The Wabanaki Voices Speaker Series, sponsored by Skowhegan History House Museum & Research Center, continues with a talk by Ashley Smith on Thursday August 25th from 7pm to 8pm.  Ashley's talk is entitled, “Stories of Nanrantsouak/Norridgewock Village: Understanding the Legacies of our Shared Histories of Violence.”

This event is free and takes place at Tewksbury Hall on Weston Avenue in Skowhegan and will also be broadcast via Zoom. Masks are required for in-person attendance.

To register for the Zoom link, visit msad54.maineadulted.org.

FMI: (207) 474-6632.

Ashley Smith was born and raised in Madison, Maine where some members of her family have been for multiple generations. She is a child of factory and papermill workers in the heart of this region of Maine. She also understands herself to be a product of the deep histories of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships and struggles that have shaped this region. As a child, her grandfather regularly took her to gather water at the site of the Wabanaki village Nanrantsouak or Norridgewock, known locally as “the Pines” in Madison. She grew up hearing stories of this place and the horrible violence that the English had brought to Wabanaki people here. For a high school project, she decided to research the history of this place and learned, to her surprise, that much of what she found in published books contradicted what she had grown up knowing and what her family had taught her about this place. Since then, she has spent much of her adult life learning about this place and its stories and memories from multiple perspectives, both book research and interviews with Indigenous descendants and non-Indigenous locals. She tries to understand how competing narratives like the ones she faced come about, how they impact people into the present, and what we might do about it. She holds a PhD in Anthropology and Native American and Indigenous Studies and is affiliated faculty at Hampshire College in Massachusetts where she used to teach. She recently left academia to return home and serve the Maine communities that mean so much to her. She now works as a legal aid paralegal and consumer advocate at Pine Tree Legal Assistance.