Jo Radner

Tangled Lives: Native People and English Settlers in Colonial New England

“Tangled Lives” (60 minutes) blends stories from Abenaki and English tradition, tracing some of the intertwined threads in the relationships between English settlers and Native peoples as they struggled to control the Abenaki lands of northern New England. Exploring questions of responsibility and justice, the stories reveal the way English and Native people in this region saw one another as defenders and trespassers, pursuers and refugees, relatives and aliens, kind neighbors and ruthless destroyers.

The stories come from extensive research, from consultation with Abenaki historians, and from the written memoirs of two families who arrived in Massachusetts in 1635 and migrated over time to settle the new English towns of Ipswich and Haverhill, Massachusetts, Penacook (Concord), New Hampshire, and finally Pequawket (Fryeburg), Maine.

I am linked by lineage to these families and their descendants who participated in the often violent appropriation of the land from its indigenous occupants. My quest to understand that colonial history invites all listeners to consider how they and their relatives and neighbors are part of the history – and the present situation – of northern New England