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Native Spaces
With the goal of expanding recognition of Indigenous Peoples in Cambridge, the community voted through the City of Cambridge's Participatory Budgeting (PB) process to fund a series of markers and signs that acknowledge the continuous presence of Native Peoples, both before and after white settlement, and to educate residents and visitors about their lives and traditions. The first element of this PB project was to translate the numbered street names in East Cambridge into the Massachusett language and install new street signs from First to Eighth streets. This web page introduces the project and will serve as a landing page for future project elements and programming.
Project Origin
Nominated by: Sage Carbone, East Cambridge resident and Northern Narragansett Indian Tribe of Rhode Island.
Particpatory Budgeting (PB) Cycle 8, 2021.
African American & Indigenous Peoples Reckoning Project was one of seven (out of twenty) projects chosen by a vote of Cambridge residents.
Street Signs in English and Massachusett
The Design
Why Purple and Green?
The color purple was selected for the Massachusett language portion of the signs because it is the color of the quahog clam shell from which Native people make wampum beads. The green color is used by many municipalities and highway departments for wayfinding signs. It is easily recognizable but is not a required color. The juxtaposition reminds us that there is more than one way of looking at things.
Indigenous Voices
My hope is that when people are traveling through, or coming to visit, they see that East Cambridge and Kendall Square are making those efforts to reconcile with their histories.
Ms. Sage Carbone, WBZ Interview, Nov. 3, 2023
We always look for small steps because we know, as with a baby, small steps equal eventually to running and, you know, doing all kinds of other big stuff.
Dr. David Shane Lowry, WGBH interview, Oct. 9, 2023
About the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag
“The Massachusett tribe are the descendants of the original people that the English Invaders first encountered in what is now the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We against all odds have survived as the descendants of the first people of Massachusetts. We continue to survive as Massachusett people because we have retained the oral tradition of storytelling just as our ancestors did. This tradition passes on the Massachusett view of how our world works, our relationship with all of nature and why things are the way they are. There are ways of perceiving and doing things in our community that trace back thousands of years. There are medicine ways thousands of years old that we still practice today. We honor our ancestors for keeping the traditions they were able to keep, for their foresight, for the gifts they left to us and for their continued guidance.”
Learn More
Participating Departments
- Participatory Budgeting, Budget Office
- Cambridge Historical Commission
- City Manager's Office
- Traffic, Parking & Transportation
- Information Technology
- Language Justice Division
- Arts and Cultural Planning