“Pakachoag: Where the River Bends” is a documentary produced by faculty, staff, and students at The College of Holy Cross about the transformation of land over the last 400 years, focusing on historical and present-day sites of indigenous community in the area of the Holy Cross campus in Worcester, Massachusetts. The documentary brings together primary resources from the American Antiquarian Society, the Holy Cross Archives, the Worcester Historical Museum and other repositories, with perspectives from three narrators, Cheryll Holley of the Nipmuc Nation, Thomas Doughton, Nipmuc historian and Senior Lecturer at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at Holy Cross, and Colin Novick, environmental historian and Executive Director of the Greater Worcester Land Trust.
Thomas Doughton and Colin Novick will join us for a discussion of this ongoing community partnership and the ways cultural organizations can support and initiate similar projects in their own communities.
Watch the documentary >
Q&A will follow the presentation.
This event is free of charge. Please register by April 10. You will receive the Zoom link when you register.
About the speakers
Thomas L. Doughton is a Senior Lecturer at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he has taught for 20 years. In scholarship and instructing undergraduates and adult learners, he has specialized in the Holocaust, comparative genocide, Native American studies, local history, and African American history as well as seminars like “Global African Diaspora” and “African Experience in Europe.” A longtime former resident of Paris, Professor Doughton did graduate work at the University of Paris completing an advanced degree with a dissertation on the relationship of the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and the emergence of post-colonial discourse in Black Africa. On alternate years he has been taking Holy Cross students abroad for a 6-week summer course entitled “History, Memory and the Holocaust in Central Europe” studying and traveling in Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany. He has also led tours on New England’s African American history for adults.
Colin Novick is the Executive Director of the Greater Worcester Land Trust and has been engaged in urban land conservation work since 1996. This work is aided by his expertise in the environmental history of Worcester and the use by Native Americans and later settlers of the region. Colin assisted in the creation of the EOEEA Massachusetts Statewide Trail and Greenway Plan with the Appalachian Mountain Club. Colin served as the chair of the Massachusetts Land Trust Coalition and was the first Executive Director of the Bolton Conservation Trust. He frequently presents workshops and seminars at state and national conferences on land conservation. Colin also serves as a deacon at the Cathedral of Saint Paul in the Diocese of Worcester.
