Event Details
For more than 200 years, the Wangunk have been referred to as Connecticut’s “lost tribe.” But what if they were never lost?
Their ancestors lived in the Connecticut River Valley for thousands of years. Their descendants are still here.
Join Gary “Red Oak” O’Neil, Wangunk descendant, artist, historian, and master storyteller, for a fascinating evening of stories, history, art, and conversation about the Wangunk people—and the remarkable story of how his family survived.
Red Oak is part of the Jonathan Palmer family line, the only surviving Wangunk line that remained in the area. He’ll share stories of a people whose history in the Connecticut River Valley reaches back some 10,000 years, and how generations of his family survived and maintained their identity, in part by living quietly and staying “under the radar.”
But this isn’t only a story about the past.
Red Oak is also one of the artists represented in Roots Run Deep: The Art of Indigenous Heritage, along with other Wangunk artists. Surrounded by their work in the WORK_SPACE Gallery, we’ll have the rare opportunity to hear directly from an artist about the ways Indigenous heritage, identity, traditions, and stories can be preserved and expressed not only through the stories we tell, but through the art we create.