2024 Honorees

Princess Red Wing Arts & Culture Award

Julia is a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Nation (the people of dawn). Aquinnah is located on the island of Martha's Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. She grew up in the town of Falmouth, Massachusetts, and summered and spent weekends year-round on the Vineyard until her teens. She now resides in the town of South Ryegate, Vermont. She now has a business named Bluejays Visions where she creates museum quality works of art. Julia is an internationally known artist, who specializes in Eastern Woodland Art. She is best known for her 17th century style twined basketry. Besides basketry, she also twines burden straps, sashes, and leg garter sets. She is an accomplished traditional painter, painting such items as: cradleboards, pipe bags, flute bags, fan handles and pouches. Julia created a line of dolls called Eninuog, which translates to (the people) based on 17th century Wampanoag people. Julia paid close attention to detail; even the beads they wear are miniatures of trade beads of the time. Julia's art has been featured at the Atrium Gallery at One Capitol Hill in Providence, Rhode Island, at the State House in Boston, Massachusetts, and in several museums throughout New England including; Mashantucket Pequet Museum and Research Center, Tantaquidgeon Indian Museum in Connecticut, Plymouth Plantation, The Robin's Museum, National Heritage Museum, Cahoon Museum, in Massachusetts, the Fairbanks Museum, Clan of the Hawk Museum, Chandler Music Hall Gallery in Vermont, Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum in New Hampshire. Julia and her art have been featured in calendars from Plymouth Plantation and the New England Native American Calendar several times. Julia and her art have been featured in several books, most recently in Keeper's of Tradition Art and Folk Heritage in Massachusetts. Julia's dolls have been featured in the magazine Indian Artist. Julia lectures and gives demonstrations for museums, historical societies, school programs, and private functions. She teaches art classes to Native Groups passing on our traditional arts. In addition, Julia is a traditional dancer and participates in Pow Wows and Dance Exhibitions throughout New England.

Eva Butler Scholar Award

Dr. Akeia de Barros Gomes is the Vice President of Maritime Studies at Mystic Seaport Museum, Director of the Frank C. Munson Institute of American Maritime History and is a Visiting Scholar at Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Akeia is responsible for Mystic Seaport Museum scholarship, publications, collections, curatorial projects and the G.W. Blunt Library at Mystic Seaport Museum. She leads a multi-disciplinary team to examine Mystic Seaport Museum's and other regional collections to develop contemporary re-imaginings of people's actions in the past and present, and translate that into content relevant to today's social environment. She is lead curator for the 2024 Mystic Seaport exhibition, Entwined: Freedom, Sovereignty and the Sea a multi-year Mellon Foundation- funded project that reimagines the history of the founding and development of the Dawnland (New England) through Indigenous, African, and African American maritime narratives. This project is a cooperative effort with individuals in Indigenous, African and African American communities so that the narrative is truly one of ancestral and descendant voices. Akeia taught as professor of American Studies and Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Wheelock College from 2008 to 2017. She received her BA in anthropology/archaeology at Salve Regina University and her MA and PhD in anthropology/archaeology at the University of Connecticut.

Ellison “Tarzan” Brown Champion Award

Autumn Rain Johnson is a young woman who is a member of the Narragansett Indian Tribe. She was born with a physical disability, or what she likes to call, a different ability, called Spina Bifida. Spina Bifida has caused her to live life using a wheelchair. She was raised in Narragansett, RI and graduated from Narragansett High School in 2018. In 2020, after difficulties of finding a place of employment, Autumn focused on her makeup artistry skills & became an entrepreneur, selling high end makeup and skincare as a Younique Ambassador. Later in 2020, she began doing photoshoots & runway modeling. Through modeling, Autumn met a young girl named Victoria Colón, who also has Spina Bifida. Autumn then realized the impact she can make on younger generations with different abilities, & began focusing on how she can use her social media platforms to spread awareness about Spina Bifida, as well as, empower the disabled community. By 2022, Autumn became a board member of the Rhode Island Parent Information Network, a nonprofit organization that helps provide resources to the disability community. During this time she became a student at College Unbound, working towards a bachelor's degree in Organizational Leadership and Change. Last year she had the opportunity to be Ms. Wheelchair Rhode 2023 where she has continued mentoring Victoria, who now is known as Little Miss Wheelchair RI 2023. Autumn has traveled around RI & to the 2024 Ms. Wheelchair America National Competition, sharing her platform, which is "Embrace your unique abilities within your disability, as well as others’ unique abilities!". With her platform, Autumn also brought awareness to the inaccessibility of RI beaches. Autumn now co-leads a collective called the SpinaSisters Empowerment Collective, a safe space for young girls & women of color who have Spina Bifida to build community, offer support, and raise awareness about Spina Bifida. Once she graduates from College Unbound, Autumn plans to further education & obtain her master's degree, & dreams of one day becoming a social worker for children & young adults.

The Kaukont Philanthropic Award

In 2016, the New York Times called Tom Ahern "one of America’s most sought-after creators of fund-raising messages." In 2021, UK guru Richard Radcliffe, added: "Tom Ahern is possibly the greatest non-profit copywriter on the planet." Tom consults with charities tiny and large ... from a bustling orphanage in Tijuana, Mexico ... to a children's hospital at one of the world's great universities (Stanford) ... to brand-name international charities like Save the Children ... to the amazing Indigenous-led Tomaquag Museum, now about to grow again. He has authored a half-dozen popular how-to books on donor communications and speaks internationally. He specializes in applying the discoveries of psychology and neuroscience to the day-to-day business of attracting and retaining donors.

Eleanor Dove Entrepreneur Award

Craig Spears Jr. is a proud federally recognized Narragansett Tribal citizen, the protector and loving father of six girls and three grandchildren. Craig grew up and still resides on the original Narragansett reservation lands, in Charlestown, where he enjoyed and continues to enjoy swimming in the ponds, finding bullfrogs in the streams, climbing trees, riding dirt bikes, shellfishing, crabbing, fishing and ice fishing from the ponds, as well as hunting large game to feed his family. Craig grew up attending his Narragansett Tribe's Pow-wow and continues to practice his Narragansett traditions and culture, which he continues to pass to his children and grandchildren.

Stone masonry is a Spears family tradition - an art, craft, and science handed down from generation to generation for over 60 years. This tradition was passed to Craig at the early age of fifteen. He now has more than 30 years of experience working with natural stone masonry. He is a skilled craftsmen who works with brick, cobblestone, pavers, and fieldstone to build stone walls, brick veneers, patios, walkways, fireplaces, and restore masonry in both residential and commercial settings.

One of his most recent accomplishments was the Intertribal stone monument he built with his nephews, at the Rhode Island Veterans Memorial Cemetery, honoring the legacy of Indigenous Veterans, who have been serving since the American Revolution. Craig is happy to have had the opportunity to be a part of this well deserved and long overdue recognition and honoring of our Indigenous Veterans.

Volunteer of the Year Award

Allyson LaForge is a PhD candidate in American Studies at Brown University. She has spent the past five years as a volunteer at the Tomaquag Museum, where she facilitated an inventory of over 10,000 Indigenous cultural Belongings. These Belongings are now under intellectual control for the first time in the museum’s history, meaning the museum can steward knowledge about them – descriptions, creators, locations, photographs, nomenclature, and more – through Indigenous data sovereignty. Her dissertation project, “Materializing Futurity: Networks of Native Organizing in the Northeast,” examines the role Indigenous material culture played during transnational Native Northeast movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, led by coalitions of Native leaders, activists, artists, craftspeople, and writers who worked to resist settler colonialism and ensure Indigenous futurity. Weaving together material culture histories, “Materializing Futurity” features the stories of Passamaquoddy birchbark artist and leader Tomah Joseph, Odawa quillwork artist and leader Margaret Blackbird Boyd, and Narragansett and Wampanoag knowledge-keeper and educator Princess Red Wing. Their resurgent work sustained Indigenous homelands, sovereignty, and knowledge. Allyson’s current exhibit at Mystic Seaport Museum, “Restor(y)ing Indigenous Collections,” features the art and knowledge of artists Brittney Peauwe Wunnepog Walley (Nipmuc) and Julia Marden (Aquinnah Wampanoag). She holds a BA in History and French from Mount Holyoke College and an MA in Public Humanities from Brown University, and completed her MA practicum as a curatorial assistant at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine. She is profoundly grateful to the multiple mentors and knowledge-keepers who have supported her work.

Lifetime Achievement Award

Anita “Mother Bear” Peters was born in Mashpee to the Mashpee Wampanoag supreme medicine man, John “Slow Turtle” Peters, and Barbara “Morning Star” Avant Peters. She is the eldest of their 7 children, and after years of watching her mother create beautiful regalia, Mother Bear attended the School of Fashion Design in Boston. She developed her interest as a seamstress and in 1999, worked for Plimoth Plantation where she made traditional eastern woodlands regalia, outfitting 90 Wampanoag men for a National Geographic photo shoot as well as the regalia for the native american interpreters working at the museum's living exhibit called Hobbamock's Homesite. For years, she has been a cultural guide and culture educator at the Tribe’s Indian Museum in Mashpee, and in 2004, led the art of making Wampanoag regalia as her educational part of a six-day festival celebrating the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian, the newest Smithsonian Institution presence on the mall. In 2005, Mother Bear served as a master artist in a Traditional Arts Apprenticeship program after which she began on a full-time basis creating traditional eastern woodlands regalia for hundreds of tribal members, both from Mashpee and from other tribes as well. Mother Bear is known for her giving. Her generosity shows up in many ways. One day she’s at your door with a native fleece blanket, or the next time she’s gifting you with pine tree oil. She comes by her nature to serve honestly as her entire family’s legacy has been one of spiritual, cultural, and civic duty both within the Mashpee Wampanoag tribal community and politically with the Town of Mashpee as well. She speaks often of her great grandmother, Mabel Pocknett Avant, who influenced her traditional ways and occasionally will share thoughts like “The most important lessons she taught me were it is better to give than receive and as long as you do the right thing and give thanks for what you have, the Creator and Ancestors will take care of you. She taught us beadwork and shared invaluable information on medicinal plants. She encouraged us to excel and taught us the importance of finishing what we started”. Mother Bear works much of the time with tribal youth on tribal crafts projects both historic and cultural and is always excited to pass on the special craft of traditional regalia-making skills to ensure that the gift is carried into the next generations. In Mother Bear’s own words: “My passion has always been working with children. I am the oldest of seven, have seven daughters, seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren. It gives me great pride to pass on traditional cultural knowledge and encourage children to do their best. It makes me so proud to watch a child achieve their goals. My gift from the Creator is to make traditional regalia. With the person who will wear it in mind, I can visualize how they will look in the Circle. I try to tune my whole spirit and love for my people into my work and to see it in the Circle makes me happiest.As the eldest of seven children, it was my responsibility to lead, representing and holding the matrilineal title of Clan Mother thus my title of Mother Bear”. Mother Bear lives in Barnstable, on Cape Cod, in MA; on the traditional Wampanoag homelands of the Mashpee Wampanoag, where she manages the Nation house, all of its gardens, and produces the bulk of her beautifully designed eastern woodlands regalia.