A new documentary explores the largely erased history of a Mohegan scholar and minister who raised the money that helped establish Dartmouth College in 1769.
The money was supposed to help build a school for Native American students, but it was instead redirected to Dartmouth.
In the first 200 years of its existence, Dartmouth graduated just 19 Indigenous students despite professing a commitment to educating Native American students. In 1972, Dartmouth revived its commitment and since then, has graduated more than 1,200 Native American students.
“The Forgotten Founder: The Untold Story of Samson Occom” at Dartmouth will be screened at the college this Friday evening.
Co-directors Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel and Signe Taylor spoke with NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Barnett about their documentary.
Transcript
Melissa, this film is a collaboration between the Mohegan Tribe and Dartmouth. How did this work to tell Occom’s story begin?
Well, I first became involved with this project through a Mellon grant that the university had put together. And I was in a group, and the group was designed to bring native people in the university closer together on issues that perhaps had been fraught in the past.
But in the case of Dartmouth and Mohegan, I had a very specific concern. And it arose because I was born in the homestead of a man named Samson Occom. And Samson Occom was a Mohegan who was near and dear to me my whole life. As I grew older, I taught about him at the museum, at the Tantaquidgeon Museum, and wrote about him. And as part of that journey, I realized, more and more I think, how much he'd been wronged. As history and historians became more decolonized and his story came out more fully, I realized that he wasn't just a kind of an unknown preacher or a person who wrote a few things. I saw that his work was being put in Norton's Anthology [of Poetry] and that he had come to be recognized by the scholarly community. And so that became sort of the start of our introduction of Dartmouth to maybe some of the things that hadn't been looked at in a while.
Signe, why is now the time to release this documentary?
After the Mellon grant had started to open up relations between Dartmouth and Mohegan, the Native American Visiting Committee at Dartmouth worked with the president's office at Dartmouth around the repatriation of Occom's papers. That happened in 2022. And I think that that created an opening for Dartmouth and Mohegan to look at their history together and figure out a path forward. And this film is part of that.
Melissa, maybe start with you on this one. The film tells the story of Samson Occom, who is Mohegan. But behind the scenes, many people in front of and behind the camera in this film are also enrolled members. So what was it like to be able to tell Occom’s story, guided by the perspective of those connected to him, including some of his direct descendants?
It's a very emotional experience and a very deeply moving experience because people were informing their performances, their writing, their recollections with generations of stories and experiences. And also, in many ways, generations of concern that this person was always going to be kind of in the shadow of what they should be. So doing them justice was very compelling. And I think it was compelling for the Dartmouth group too.
How do we do this story real justice? Because this is a person who gave everything for their people. And to understand them and to share that in a way that is worthy, it felt like it needed a group and it really needed a village of people who cared. And it needed to also be guided by Occom's words. So at one point, we decided that the only things Occom would say would be things he had actually written or spoken, and that had its own power. So it was a good choice.
In the documentary, you touch on the idea that there's no real separation of the past and now, and that Occom's story doesn't just exist in a set period of time. Signe, I'll start with you. How did that inform the way this documentary was put together?
I remember early on in our conversations, Sarah Harris — she is in the film speaking both from the perspective of someone who went to Dartmouth and someone raised Mohegan — spoke about how this story continues and students at Dartmouth now are part of this story, and what they do in the future is also part of this story. And I find that incredibly moving and also just a wonderful way to approach life and approach history. I think that for me, that was a really grounding way to approach the story.
Melissa, I've been seeing you nodding along.
Right. I agree with everything that's just been said. We have a symbol. It's a triangle. A triangle represents the past, present and future. And you see it in wampum that's as old as half a millennia old in the tribe. Past, present and future being connected creates a different attitude towards everything. Yes, you are responsible to your children and the next generations. You are responsible to the past. But it's all a process and it's all a path. So a mistake you made is not the end of the story, and a success you have is also not the end of the story. For instance, my Aunt Gladys, when we received our federal recognition, instead of saying congratulations, said, “What's next?” Let's keep trying. Let's keep working towards something better for tomorrow.
Signe, you worked on this documentary and presented it at film festivals. Have you seen more recognition of Occom's role in Dartmouth's history now compared to previous years?
Melissa and I presented together at the film festivals. I felt that there was a real dearth of knowledge around him. I think that's changing. I think the repatriation of the papers has brought him a little bit more acknowledgment on the Dartmouth campus. I know that they'll be showing the film to incoming first year students at Dartmouth this year and hopefully we will do that every year. I think that will change the culture at Dartmouth around Samson Occom. I think that's a huge step that we can take.
Melissa, was there something you learned during the filmmaking process that surprised you?
My whole life I felt like Samson Occom was sitting on my shoulder and hoping that I could somehow bring his real story to light. It's been a several-hundred-year tribal and family mission to keep his name alive. The thing that surprised me was, could this effort really see it through to the completion line? Could his story really be told? And could it be told by Dartmouth?
I said to folks at Dartmouth, “You're the educational authority. If you say this about Samson Occom, it's one thing. If I say the same thing, it's not that important.” And when they told his story in a way that I felt was honest and just, nothing could have surprised me more or made me happier.
