July 13-17, 2026
Mashantucket Pequot Reservation, Mashantucket, CT
Teachers in this one-week workshop will participate in field trips and learn to use primary and secondary sources to examine a history that is rarely told, and certainly not from the Indigenous perspective.
Support the Pequot Neepun Teacher Institute and help bring authentic Indigenous history into classrooms. Your donation provides educator scholarships, curriculum resources, and hands-on learning rooted in Native perspectives.
Applications are now closed.
Mashantucket is easily accessible by car, train, boat, and air, offering multiple convenient travel options for visitors across the region
Mashantucket is conveniently located just off I‑95, making travel simple for visitors across the region. Participants driving to the area should enter Foxwoods Resort Casino into their GPS for the most accurate directions.
From New York City — 2 hours 30 minutes
From Boston: 1 hour 45 minutes
From Providence: 45 minutes
From Hartford: 45 minutes
From Worcester: 1 hour
From Albany: 3 hours
The closest airport to Mashantucket is T.F. Green Airport in Providence. Participants may also choose to fly into Hartford, Boston, or New York, depending on their travel needs.
T.F. Green Airport (PVD) — Providence, RI • 41 miles
Bradley International Airport (BDL) — Hartford, CT • 60 miles
Logan Airport (BOS) — Boston, MA • 100 miles
LaGuardia Airport (LGA) — New York, NY • 134 miles
John F. Kennedy Airport (JFK) — New York, NY • 141 miles
Because of our location near the Long Island Sound, there are several ferries that are in close proximity to Mashantucket.
The Northeast Corridor offers some of the best train service in the country with a stop in New London, Connecticut just 20 minutes from Foxwoods.
Amtrak’s high-speed, first-class AcelaSM Express services to New London from:
Boston: 1 hour, 15 minutes
New York: 2 hour, 30 minutes
Philadelphia: 4 hours, 30 minutes
Washington, D.C.: 6 hours, 50 minutes
Parking is free at Foxwoods Resort Casino.
We encourage applicants to spend the week in our reserved block of rooms at the world class Foxwoods Resort Casino.
Foxwoods Resort Casino has many dining options for Institute participants. Restaurants can be found here.
Rebecca Lord Gomez is thrilled to serve the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation as the Director of Education. Rebecca attended Ithaca College in upstate New York, where she studied oboe performance and history. She began her career as a 7th grade English teacher in the South Bronx as a Teach For America corps member, then spent time teaching in Brooklyn, NY at Achievement First before obtaining a dual master’s in Library Science and Humanities at Long Island University and New York University. Her undergraduate thesis was on the McKinley assassination and the emergence of the conservation movement under Theodore Roosevelt, and her master’s thesis was on the dramatic literature of Bertolt Brecht and the everyday “performance” of German complicity in Nazi Germany.
After realizing that her true love is inspiring middle schoolers to read, she left academic to return to the classroom in Newark, NJ. She spent five years teaching 8th grade English and serving as an Academic Dean before becoming a history curriculum director for Uncommon Schools, a major charter school network across New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
In her current role, she serves the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal community in fulfilling all of their educational endeavors. She also works with the Connecticut State Department of Education to write curriculum, serves on the board of Connecticut Council for the Social Studies, consults on Indigenous slavery with the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale, works with CT Humanities and the CT Democracy Center on CT History Day, serves on the America 250 Education Sub-Committee for Connecticut, and is a participant in a group working to indigenize the CT State community college system.
When she is not teaching, Rebecca enjoys reading, cooking vegetarian cuisine and singing karaoke. She loves then National Park Service and anything related to Broadway and showtunes. She lives with her daughter, husband and two cats (Ishmael and Moritz) in Stonington, CT.
Wunneanatsu Lamb-Cason (Schaghticoke/HoChunk) is an award-winning educator, traditional storyteller, author, and advocate with over 20 years of experience promoting social and cultural equity in education. She has taught high school history in Virginia for the last decade and was recognized as the 2024 National History Teacher of the Year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History for her contributions to accurate and inclusive history education.
An enrolled citizen of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, Wunneanatsu draws inspiration from her grandmother, Trudie Lamb-Richmond, a renowned Tribal Historian, Master Storyteller, and the original Director of Public Programs for the Pequot Museum. Her grandmother’s teachings inform Wunneanatsu’s approach to intergenerational knowledge-sharing and cultural preservation, inspiring her debut children’s book, Grandmother Moon, set for release in August 2025.
Wunneanatsu holds a B.A. in History with a concentration in Native American Studies and an M.A. in American History. She has served on numerous state and national committees, including as Chair of the NCSS Indigenous Peoples Policy Statement Task Force.
Now serving as the Assistant Director of Native American and Indigenous Studies at Brown University, Wunneanatsu supports expanding Indigenous-focused academic programs and fosters relationships with tribal communities. She also owns Eastern Woodlands Education Consultants, LLC, through which she provides workshops and professional development to educators nationwide, focusing on combating misinformation and ensuring Indigenous histories are authentically represented in classrooms throughout our educational landscape.
Dr. Jason Mancini joined CT Humanities as Executive Director in 2018. At CTH, he is focused on strengthening organizational partnerships, engaging diverse audiences, and anchoring Connecticut’s placemaking, public history, and integrative digital initiatives.
Jason is also co-founder of Akomawt Educational Initiative and the former Executive Director of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. During the past 30 years, he has worked with tribes and Indigenous peoples of southern New England, Alaska, Hawai’i, and New Zealand. He is an ally to these communities and works to build awareness of Indigenous rights and histories in public spaces. His academic interests include Indigenous social networks, maritime labor, and migration; Indigenous citizenship and political activism; and re-indigenizing public history and education.
Currently a Visiting Associate Professor of Slavery and Justice at Brown University’s Simmons Center, Jason served previously as Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut, Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Connecticut College, Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Brown University, and Social Sciences Instructor at Sea for Sea Education Association (SEA).
Jason is a Scientist-in-Residence at Mystic Aquarium, a member of Everyday Democracy’s Civic Health Advisory Committee, board member of UConn’s Asian and Asian American Studies Institute, advisor for UConn’s Tribal Educational Initiative, and served on the African American Curriculum Development Committee for the State Education Resource Center (SERC).
Jason holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Connecticut with expertise in the archaeology and ethnohistory of New England. His article, “in contempt and oblivion”: Censuses, Ethnogeography, and Hidden Indian Histories in Eighteenth-Century Southern New England, published in the Journal of Ethnohistory and his forthcoming projects, “Beyond Reservation: Indian Survivance in Southern New England,” and “The Narraganset Chief, or the Adventures of a Wanderer”: Recovering an Indigenous Autobiography, examine the nuanced and subverted histories of the Indigenous peoples of the American northeast.
Kevin McBride is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut and the former Director of Research at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. He has conducted archaeological and historical research throughout New England, Block Island, Baja Mexico, the Caribbean, and Portugal. His research interests include Indigenous and Colonial cultural and historical landscapes, maritime adaptations, historical archaeology, underwater archaeology, and battlefield archaeology.
McBride is a member of the Society for American Archaeology, the American Anthropological Association, the Society for Historical Archaeology, and the Society for American Ethnohistory and is adjunct Faculty at the Institute for Exploration. He is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Museum of Natural History and of the Governor’s Task Force on Indian Affairs.
He has written numerous articles on Native American and Colonial archaeology, ethnohistory, archaeobotany, underwater archaeology, and battlefield archaeology.
Traditional singer, dancer, speaker and carver, Jonathan Perry is grounded in the traditions of his ocean-going ancestors.
Jonathan is influenced by his ancestors and his time spent on the ocean, something very close to him, being from an island Native community. Jonathan continues to use the materials and knowledge handed down from his ancestors to express his understanding of the Natural World and the change that it has experienced in the past four hundred years. Jonathan’s three dimensional artwork ranges in size from large, hand-carved dugout ocean vessels, to stone effigy pipes and high-end copper jewelry.
An articulate and thoughtful speaker, Jonathan has lectured on the topics of Eastern Woodland art and traditions for over 25 years at both regional and national venues and his performing arts career has spanned over 30 years. These venues have included the Peabody Essex Museum, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, Harvard College and Brown University.
In his personal time, Jonathan enjoys spending time with his family and participating in cultural activities in the Native community. He particularly likes to collaborate with his sister, Elizabeth James-Perry on artwork, research and exhibitions
Margaret Ellen Newell received her A.B. in History and Spanish from Brown University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Early American History from the University of Virginia. Ohio State University named her a Distinguished Scholar in 2020.
Professor Newell’s research and teaching interests include colonial and Revolutionary America, Native American history, slavery, the history of capitalism, and Latin American history.
Her most recent book, Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery (Cornell University Press), won the 2016 James A. Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians for the best book on the history of race relations in the U.S. and the 2016 Peter Gomes Memorial Prize from the Massachusetts Historical Society. She has given dozens of public talks and recorded radio interviews and podcasts on Indian and African slavery.
Dr. Akeia de Barros Gomes is the Interim Vice President of the American Institute for Maritime Studies at Mystic Seaport Museum, she is the Director of the Frank C. Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies, and is a Visiting Scholar at Brown University’s Ruth Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice.
Akeia is responsible for scholarship, exhibitions, and collections at Mystic Seaport and has been responsible for curatorial projects of race, Indigenous histories, ethnicity, and diversity in New England’s Maritime activities. She leads a multi-disciplinary team to examine Mystic Seaport Museum’s and other regional collections to develop contemporary re-imaginings of people’s actions in the past and present, and translate that into content relevant to today’s social environment.
Akeia taught as professor of American Studies and Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Wheelock College from 2008 to 2017. She received her BA in anthropology/archaeology at Salve Regina University and her MA and PhD in anthropology/archaeology at the University of Connecticut.
The Pequot Neepun Teacher Institute is independently funded by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, reflecting the Nation’s long-standing commitment to education and cultural preservation.
This initiative empowers educators and inspires future generations to engage with Indigenous history in meaningful and transformative ways.
