The Rhode Island Historical Society will host Wampanoag artist Deborah Spears Moorehead for the artist talk Scratching the Surface: History on the Walls on Thursday, November 14th at 6:00pm.
Spears Moorehead will present her art and literature, which addresses the pivotal roles that the Eastern Woodland Tribal Nations played in the making of the United States. She does this through the lens of an Eastern Woodland Native American cultural view and expression. Her work is a reflective recovery in response to the erasure of Eastern Woodland Native American people that continues to harm her nation today. Spears Moorehead will discuss the colonial techniques and rhetorical language employed by the United States to force assimilation and systematically eliminate Eastern Woodland culture and livelihood to be relegated to live in the marginalized spaces of society. Spears Moorehead will share how her art counters the erasure of her community by making them the subjects of her work.
Deborah Spears Moorehead is a Fine Artist, Painter, Sculptor, Native American Consultant, Historian, Cultural Bearer, Storyteller, Musician, Composer, Performer, and Author. She belongs to the Seaconke Pokanoket Wampanoag Tribal Nation. She holds a Masters in Cultural Sustainability and a Bachelors of Fine Arts. She is a descendant of Massasoit, the 1620 Supreme Sachem of the Pokanoket Nation who saved the Pilgrims from starvation. She also descends from the Pocasset and Nemasket Wampanoags, Narragansett, Mohawk, Catawba, Nipmuc, Massachusetts and Pequot Nations.
Moorehead authored the books Finding Balance: The Oral and Written History and Genealogy of Massasoit's People and Four Directions at Weybosset Crossings. She owns and directs Painted Arrow Studio, Talking Water Productions, and Turtle Island Native American Tourism Company. In 1992, she co-founded Nettukkusqk Singers with her sister, an all-woman Native American traditional healing, learning, teaching, and music performing group.
In 2022, Moorehead served as the Nightingale-Brown House Artist in Residence at Brown University‘s John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage and was awarded a Fitts Family Grant. Since 2022, Deborah has been a Distinguished Scholar and Artist in Residency at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston.
The Rhode Island Historical Society, the state's oldest and only statewide historical organization, is dedicated to honoring, interpreting and sharing Rhode Island's past to enrich the present and inspire the future. Founded in 1822, the RIHS is an advocate for history as a means to develop empathy and 21st -century skills, using its historical materials and knowledge to explore topics of timeless relevance and public interest. As a Smithsonian Affiliate, it is dedicated to providing high-quality, accessible public programming and educational opportunities for all Rhode Islanders through its four sites: the John Brown House Museum, the Museum of Work & Culture, the Mary Elizabeth Robinson Research Center and the Aldrich House.
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