George Mason collaborating with National Park Service to examine Revolutionary War from tribal nations' perspective

As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary this year, George Mason University is collaborating with the National Park Service (NPS) to make sure the contributions of all Americans are being recognized.

Gabrielle Tayac, an associate professor in the Department of History and Art Historyin the College of Humanities of Social Sciences, has received a grant from NPS to lead Phase Two of Tribal Nations and the Revolutionary War, a community-driven research project that will examine the Revolutionary War and its aftermath from the perspectives of tribal nations.

Tayacserves as the principal investigator and will assist the NPS in facilitating educational and interpretive strategies that will be implemented in sites around the Mid-Atlantic region and throughout the Northeast.

"My hope is that it will help everyone get a sense of deep connection and relationship to the lands we live on now, to the people who are still here and maybe who are not here and wonder what happened to them," Tayacsaid. "To be better caretakers of our communities and places."

The NPS grant runs through 2027 and coincides with America's semiquincentennialcelebration. Tayacis working with fellow Department of History and Art History professors C. Joseph Genatin-Pilawaand George Oberle, BA History '96, MA '98, PhD '16, who also serves as a history librarian and the director of the Center for Mason Legacies (CML). Digital Humanities Librarian Alyssa Fahringer, who collaborates with Oberle in the CML, will also contribute to the project.

Tayac, who served as the inaugural curator historian at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., and New York, will set up workshops in the Northeast region from the Chesapeake Bay up to Maine. These seminars will provide insight from historians, NPS park rangers, and Indigenous community scholars. Tayacand her George Mason colleagues will then produce digital work for historic sites and visitor centers.

Tayac, who collaborated on the 400th anniversary of Jamestown in 2007, hopes the project and the 250th celebration will serve as a focal point to "deepen those histories so that people can see them for a long time."

"It is really critical it is done in a way that Native communities want their stories to be told," said Tayac, who is an enrolled citizen of the Piscataway Indian Nation. "We also know that it has to be done in a way where the American public can really understand it, relate to it, and find the information relevant and intriguing to open up those conversations."

George Mason alum and NPS regional cultural anthropologist Noel Lopez, PhD Cultural Studies '18, serves as a tribal liaison officer for the National Capital Region. He said previous interactions with George Mason, such as collaborations on ecological study units with tribal communities in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, have made the transition into the project easier.

"A lot of the work all of us do, whether it is anthropology or tribal liaison, alot of it is around connections with people and connections with networks," Lopez said. "All of this work we're doing on both sides is relationship building. It is building trust with people."

George Mason students will also play a role. Tayacwill offer training and hands-on opportunities, including through an undergraduate course, History 397 Public History in Action, which she will teach in spring 2027. Students will pull from the tribal communities' stories and transform those into projects for museums, historic sites, a cultural center, or a website.

"I'm really excited about the opportunity for this project to not only workshop in the relationships with Native tribal community representatives but also to bring it back into Mason," Tayacsaid. "In real-time, my students can also have a hand in it. I think that's really important, and it tends to make them really excited about history work, too."