What many don’t know about URI
The University of Rhode Island’s history, sociology and anthropology departments have worked together to develop a course highlighting the University’s history with respect to the relationship between the Narragansett people and European-American settlers.
In collaboration with the Tomaquag Museum located in Exeter, Rhode Island, the new one-credit class, HIS/APG 392X: The URI Campus: A Walk Through Time, is being offered to students of all majors and all years.
According to the College of Arts and Sciences, the Tomaquag Museum is “Rhode Island’s first and only museum dedicated to educating the public and promoting thoughtful dialogue on Indigenous history, culture and arts as well as Native American issues of today.”
Loren Spears, the executive director of the Tomaquag Museum, is featured in lecture-style videos produced by the Harrington School of Communication and Media to incorporate into the class curriculum. The videos are broken into segments that discuss topics like enslaved peoples on Rhode Island farms, colonization and the need for reparations to native Narragansett students enrolled at URI.
History department chair Rod Mather said there were a number of central themes taken into consideration when developing the class.
“As COVID-19 hit, the University was looking for enrichment classes,” Mather said. “Classes that would be interesting, thought provoking and would allow students to think about the world in which they live. So, we came up with the idea of taking the walking tour and turning it into a class for the fall semester.”
According to Mather, the class focuses on the landscape URI was built on, the way the land has changed over time and “ways of knowing” such as historical documents and oral traditions through the Narragansett people.
Head of the anthropology department Kristine Bovy said that many students are probably unaware of the history of the land they walk on everyday.
“[Students] don’t know that they are parking on top of an archaeological site when they park down on Plains Road,” said Bovy. “We don’t know necessarily how big these sites were or how many people [there were], but certainly they were reusing the land over and over again so there are lots of archaeological remains found in the low [Plains] area.”
Located on Farm House Road near Tucker Hall, the Watson House was once home to the Niles family, plantation owners who had enslaved African Americans and Indigenious peoples. According to professor Catherine DeCesare of the history department, the University has allocated a considerable amount of money into renovating and repurposing many of the building’s features.
“There is still a lot of work that needs to be done,” said DeCesare. “There needs to be some sort of benefactor who can dedicate a lot of money into restoring the Watson House. In that aspect, figuring out what it should represent, how it should be used and what’s [the] purpose of it.”
Outside of the Ryan Center is the family’s burial ground. Mather said the symbolic stone wall and plaque doesn’t seem to “really fit what the Niles burial ground represents.” An excerpt from the plaque at the site says, “this small burial pace is rooted in Rhode Island’s multicultural history. The area contains the remains of ancient and diverse settlers.”
“It doesn’t make clear that there may be enslaved people buried there, there may be Indigenous people who were [also] enslaved, buried there. It doesn’t really explicitly make clear what has happened there,” he said.
Mather noted that the plaque exists as only one small piece of Rhode Island’s colonial history, and an even smaller piece of Narragansett’s history as well.
“This tiny plot of [European-American] history is preserved whereas the vast extent of Narragansett’s history is mostly erased from the landscape,” said Mather.
According to a real estate license agreement between URI’s Board of Trustees and the Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum discussed in June, the University recognized that the campus is built on “formal tribal land.” URI gave the Tomaquag Museum a piece of land to build a larger museum on.
The statement acknowledges the long-standing partnership between URI and the Museum. It also says the relocation of the Museum would benefit the community and would “honor the history of the people and culture”.
Mather, Bovy and DeCesare all believe there is still not enough recognition by the University to acknowledge the history of the Narragansett peoples. Bovy believes there is some awareness within administration, but not nearly enough in the higher up positions in leadership. Mather said there is a disconnect between the way URI references its past and the actual depth of that past’s pain.
“Narragansett people shouldn’t pay tuition at the [URI],” Mather said. “If you look at the history of what’s happened here, the battle of survival that the tribe has had over the last 300 years, I think it would be fitting and proper for the University to recognize that history.”