeter. My mother, Dawn Dove, was the volunteer director in the ’70s, and she actually helped the museum get its 501(c)(3) documentation. As a child, I participated in the cultural programming, if you will, on the different thanksgivings and ceremonial events that we hosted, like Strawberry Thanksgiving. We were originally founded [in 1958] by Eva Butler, who was an anthropologist, and Princess Redwing, who was Narragansett and Wampanoag.

In 2003, I had been working as a public school teacher in the Newport Public School District. And my two oldest children were little at the time. I just wasn’t happy with what was happening with them in school. It just seemed to be repeating the same issues that Native children seem to have generation after generation, and I decided I thought I could do it better, so I came to the Tomaquag board and asked could I open a school under their umbrella? In 2003, we opened the Nuweetooun School. We got to be part of the Rhode Island Foundation’s Expansion Arts Program, and I feel that that was one of the many things that was very instrumental in helping us grow.

When you opened the school (which closed in 2010), you also took on directorship of the museum. Did you ever think you would be in this role of educating the public about Native culture? Interestingly enough, I feel like because of  the Tomaquag Museum and because of my grandparents’ restaurant and gift shop, I’ve been educating the public about Native history, culture, the arts and the environment and ecological knowledge my whole life, but I never thought I was actually going to do that as a job. I came into it from an educator mindset, which works for delivering programs. But we had to learn to develop and run a nonprofit organization, and I think early on, we thought that meant you had to be poverty-stricken. That you had to be poor to be a nonprofit. I think it took us a while to understand, ‘What does it take to run and build and grow?’ A nonprofit does not have to be poverty-stricken. It just means the money is going back into the program.

How did the new museum come about?

It has unfolded over a long period of time. We have dreamed of a new museum for years, even back into the mid-80s and early ’90s. When we set out to look for a partner, we vetted twelve sites. Our goal was because we don’t own this location and because this is very rural and you can’t get here without a car — there’s not public transportation here — we’re looking for something that’s visible. Tourists, when they come to Rhode Island, can find it fairly easily. We wanted it to be accessible. But still rural, because we want people to continue to be able to do the [Traditional Ecological Knowledge] walks and talks and kayaks that we do where we connect them to the land. We visited four sites by DEM, we went to four sites in Charlestown, we went to three sites at URI, we went to one site at the Rhode Island Historical Society, and after vetting all of those spaces and places, we ended up forging a partnership with the University of Rhode Island.

What will the new space look like?

We wanted to have an education center that had a couple of classrooms in it where you could do the workshops and classes. The main exhibit gallery, it’s not the Smithsonian, but it is significantly bigger than what we currently have, and the exhibits will be more state-of-the-art and interactive. Right now, we have over 1,000 what you might term artifacts [on display] — which we decolonize as belongings because they belong to our communities — but sometimes they don’t get spotlighted because there’s so much in a particular exhibit. It’s a little over 12,000 in total. There is the Archive Collections Research Center, and it will also have some kind of public-facing reading room so that teachers, parents and trusted parties could come in and just browse the literature. There’s also a temporary exhibit gallery, and then we have the Indigenous Empowerment Center workshop classroom spaces. Then there’s the museum store, which will be bigger than what we currently have and allow us to really expand the Native-owned businesses nationwide that we partner with as well as the Native artists that we represent in the store. And then there’s a cafe. It’s going to be about Indigenous foods [and] Indigenous lifeways related to the foods. We also have an outdoor classroom and outdoor exhibits.

What are you hoping visitors will be able to experience at the new museum that they can’t necessarily experience here?

It’s more holistic. Our [current] space is small, but there you’re going to be able to peek into the Archive Collections Research Center or have the behind-the-scenes tour that you can’t have here. You’re going to have a chance to eat Indigenous foods, you’ll have many more opportunities to explore Indigenous culture and support Native artists and culture-bearers. You’ll be able to experience a state-of-the-art exhibit gallery and also go down the hall and see a Native art exhibition or a different temporary exhibition that’s traveled here from across the country. They’re going to be able to come hear our stories, see our stories, feel our stories, experience our stories in ways that they can’t here.

Are there particular stories you’re looking forward to sharing in the new space?

I have always wanted to do a wedding exhibit. We have an amazing wedding dress from the 1860s that’s an Indigenous wedding dress. We have lots of photographs of people getting married in the late 1800s, early 1900s. We have a wedding dress from 1970, which is quite funky. You can tell the time period by the dress — it’s blue with really long fringe and red and yellow beads and a mini dress. I just feel like there’s a story to tell. There’s a human story thinking about people getting married, then there’s family, there’s community, there’s continuation. There’s a basket that my grandmother gave me that was a wedding basket. It looks like a big wedding cake.

Will it be bittersweet for you to leave the Exeter property, given your family’s history here?

I definitely think so, but I think it’s necessary for Tomaquag to truly be the cultural education destination that it’s meant to be. We get a lot of tourists even now, but people have to be adventurous. You’ve got to go way off the beaten path. When you’re driving by URI on your way to Newport, you can stop in the [new] Tomaquag Museum. When we get to Kingston, it’s just a little bit more accessible for folks. We want the public to understand how important and intrinsic the history of the First Peoples is in the formation of this state and country. And that without us, it wouldn’t necessarily be the Rhode Island that it is today.

How has interest in Native history and traditions changed over the years?

The way that we are choosing to represent our Native culture to the public is changing their perceptions. I think there was a time where we just wanted to be seen, and so there was a lot more performative-based educational programming. Not that there’s not any of that today, but I think we’re really focused on learning and undoing the stereotypes, misconceptions and inaccuracies in the history of what’s taking place. Over time, we as an organization and maybe we as Indigenous people are changing what we’re putting as the focus. For example, today, our educators might not wear their traditional clothes to go into a school. They might wear a ribbon shirt, which is a contemporary adaptation of something that’s [been] Indigenized, if you will. They might still have jeans on and they might have their moccasins on, or they might just have shoes on. I think the idea is that we’re Indigenous regardless of what we’re wearing, and we’re trying to really get that across that you don’t have to be wearing traditional clothing to be Indigenous. I say this quote all the time: ‘There is no U.S. history without Indigenous peoples’ history.’ There is no Rhode Island without Narragansett, Niantic and other First Peoples’ history. 

If people outside the Native community could know one thing, what would you like to tell them?

I would have to go back to, ‘We’re still here.’ Because I think that’s something people don’t know and understand. A few years back, I had a gentleman that I was talking to. The person who introduced him told him who I was and so forth. And then the man proceeded to say, ‘Oh yeah, I was out in New Mexico, and I met the real Indians.’ And no matter how many times I interjected, because I wasn’t in traditional clothes at that moment, he couldn’t get past it. Because in his mind — when he was there visiting that museum and people did a program and they were wearing traditional clothes — in his head, that’s how they live all the time. He couldn’t envision them leaving there, putting on jeans and a T-shirt, going to town in a truck. I think it’s because we’ve segregated the history and the culture and the community, and it’s easy to buy into the mythology that we all disappeared. There’s a notion if there’s any left, they’re out on a reservation somewhere where it’s far, far away. Not only are we still here, but we’re part of and contribute to this country.

Where is your favorite place in Rhode Island?

I think today I’m going to go with being at the ocean. As an Eastern Woodland coastal person, I think that it’s really important for us to have access to the salt waters and the salt ponds. Each year, we get less and less access and more and more blocks to traditional lifeways related to the salt waters. I think that for us, historically and into the contemporary times, the ocean is ceremonial. Our gardens were incorporated with the salt waters, with fish and seaweed and crumbled shells for nutrients. It was part of our annual life cycle having a summer home by the salt waters and a winter home inland.

And that’s where you see the Indigenous history intersecting with the whole history of coastal access in Rhode Island.

I think that as each generation, people have to understand that our history and the problems in our history have not ended. We’re still dealing with not only the historical and intergenerational trauma of that, but also the continued dispossession. These are battles that we’re continuing to fight for sovereignty, not just political sovereignty and economic sovereignty, but literally cultural sovereignty. Whether that’s food sovereignty, if you want to call it that — the right to hunt, fish, harvest — all of those things that are connected to our life, the ways of our people and food, and how difficult that is to continue in the twenty-first century. It can be very difficult to maintain and keep those things going. But we do. We managed to do that despite it all. tomaquagmuseum.org