About

The concept

Stolen Relations is a community-centered database project at Brown University that seeks to illuminate and understand the role the enslavement of Indigenous peoples played in settler colonialism and its impact on the present. As we scour the archives, we are seeking to document as many instances as possible of Indigenous enslavement in the Americas between 1492 and 1900 (and beyond, where relevant).

Our project seeks to recover the stories of individuals as well as educate the public on the reality of these processes. We are focused primarily on New England for now, and are working in close partnership with approximately thirteen regional tribes, nations, and communities.

Importance of Indigenous enslavement

Long overlooked by scholars and almost completely unknown to the wider public, the enslavement of Indigenous peoples was a persistent and destabilizing aspect of settler colonialism that caused trauma and harm to communities and families even as it aided settler colonial expansion. The enslavement of Native Americans was a hemispheric phenomenon, perpetrated by every European colonial power in their invasion of the Americas. Scholars now estimate that between 2.5 and 5 million Natives were enslaved in the Americas between 1492 and the late nineteenth century – an astonishing number by any measure (even compared to the approximately 10.5 -12 million Africans who were brought as slaves from Africa in this same time period). Approximately 600,000 Native peoples were enslaved and otherwise abducted or removed from communities in North America. For a concise summary of Native American slavery history, see this page.

Connecting Past and Present

While this project seeks to bring greater understanding to the past, it is important to recognize that these Indigenous nations are still here, in New England and all across the Americas, and have vibrant communities and cultural traditions. They, too, have oral histories regarding settler colonialism, displacement, Indigenous enslavement, and ongoing survival into the present that need to inform our understanding of the past; archival materials alone are insufficient. In combination with tribal input, Stolen Relations is providing collecting biographical information related to enslaved Indigenous people and placing it online where historians, researchers, students, tribal members, and families can use the information to reconstruct histories, chart networks, and make connections in ways that have never before been possible.

These are hard realities and difficult histories, but they need to be told fully so we can start to be more honest about the history of this country and think more clearly about how to make amends moving forward.

We are grateful for our partnerships with our tribal collaborators, as well as various Brown departments and centers listed below. Please see our Project documentation page for more information regarding our collaborative editorial and technical decisions.

Timeline

Stolen Relations was founded as the Database of Indigenous Slavery in the Americas in 2015. Starting in 2019, the project expanded to collaborate with more than a dozen regional Native nations. In August 2022, we received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and will go live on May 10, 2025.

How to contribute

We are working with our tribal partners and a team of researchers to identify, enter, and interpret relevant historical and oral historical materials. We are looking to partner with individuals and institutions who are willing to send materials they have or join our research team to input materials directly. Please see our Contribute page or contact Linford D. Fisher to learn more.