The Newton History Series, co-sponsored by Historic Newton and the Newton Free Library, launches its 2026 season on Thursday, January 15 at 7pm at the Library with Land as Archive in the Native Northeast.

Since the time of first interactions between English settlers and the Native peoples of the Dawnland, the settler colonial project has focused on the continued dispossession of Indigenous homelands. Early land deed or transfer documents drawn up between settlers and Narragansett, Nipmuc, Wampanoag, Pequot and other tribal representatives, before and after King Philip's War (1675-76), represent just one of the audacious forms of dispossession enacted by settlers across the Native Northeast. =

This talk will explore the imposition, impacts, and legacies of these 17th century documents, and the lives and experiences of the Native people who signed them. Speaker Kimberly Toney is an enrolled member of the Hassanamisco Band of Nipmuc, and is the Inaugural Coordinating Curator of Native American and Indigenous Collections, jointly appointed to the John Carter Brown and John Hay Libraries at Brown University.