Draft:Stolen Relations

Stolen Relations

Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas
Established	2015
Founder	Linford Fisher
Headquarters	Brown University
Location	Providence, United States
Publication	May 10, 2025
Affiliations	Brown Center for Digital Scholarship, Assonet Band of Wampanoags, Chappaquiddick Wampanoag Tribe, Chaubunagungamaug Nipmuck Indian Council, Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation, Hassanamisco Nipmuc Band, Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, Massachusett-Ponkapoag Tribe, Montaukett Indian Nation, Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe, Tomaquag Museum, Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah)
Website	stolenrelations.org

Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas is a Digital Humanities project housed at Brown University under principal investigator Linford Fisher and made in collaboration with the Center for Digital Scholarship at the Brown University Library and thirteen regional Indigenous nations and communities. It investigates the role of Indigenous slavery in settler colonialism under American, British, French, and Spanish contexts. Stolen Relations attempts to tell the stories of enslaved, captive, and otherwise unfree individuals in the Americas and beyond through a database project and other collections of resources.

History

Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas was created in 2015. It was imagined as a crowd-sourced, hemispheric database on documents relating to Indigenous enslavement. Linford Fisher conceptualized this project as researched his forthcoming book, Stealing America: The Hidden History of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History (Liveright). While in the archives, he realized that so many of the documents relating to Indigenous American enslavement that are stored in American and European archives are largely inaccessible to tribal communities and the wider public. To address this problem, he and a team of Brown University programmers and digital humanists began the Stolen Relations project (then referred to as the Database of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas) to democratize access to archival documents.

Over the next four years, the Stolen Relations project made some changes in its direction. First, the team chose to move away from crowd-sourced data collection in an attempt to ensure high quality of research. Secondly, with this decrease in possible editors to the website, it was necessary to narrow the area of research down to one specific region as a primary focus, New England.

In 2019, Stolen Relations began working directly with thirteen Indigenous nations and communities located in Southern New England in hopes of being able to more effectively and directly address their needs and tell histories relating to their peoples. They were each invited to appoint representatives to the project to serve in advisory roles and attend biannual feedback meetings; some also chose to participate in other subcommittees for Stolen Relations, in an effort to Indigenize back-end programming and decision making. The password-protected database was available to them for purposes of performing research and understanding family histories.

In August 2022, Stolen Relations received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities which would allow for increased collaboration with tribal partners (particularly the Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum) over the next three years, leading to the public release of the database and other features in 2025. This was terminated in April 2025 along with more than 1,200 other grants, due to directions from the Department of Governmental Efficiency. These cancellations were purportedly made to fight "Radical Indoctrination" and "Radical...DEI Programs," but a temporary injunction against the Trump administration stopped these cancellations in July 2025.

Stolen Relations was formally launched on May 10, 2025, in a day-long symposium, featuring discussions by tribal representatives, team members, and advisors; and a keynote presentation by Lisa Brooks (Missisquoi Abenaki), of Amherst University.

Values and Goals

The Stolen Relations project seeks to illuminate an often hidden history of Indigenous slavery in American history in order to tell a fuller story of settler colonialism and the harms done to Native nations. The project maintains that at the core of this work are the needs of Indigenous communities that these histories are about. They thereby also want to emphasize the humanity and relations of those who were stolen, as well as the survival and present-day presence of those communities most affected.

In collaboration with tribal communities, this project focuses on creating reciprocal relationships between the Indigenous communities and academic communities, prioritizing Indigenous peoples first. As this subject is widely understood differently across Indigenous communities, they are responsive to the differing needs and desires for how this information is portrayed to, and shared with, wider audiences, so as to avoid perpetuating harm caused by archival tellings of this history.

One of the primary goals of this project has been to create an online resource regarding individuals who were stolen, along with other materials for understanding both the past and present, thereby serving the needs of tribal communities and hoping to further their goals of public education, tribal knowledge of ancestors, and a recognition of their importance and presence today.

Features

Database

Stolen Relations was founded as a database project relating to historical documents. Over its ten years of development, it has shifted to a people-centered perspective. Today, it has pages for over 7,000 individuals involved in Indigenous unfreedom, as found in over 2,500 documents. These documents have included manuscripts, Newspaper articles, books, documents, interviews, journal articles, magazine articles, theses, and webpages. For each document, the original reference is maintained through image of the source page and a transcription, but also uses modern labels of identity where applicable, following advice from the Stolen Relations community partners. If known, name, location, record type, tribal nation, racial designation, gender, occupations, year, age category, and colonial context are documented for each individual. Each individual is described as some form of “free” or “unfree,” with more detailed status descriptions applied where known. The search interface then allows for finding documents and individuals around each of these labels. The project aims to expand public understandings of unfreedom into more disguised forms of forced, unpaid labor, including indentured servitude and apprenticeships. All of an enslaved or otherwise unfree Indigenous individuals’ relationships are listed as described by the document the information is taken from. These connections relate to kinship (for example, “child of”), exploitation (“captured by”), and circumstance (“ran away with”). These documents are currently centered around English-speaking locations, but the team has communicated a desire to expand eventually into other geographies and contexts.

Stories

Stolen Relations offers representative stories derived from their archival documents. The goal of these are to shift the narrative away from the colonizer perspective that so many of these historical documents present and towards a more integrated story of the lives of these unfree individuals. Authored by a team of student storytellers, these stories integrate these documents with the full context of the time and culture in about 750 words. These efforts were made both to restore the humanity and autonomy of the actors described in each story, and to make this history more accessible to those interacting with histories of Indigenous unfreedom for the first time. As of March 2025, ten stories existed on the site, with more to come.

Indigenous Voices

Interviews

As part of the Stolen Relations goal of understanding the effects of Indigenous unfreedom on modern tribal communities, the website features recorded interviews from tribal partners, including Paula Peters (Mashpee Wampanoag), Patricia Rocker (Chappaquiddick Wampanoag, Whale Clan), and Lorén Spears (Narragansett). They provide an important perspective on the ways that all types of unfreedom operated within a broader context of colonialism that served to disconnect individuals from their communities and exploit their labor, in a way that continues to the modern day. These oral histories are split into short segments to facilitate their use in the classroom.

Art

In addition to interviews, the Stolen Relations website provides art meant to depict the experience of Indigenous unfreedom and more broadly, experiences of Indigeneity. As of Summer 2025, poetry, visual art, and music produced by contemporary tribal members was utilized for this purpose.

Maps

For each individual who is connected to a specific location through archival documentation, there has been an effort to geotag their location using a coordinate system. There is a range of specificity, with some individuals being connected to a colony/state, city, or even a specific building. Some individuals are not placed on the map because the source materials are unclear regarding location. These existing geotags have been compiled onto a single global map, aimed at showing the global nature of Indigenous unfreedom. Users can navigate to the pages of individuals by clicking on the geotags associated with their locations.

Curriculum

The Stolen Relations project includes an Education component. Provided on the site are lesson plans for grades 6 through 12 that are meant to be fully integrable into existing national curricula, many of which do not otherwise include reference to Indigenous enslavement. As of May 2025, “Tools of Removal: Enslavement during Warfare” became available for use in recognition of the 350th anniversary of the start of the War for New England, or King Philip's War. These include enriching activities and assignment prompts that further direct interaction with these materials and primary sources. Additionally, a glossary of useful terms for interacting with these materials is available for viewing. The site also provides example syllabi for Indigenous Enslavement or primary document-focused courses at higher educational institutions.

Timeline

The Stolen Relations site includes a timeline of indigenous unfreedom spanning from pre-contact times to the present day. This timeline begins with a description of pre-contact Indigenous societies and then includes a range of events under Spanish, British, French, and American imperial control, including the first enslaved people in New England, a group of Abenaki people captured by Portuguese explorer Gaspar Corte-Real. These events continue past the formal end of slavery in the United States due to the legacies of unfreedom evident in American Indian boarding schools and adoption projects, but also due to the continued resilience of Indigenous communities, through movements like the American Indian Movement and more recently, the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement, both of which Fisher has cited as inseparable from Indigenous enslavement. This timeline feature provides a crucial context for this history for those without prior knowledge on the subject.

Methodology, Technical Aspects, and Documentation

Stolen Relation is built on a Wordpress site with a custom design by Common Media. The SQL database houses the information and is added to through a proprietary back-end entry form created by Brown Center for Digital Scholarship programmers.

The project team created controlled vocabularies and data entry points to roughly correspond with the People of the Slave Trade project (enslaved.org), with plans to comply with interoperability (although this project’s focus on Indigenous slavery renders their categories not entirely compatible). This became especially important for key categories such as freedom “status” and “race.”

Research assistants (RAs) have created a large online archive of research documents related to Indigenous slavery drawn from historical records. Relevant information is entered into the database, and tribal collaborators have access to the whole online archive. To aid research and data entry, the RA Coordinators developed a data entry guide and training videos, along with transcription guidelines to ensure best practices. But the quasi-crowd-sourced nature of the project (through dozens of RAs) has meant that constant data cleaning is necessary.

Leadership and Collaborations

Stolen Relations is a deeply collaborative project and relies upon a wide network of experts, tribal representatives, and experts. Much of the regular building of the project has happened through a core team that is mostly situated at Brown University and includes digital humanists and programming specialists, as well as a Community Outreach Coordinator and tribal interns. Members of the Tribal Advisory Board also participate in subcommittee meetings related to both content and technical development.

Central to the project is the Native Advisory Board, which is composed of officially appointed representatives from thirteen tribal nations and associations. Members of the Tribal Advisory Board are involved in all aspects of the project and meet regularly with the core team to provide insights and help with decision making processes.

The project is also guided by the Academic Advisory Board, members of which are experts in the field of Native American slavery, the public humanities, and Indigenous history.

On the research front, the project is sustained by dozens of research assistants (RAs). Since 2015, the project has worked with many RAs who have come from dozens of high schools and universities. RAs are trained to conduct research and enter information into the database through a proprietary back-end data entry form.

Funding

Stolen Relations’ primary support has been through centers and units at Brown University and the National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Advancement Grant ($350,000, but terminated prematurely in 2025). The project has been housed at the Center for Digital Scholarship in the Brown University Library.

Volunteer Opportunities

Stolen Relations is open to collaborators with a range of experiences. Historical documents and information can be provided by individuals that have them, with credit on the website. Research affiliates are trained in data entry. High school and college interns are primarily focused on research and decoding historical documents. Educational partners pioneer the curriculum materials in their classrooms. Institutional collaborators (primarily universities and historical societies) are welcomed to help expand the reach of the project. Finally, tribal collaborators provide their specific experience to the project and are focused on identity related projects.

Additional Resources

• Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade
• Exploring Slave Trade in Asia
• Freedmen’s Bureau Project
• Freedom on the Move
• Freedom Seekers: Stories of Black Liberation in the American Revolutionary Era and Beyond
• Gold Chains: The Hidden History of Slavery in California
• Native Bound Unbound
• Runaway Slaves in Britain
• Slave Voyages