Experience and Legacy - Raymond Two Hawks Watson

Experience and Legacy - Raymond Two Hawks Watson

Experience and legacy. These are two concepts that I’ve come to appreciate immensely as I’ve progressed, individually and professionally. Throughout my adolescence and early adulthood, I came to understand the impact of my individual experiences on the legacy of my predecessors. Relatedly, the birth of my first child introduced me to a new paradigm that required me to factor fatherhood into the equation of my own legacy. At this point, legacy is preeminent, and I do my best to ensure that my individual experiences are in service to the legacy I hope to pass on to future generations. In this regard, my mind tends towards the recent release of the Report of the Providence Municipal Reparations Commission.

As I’ve shared in past commentaries, my initial engagement with City of Providence Mayor Jorge O. Elorza’s Truth Telling, Reconciliation, and Reparations initiative was as a contributor to the A Matter of Truth Report produced by the 1696 Heritage Group. The report comprehensively detailed the historical experiences of Providence’s African heritage and Indigenous communities and, for me, was nothing less than an unofficial narrative of my family’s experiences with Rhode Island.

For those who may not be aware, I’m a Narragansett “Indian.” My family fought in the King Philip's War, and afterward were indentured or onto forced reservations. My family was intimately tied to and impacted by the State’s illegal detribalization of the Narraganset Tribe of Indians in 1881. My family was subsequently misclassified to the statuses of negro and white to justify the State’s illegal act. Despite these odds, after detribalization, my family migrated to “Providence” and became a part of the Lippitt Hill community. Lippitt Hill was a “mixed” community of “negroes” and “Indians” that, labeled a slum by local interests, was decimated by the urban renewal policies adopted by the City and the State in the 1950s and 1960s. I grew up in Mt Hope (contemporarily Lippitt Hill) and Fox Point; two neighborhoods directly impacted by urban renewal in Providence.

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Each of these are experiences that my family has endured as Providence has progressed. Each of these experiences informs my individual perspective of the City’s legacy. When viewed comprehensively, my experiences speak to a legacy of marginalization and disenfranchisement endured by my family at the hands of local government and powerful interests.

While the reality of the circumstances faced by my family is quite sobering, I do not speak from a place of victimhood. How could I? As my people say, “Eniskeetompoag!” (We are still here!). Ergo, I was raised to consider my very existence as a testament to the success of my ancestors’ struggles, a blessing from Creator above, and a charge to contribute to the ongoing legacy.

I felt humbled and enlivened in June 2021 when Dr. Brian Hendrickson informed me that the Providence Cultural Equity Initiative would be partnering with Roger Williams University to lead the reconciliation phase of Mayor Elorza’s Truth Telling, Reconciliation, and Reparations initiative. I’ve written about that project in detail in the past, and I continue to encourage the public to view the final report at truth.rwu.me; it’s quite informative.

In retrospect, I see how experience and legacy heavily informed the strategy we adopted during the reconciliation phase. Our goal was to identify individuals with firsthand or generational experiences with urban renewal in Providence during the 1950s and 1960s. By documenting these individuals’ narratives, we identified common experiences and themes related to urban renewal in Providence. For the individuals most intimately and severely impacted, the legacy of urban renewal was that of marginalization and disenfranchisement of African heritage and Indigenous communities.

As I conclude this week’s commentary, my mind tends toward the upcoming press conference for the release of the Report of The Providence Municipal Reparations Commission. The report is the culmination of approximately four months of weekly meetings among appointed stakeholders and identifies 11 key areas for the City of Providence—and the community at large—to begin making investments and providing support to address the generational challenges that the City’s African heritage and Indigenous communities have faced.

In my opinion, The Commission’s report is a very solid foundation to build on, and I thank Mayor Elorza for the opportunity to serve on the Commission. It’s been a tremendous honor, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and one that I sincerely hope will contribute to the establishment of a new legacy for the City of Providence. The experiences of the African heritage and Indigenous communities of Providence are a part of Rhode Island’s legacy, and they deserve to be acknowledged as such.

Experience and legacy . . . the two go hand in hand.

My Three Cents,

Raymond Two Hawk Watson, J.D., M.C.P.