Up and Down the River (film)

 

IMPORTANT WATCH: https://www.mohegan.nsn.us/explore/video/up-and-down-the-river

Can you miss what you never knew? A perfect quote from the film... 

👇I didn't attend this at Yale but wish I had:

 Conference looks at Native Americans’ role in the American Revolution

Yale’s First America conference brought together scholars, activists and members of local Indigenous nations to examine the roles Native Americans played in the founding of the United States.

By Jessica Hickle | March 30, 2026 

Ahead of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, scholars from academic institutions and Native cultural groups came together from across the country to commemorate Indigenous peoples’ roles in the American Revolution.

The Yale Group for the Study of Native America and the NYU-Yale American Indian Sovereignty Project hosted a three-day conference Thursday through Saturday. At the conference, which was titled “First America: The Legacies of the Declaration of Independence for Native Nations,” scholars and community members considered the place of Native Americans in the United States’ founding. 

The conference featured several panel and roundtable sessions, including a keynote session by filmmakers Ken Burns and David Schmidt, who created the six-part series “The American Revolution.” 

According to Yale history professor Ned Blackhawk, one of the conference organizers, the agenda was designed to “draw attention to the themes of the conference through critical interrogation of the Declaration of Independence.” In particular, presenters considered the context and implications of the declaration’s 27th grievance, which refers to Native Americans as “merciless Indian Savages.”

“This is a country built on native land. And that’s not revisionist history. That’s just it,” Dartmouth history professor Colin Calloway said in his conference presentation. 

In addition to presenting scholarly research, conference organizers also sought to spotlight the work of Native educators and historians. 

Lorén Spears, the executive director of the Tomaquag Museum in Exeter, Rhode Island, whose mission is to educate the community about “Indigenous cultures of the Dawnland (focus on Southern New England),” said she appreciated that aspect of the conference’s agenda. 

“There is no U.S. history without Indigenous people’s history. It just doesn’t exist. And so this conference just kind of validates that even more with so many different researchers doing this work,” Spears said.  

Spears was not the only participant to travel from out of state to attend. According to Grace Ellis ’25, the program coordinator for the Sovereignty Project, “The conference convened participants from as nearby as West Haven and as far as Montreal and San Diego, bringing together historians from both tribal cultural institutions and academic institutions.”

In an example of that cross-institutional collaboration, Spears participated in a roundtable session that highlighted the Stolen Relations project. The project is led by Brown University and 13 regional Indigenous nations to gather data related to the enslavement of Native Americans during Europeans’ settlement in what is now the United States. 

The conference concluded with a screening of “Up and Down the River,” a short film about “the struggles of the Mohegans in the American Revolution,” which was written by Mohegan Council of Elders Vice Chair and Justice Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel and her daughter filmmaker Madeline Sayet. The Mohegan tribe is a sovereign, federally-recognized tribe situated in southeastern Connecticut. 

The film left some audience members visibly emotional. 

“There’s a real void in the Northeast Corridor for telling these stories. So this is all helping to fill that,” Spears said after viewing the film.

The participation of scholars from outside of academia was the result of a “year-long effort” by conference organizers, Ellis said. 

“I have been teaching here since 2009, and this was the most sustained effort that we’ve undertaken to partner with local and regional tribal nations that I can remember,” Blackhawk wrote in an email to the News.

For conference attendee Jonathan Cabrera GRD ’30, the participation of Native community members made the conference remarkable compared to other academic conferences.

“What I found quite helpful is that this conference features work not only by scholars, Native and non-Native, but also community members,” Cabrera said in an interview. “We are actually centering the voices, the literal voices, of Native people.”

The Yale Group for the Study of Native America began in 2003 as an interdisciplinary working group interested in topics related to Native Americans.

FILM:  Co-written by Council of Elders Vice Chair Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel and her daughter Film Director Madeline Sayet.

This 20-minute movie, funded by the National Park Foundation, is based on the struggles of Mohegans in the American Revolution, showing the sacrifice all Mohegans had to make to preserve the future of our Mohegan nation and this country.

The film stars many Native actors including Mohegan Elders Bruce Bozsum and Beth Regan, Justin Scott, Bethany Poole,  Beatrice Poole along with Native actors from Wampanoag, Pequot, Montauk, Cree, Cherokee, Iroquois and a film reel cameo of Chief Malerba. Costumed by Award-winning Navajo costumer Asa Benally.

 

LINK TO CONFERENCE: https://ygsna.sites.yale.edu/news/first-america-conference-program-march-26-28