For many years, Unitarian Universalists have publicly acknowledged our settler colonialist past with spoken “land acknowledgements” offered at services and gatherings. Here at UUCD, in 2020, we too began including a spoken acknowledgement that our Fellowship Hall was built on unceded Native American land.

Words matter, but they aren’t enough
As time went on, folks began thinking about what our next steps should be; how we would move beyond the land acknowledgement. The Sunday Services Team invited Shoran Waupatukuay Piper, Clan Mother of the Golden Hill Paugussett People, to speak at a service in February of 2024. The Clan Mother graciously accepted the
invitation. Her talk was very well-received, gave us some ideas, and a Land
Acknowledgement Task Force was formed.

In the Spring of 2024, we held a discussion-based Sunday Service where we considered how we might take action to show solidarity with our Indigenous neighbors.

During the Service, we listened to native voices via readings, music, and interviews
and then did some of our own work as justice-seeking Unitarian Universalists. Since then, work has gone on to learn more about the many tribes who inhabited this area. Darlene Kascak, a member of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation and Educational Outreach Ambassador for the Institute for American Indian Studies https://www.iaismuseum.org/ in Washington, CT Nation has spoken to the congregation on more than one occasion and has been instrumental in helping
us with our education.

We are grateful to Darlene, to the staff of the Institute for American Indian Studies, and
to the Clan Mother for their time, guidance, and spirit.

The mosaics in the Fellowship Hall
To honor our Indigenous neighbors, the Task Force commissioned a series of three
mosaics to be created by the artist Eva Newell of the Pokanoket Tribe. The mosaics will be complemented by a plaque outside the main entrance to the Fellowship Hall, and a display in the lobby featuring a map of the ancestral homelands of the Indigenous people of what is now Connecticut.

Information about Eva Newell and her art:
https://www.fairfieldcountyartists.com/eva-newell and
https://www.facebook.com/MosaicsEvaNewell/.

Information about the Institute for American Indian Studies:
https://www.iaismuseum.org/

The Paugussett, Pequonnock, Schaghticoke, and Wappinger People
While many Indigenous communities have made their homes in the Housatonic river
watershed, our land acknowledgment now recognizes the Paugussett, Pequonnock,
Schaghticoke, and Wappinger people in particular, because our Fellowship Hall at 24
Clapboard Ridge Road in Danbury is located within their ancestral homelands. They
are listed in alphabetical order, and no other priority is implied by that choice. Please
take the opportunity to learn more about them here.

The Paugussett People
The part of the Housatonic watershed on which our Fellowship Hall is located was home to a band of the Paugussett tribe who called this place Pahquioque, meaning
“open plain.” The Paugussett tribe’s territory extended along the Long Island Sound
from New Haven harbor to Norwalk, and inland along the Housatonic and Naugatuck
Rivers as far as those rivers were navigable by canoe.

They were farmers, raising what they called “the 3 sisters” – corn, beans, and squash –
along with tobacco for ceremonial purposes and Jerusalem artichokes. They fished the rivers and harvested shellfish from the sound. The mouth of the Housatonic river and the area just off the coast of Bridgeport was and still is the largest natural oyster bed north of Chesapeake Bay, and the Housatonic River was the southernmost river on the east coast with an annual Atlantic salmon run. It was a good place to live. They were an Algonkian tribe, allied at times with the Mohican, Wappinger, and Shinnecock people. They were neighbors with the Pequot and Mohawk people, but those were Iroquois tribes and relations with them were not always smooth. Just as Europeans are similar to each other in many ways, but very different in others (languages, customs, allies, and enemies), so are and were Native Americans.

First contact with Europeans was early in the 1600’s – with the Dutch settling in the Hudson River Valley and the Puritans expanding west into Connecticut. In 1639 they
were limited by treaty to a reservation vaguely west of Stratford and east of Fairfield.
Stratford and Fairfield argued about the border between them, and finally settled that
dispute in 1659 – in the process, more firmly establishing the boundaries of the Paugussett reservation lands, without any input from the Paugussett people. The
reservation lands were quickly whittled down to about 80 acres.

In 1763, white trespassers squatted on the land, and the tribe sued. The court ruled that the trespassers could keep the land (68 of the 80 acres) and awarded the tribe some blankets and corn. In 1802 the state-appointed tribal overseer sold the remaining 12 acres “for the tribe’s own good” and used the money to pay his own fees, leaving the tribe with nothing.

Members of the tribe and their descendants scattered, but some established a community in Bridgeport that came to be known as Ethiope. In time that land became
valuable and the tribal members gradually lost control of the property. In 1875, the chief of the tribe, William Sherman bought 1/4 acre in what is now Trumbull and left it in his will to the State to be held in trust for the Paugussett people.

Clan Mother Shoran Waupatukuay Piper is the great-great granddaughter of William Sherman – the name “Sherman” is actually an anglicized version of “Shoran.”

An aside on tribal governance:
The Paugussett tribe is managed by a Chief, a tribal council, and a Clan Mother. The tribal council acts as a legislative body and makes decisions. The Chief is the executive who carries out those decisions. The Chief and the tribal council both work closely with the Clan Mother, and she is the highest authority in the tribe. She has the power to appoint and remove the Chief, and to veto tribal council decisions.) That 1/4 acre along with 108 acres in Colchester bought in 1980 with funds granted by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, are the tribe’s reservation lands today.

For further information:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063745440711#
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1UYhrAo0Ys&t=173s
https://portal.ct.gov/sde/publications/teaching-native-american-studies/golden-hill-
paugussett-tribal-nation/gptn-history-and-culture?archived=true
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Hill_Paugussett_Indian_Nation

The Pequonnock People
The Pequonnock people no longer exist as a distinct tribal or political entity. They lived mainly along the lower and tidal stretches of the Housatonic watershed and were
affiliated with the Paugussett Tribe. Their descendants identify today with the Golden
Hill Paugussetts led by Clan Mother Shoran Waupatukuay Piper.

See also: https://libguides.wcsu.edu/mc_Native_American_Heritage
https://librarybestbets.fairfield.edu/c.php?g=1396965&p=10333502

The Schaghticoke People
The people of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation have made the Housatonic Valley their
home since at least the 1600’s. The Tribe’s roots grew from many Indigenous nations,
as for centuries it was a refuge for members of the Mahican, Oweantinock, Pequot,
Podunk, Pootatuck, Tunxis, Weantinock, and other Indigenous tribes fleeing
dispossession, enslavement, and violence by white colonists. The Schaghticoke
people today are the descendants of those people.

They created a community based on farming, hunting, fishing, and the manufacture of
baskets, brooms, canoes, and other tin and wood products for their own use as well as
for sale to the ever-encroaching white communities in the area.

In 1736 the General Assembly of the Colony of Connecticut (without consulting the
Schaghticoke people) designated a reservation for the Tribe between the Housatonic River and the border with the Colony of New York. White overseers were appointed to
manage the reservation lands for the benefit of the Tribe. Between 1801 and 1911 those overseers sold off more than 2,000 acres in transactions of questionable legitimacy. Today the reservation consists of about 400 acres near Kent – less than one-fifth the size of the original reservation, and a tiny fraction of the Tribe’s original homeland.

Until 1973 the reservation was managed by the Connecticut State Welfare Department, although that “management” appears to have been more for the purpose of the Tribe’s extinction rather than its benefit. Except farming, no business was allowed on the reservation, and no buildings or improvements could be constructed without State approval, which was rarely if ever granted. In 1960-1961, the Welfare Department refused to fund repairs for homes, and instead burned all but two of them to the ground.

State Welfare Department jurisdiction was finally terminated in 1973 and the Tribe was incorporated. In 2004, the Tribe gained federal recognition, although at the urging of the State of Connecticut the Bureau of Indian Affairs rescinded that recognition in 2005. The State worried that if federal recognition was granted, the Tribe might build a
casino and press legal claims for dispossessed land. Consistent with centuries of mistreatment of the Schaghticoke people at the hands of government authorities, the
BIA acceded to Connecticut’s request. The Tribe is seeking to have federal recognition reinstated.

Today there are about 300 members of the Tribe, most of whom live outside of the
reservation in Fairfield, New Haven, and Litchfield Counties, but who come together to preserve their tribal culture and identity. The Tribe has its own constitution and is led by Chief Richard Velky and an elected Tribal Council, which makes community
decisions and administers day-to-day matters – including a scholarship fund.

For further information: https://www.schaghticoke.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schaghticoke_people
https://goopenct.org/courseware/lesson/1531/overview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUBOgFum3FA&t=8s

The Wappinger People
The history of the Wappinger people is a tragic, but common one among Native
Americans. They were a confederation of related bands of Indigenous people
whose territory extended from the east bank of the Hudson River into western
Connecticut. Conflicts with Dutch settlers and diseases contracted from the
Europeans decimated the tribe and culminated in the “sale” of their ancestral lands in
1683. It is not at all clear that the Wappinger people understood that their signatures
on deeds meant they had to abandon their territory, but that’s what inevitably
happened. The remaining Wappinger people dispersed west and north and were
absorbed into the Lenape, Mohican, Stockbridge-Munsee, Nanticoke, Iroquois, and
Delaware tribes – while others married into white families. The Wappinger tribe, as
such, disappeared from the historical record by the end of the 1700s.

“Wappinger” seems to be the most common anglicized spelling of the tribal name, but
the tribe has been referred to by various names over time, with multiple spellings:
Wappink, Wappings, Wappingers, Wappingoes, Wawpings, Pomptons, Wapings,
Opings, Opines, Massaco, Menunkatuck, Naugatuck, Nochpeem, Wangunk, Wappans,
Wappings, Wappinghs, Wapanoos, Wappanoos, Wappinoo, Wappenos, Wappinoes,
Wappinex, Wappinx, Wapingeis, Wabinga, Wabingies, Wapingoes, Wapings,
Wappinges, Wiechquaesgeck, Wapinger and Wappenger.

For further information: https://mountgulian.org/history/the-wappinger-people/
https://www.hudsonrivervalley.org/wappinger
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Wappinger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wappinger

This Work Is Never Complete
We know there is much more work to be done to actively support local tribes. We hope to publicize local Native American events on our social media platforms and really have UU folks show up. There will no-doubt be opportunities to financially support tribal activities as well. We will continue to pursue other ways to acknowledge and honor the first inhabitants of the land we worship on. For example, members of the congregation have submitted comments to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in support
of the Golden Hill Paugussett Tribe’s efforts to obtain federal recognition. All of this is aligned with our congregation’s core values of creating a diverse and inclusive community. We acknowledge that it is the responsibility of our congregation to
recognize the people, cultures and history that connect us to its original inhabitants.

For an Indigenous perspective on land acknowledgments, you might find this essay informative:
I’m Native American. Land Acknowledgments Are Infuriating. Guest Essay by Reid Walker of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, published in the New York Times July 24, 2026. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/opinion/native-american-land-acknowledgment.html