Native Bound Unbound

Thank you for sharing this New Mexico Public Education Department.

We look forward to a busy summer working with educators and in building curriculum

This will be a great prototype as we expand this effort in the coming years.

Native Bound Unbound is seeking New Mexico teachers with Social Studies experience to help develop engaging, standards-aligned curriculum units and lesson plans for elementary, middle, and high school classrooms. We also welcome related content areas, such as Language Arts, Spanish, and others.

This paid opportunity will bring educators together to explore New Mexico’s history through primary sources, including maps, mission records, and historical documents from 1776. If you are passionate about inquiry-based learning and expanding the material students encounter in the classroom, we encourage you to learn more. Interested educators, please send a letter of interest and resume to Dr. Aaron Taylor at [email protected].

Reckoning with 1776 - from an article by Dr. Rael-Galvez in El Palacio

"The world Domínguez perceived was complex, multilingual, and shaped by the convergence of cultures. What he recorded offers only a partial glimpse of the societies that defined New Mexico in 1776. Yet his report also stands in quiet contrast to another document written in that same year: the Declaration of Independence. While the Declaration proclaimed universal principles of liberty yet remained silent about slavery, Domínguez’s account reveals a frontier society structured largely by Indigenous slavery. Read together, the two documents illuminate both the aspirations and the silence of slavery embedded in the historical moment of 1776. "

Read more at https://elpalacio.org/2026/06/reckoning-with-1776/ or by following the link in our bio.

𝐂𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐎𝐮𝐫 𝐓𝐞𝐚𝐦 – 𝐉𝐮𝐛𝐢 𝐎𝐥𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐩𝐨

When Jubi Oladipo first reached out to Native Bound Unbound, she did so not only to express her appreciation for the project, but to ask how she might contribute to its work. A student at Harvard College studying History and African American Studies, Jubi is deeply interested in the intersections of African American and Native American histories, particularly how these stories have too often been separated in both scholarship and public understanding.

Her research has already begun to illuminate these connections. In her work on the 1637 voyage of the Desire, Jubi traced one of the earliest documented convergences of Indigenous and African slavery in New England, following the ship’s transport of Pequot captives to the Caribbean and its return with enslaved Africans.

Now, as an intern with Native Bound Unbound, Jubi is building on this work through archival research in Massachusetts, identifying and organizing materials that reveal the presence of Indigenous slavery in the region’s historical record. Her work contributes to a growing effort to better understand these intertwined histories while also helping to shape an emerging collaboration with Harvard focused on expanding the study of Indigenous slavery within its institutional and regional context.

There is something about a broom that feels subtly resonant of slavery. Across time and many landscapes, it appears as a simple household tool, made by gathering grasses or shrubs and binding them into a bundle. Its purpose is work; it sweeps dust, debris, and whatever settles on the floor. Brooms stood in corners, leaned against doorways, or rested beside a hearth, always present, rarely acknowledged, and usually out of sight. In the long history of coerced domestic labor, the broom was one of the tools most often in the hands of those who were enslaved.

Across the Americas, the landscape shaped the broom. In arid regions, people relied on the tough fibers of lechuguilla or sotol since grasses were limited. In wetter lowlands and along the Caribbean coast, palm fronds, cane, and rushes were gathered and tied into sweeping bundles. Whatever the region, someone had to go out and collect the material, strip it, dry it, and bind it into a usable tool. Few of these brooms survive. They wore down quickly, and new ones were made as seasons changed and plants aged. They were everyday objects, used until they fell apart and then remade again.

The broom’s power lies partly in its invisibility. It is a tool of maintenance rather than display. Floors swept by the enslaved, whether made of dirt, clay, tile, or wood, were noticed only when they were not clean. In missions, haciendas, and households, sweeping fell to those whose labor stayed out of view, yet it was their work that kept daily life moving. The Codex Mendoza depicts young girls learning to sweep as part of their training, a reminder that sweeping was a routine practice long before European arrival. In Spanish the tool was called escoba, in Portuguese vassoura, and in Nahuatl the verb tlachpāhua referred to the act of sweeping or cleansing.

Read more at https://nativeboundunbound.org/stories/view/the-broom/

Antoine was just 10 years old when he passed away, a "panis child belonging to Joseph Carignan" in Batiscan, Quebec. Although this is the only record we have at moment about Antoine, Native Bound Unbound is committed to recovering as much information as possible about each individual and connecting these moments to build an arc of their life.

You can visit Antoine's page at https://nativeboundunbound.org/people/7450d504-dc90-4957-af87-7ea5628bbc8a/ to learn more.

https://givebutter.com/hidden-recovering-and-reconnecting-56bynr

President Elizabeth Alexander of the Mellon Foundation recently shared inspiring words about NBU. Our project was catalyzed by foundational support from the Mellon Foundation, but we need help moving forward to continue our work of recovering and sharing these names, stories, archives, and documents for free across the globe. Please click the link above to learn more.

The New Yorker recently published an article titled “The Hidden History of Native American Enslavement.”

The story highlights one life among millions whose histories remain dispersed in archives, language, and memory.

At Native Bound Unbound, our teams are working to recover and reconnect these lives through archival research, transcription, translation, and digital storytelling.

If you believe this history must be seen for what it was, we invite you to support the work.

Support the project:
https://givebutter.com/hidden-recovering-and-reconnecting-56bynr

Want to help with the project? You can give us feedback about the website! Follow the link in our bio or click on the address below to access our site survey:

https://forms.gle/uFxYYU2Y1VbtpcHt8

We are incredibly thankful and grateful to both The New Yorker and Geraldo Cadava (who attended our website premiere) for highlighting not only our project but also the history of Indigenous slavery.

The Hidden History of Native American Enslavement Indigenous slavery, which lasted for centuries, has gone by many names. A new public history project wants us to see it for what it was.