A living history museum in Massachusetts focused on colonial life on the English settlement at Plymouth is planning to change its name to better reflect the Native Americans that long lived in the region.
Plimoth Plantation, in a Facebook post this week, unveiled a new logo bearing the word “Patuxet,” the Wampanoag name for the area, juxtaposed with “Plimoth,” the one later given to it by English colonists.
The museum, which was founded in 1947 and features colonial re-enactors replicating life on the Puritan settlement, said the name to be unveiled later this year will be “inclusive of the Indigenous history that is part of our educational mission.”
It said it had long been planning to announce a new name timed with this year’s commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival on the Mayflower in 1620.
“As our Nation faces a pandemic, an economic crisis, a reckoning with racial injustice and a highly-charged election year, there is no doubt that we have reached an inflection point in our history, one that raises necessary, and at times painful, discussions,” the museum said in part in its statement. “We recognize that the commemoration of 400 years of shared history is complex and we embrace this moment as an opportunity for reflection and learning.”