- Native people are referenced in the last grievances, the Declaration of Independence as merciless Indian savages.

This is one of the most challenging and troubling passages in the Declaration of Independence.

- I can say that we were certainly aware the Declaration of Independence.

We were aware of the struggle for independence from a ruler that was in a country across the ocean.

Our folks have always seen that the rule of the governing powers comes from the consent of the governed.

That's always been a part of our outlook in the world, which we shared with our neighbors, and I think, which also inspired and affected our neighbors.

(pensive music) (upbeat music) I am from Mashpee, I'm Mashpee Wampanoag.

We are the people of the first light, the people of the dawn.

We are some of the first to see the sunrise on this continent.

- It's important to remember that every piece of what is today at United States territory has an indigenous population, and that Native American polities existed for centuries and centuries before any Europeans came to this land.

- There's an embeddedness of power in that, that colonists are very clear on.

Their fortunes, their possibilities were also contingent on the relationships they had to native peoples.

On the one hand, we can look at merciless Indian savages and think, oh, well, that's a statement that seems cruel, and it is, but at the same time, we have to flip the script on that and say that's also about indigenous power.

- At the time, the revolution, the Native American population in the area controlled or claimed by Britain, was in the hundreds of thousands.

- At the outset of the American Revolution, most indigenous peoples along the Eastern seaboard don't see this as a war they want to be a part of.

They see this as a conflict amongst brothers, a family fallout that needs to get settled and does not involve them.

- Native nations divided over what they were gonna do during that war, and the majority would side with the British to try and keep the American colonists away from their frontiers.

- The Native American population, they're continually being pushed west for over a hundred and 150 years by 1776.

- Those populations who have immigrated from Europe have often chose to disregard the local law, the local custom, the local jurisdiction of our tribes, of our tribal governance.

I can't speak to whether or not Wampanoag people were particularly aware of the line merciless Indian savages, but I can say that Wampanoag people's literacy far surpassed that of their European neighbors.

- I think we often think of indigenous communities as being particularly isolated from one another without kind of a wider knowledge of the world around them, which is simply false.

- There was a delegation of Mi'kmaw and Maliseet Chiefs who had come to Massachusetts.

They were actually hoping to meet with George Washington.

They didn't know that he had moved from Boston down to New York with the Continental Army, but when they show up, they have a treaty negotiation with representatives from the Massachusetts government, and they're pledging their support to the continental Army and the cause of independence.

And while they're in the middle of this meeting in Watertown, Massachusetts, the Declaration of Independence arrives.

- And so the Massachusetts delegates say, we really ought to let you know that situations have changed.

We're now part of something called the United States, and here's the document that states that that exists and what it means and and why.

- And we get a response from Maliseet Chief Ambrose Bear who said, "We like it well."

Now that's the translated version of this response, but this is the first moment that the independence of the United States was acknowledged by a foreign power, and it's acknowledged by a Native American chief, not by a European power.

- The fact of matter is that the first to die, to stand up and volunteer to fight against the British, Crispus Attucks was a black and Wampanoag man.

There's a lot of fundamentally Native American concepts of democracy that have huge impact on American democracy.

- When they were thinking about how do we get 13 colonies to all function together, they are looking at native examples and things that had already existed in North America.

- Historians and scholars have debated the influence of the six nations, principally centered in upstate New York, the Iroquois Confederacy on the states formed by the Continental Congress in 1776.

There is certainly a commonality alluded to by people like Franklin through the late 18th century.

- Pure democracy is about everyone's voices being heard and understood and everyone having an opportunity to articulate those in real consensus building, and that was often the model in communities.

You brought everybody together.

You brought women, you brought children, you brought elders.

Everyone came together to discuss matters of importance to the community.

(upbeat tribal music) - If you look at me, most people don't look at me and think that guy is Native American.

The way that Americans remember Native American people, indigenous people is heavily influenced by 20th century mass culture, mass media, movies and stuff like that.

- Many of our folks were enslaved alongside Africans and many of our folks intermixed with those that we were enslaved with.

- Before the transatlantic slave trade really picked up, there was an indigenous slave trade.

- Between the 1670's and 1770's, there were more native slaves exported from New England than there were African slaves imported into the Carolinas.

We've been scattered in many different parts of the world, and part of that through slavery.

- They think native people should look a particular way, as if native people haven't interacted with any other group.

Peoples come together and they marry and they have families, and they form new communities.

We don't live in an isolated world.

I want the general population to know more.

- I think it's fair to say that Native American people are vastly underrepresented in the decisions that are made that affect us.

Only 60% of the Navajo reservation has running water at this point, which means 40% doesn't.

If we saw that in West Virginia, that would be unacceptable.

How do we build a better world?

What can we do to bring about a fair and equitable presence here for all people?

It's something that we have fallen short of as a nation, I think, many times over.

- Most people would agree that freedom and equality are things that are good and that government should protect.

We agree on the values, we disagree on how to get there, but the values should be uniting, not divisive.

(thoughtful tribal music) (thoughtful music)