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PHOTO: The conflicting history of Nanrantsouak, in Madison, known locally as The Pines, will be the topic of the Wabanaki Speaker series, with guest Ashley Smith, Aug. 25 in Skowhegan. (Maureen Milliken photo)
SKOWHEGAN — Ashley Smith will speak on “Stories of Nanrantsouak/Norridgewock Village: Understanding the Legacies of our Shared Histories of Violence,” at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 25, as part of the Wabanaki Voices Speaker Series.
Smith was born and raised in Madison, were some members of her family have been for multiple generations. She is a child of factory and mill workers, and s a product of the deep histories of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships and struggles that have shaped the region.
As a child, her grandfather regularly took her to gather water at the site of the Wabanaki village Nanrantsouak in Madison, known locally as “the Pines” in Madison. She grew up hearing stories of this place and the violence that the English had brought to Wabanaki people here. For a high school project, she researched its history and learned, to her surprise, that much of what she found in published books contradicted what she had grown up learning about. She has spent much of her adult life gathering stories and memories from multiple perspectives. Part of her aim is to understand how competing narratives come about, how they affect people into the present, and what we might do about it.
Smith holds a PhD in Anthropology and Native American and Indigenous Studies and is affiliated faculty at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. She recently left academia to serve the Maine communities that mean so much to her. She now is a legal aid, paralegal and consumer advocate at Pine Tree Legal Assistance.
