Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice
Date May 28, 2026
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2025 Annual Report Update: Stolen Relations Research Cluster

This community-based project, housed at Brown University, is a collaborative effort to build a database of enslaved Indigenous people throughout time all across the Americas in order to promote greater understanding of the historical circumstances and ongoing trauma of settler colonialism.

A professor addresses a group of people
Project Director Linford Fisher provided an overview of the project. Photo by Benjamin Tyler/Brown University Library.

This year marked a wonderful, long-anticipated moment in the Stolen Relations project: the public launch! Founded in 2015 (and tribally collaborative since 2019), this project has been a careful, slow-moving work-in-progress with many layers. The team at the Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS) has been a long-term partner for the project as a whole, and the Simmons Center has likewise been a faithful supporter in ways big and small. A National Endowment for the Humanities grant from 2022–2025 allowed us to develop the new website and search interface, all in close collaboration with a team of a dozen tribal members and leaders from the region.

A group of people at a panel talking to an audience
Q&A with Panel Two: Rethinking History and Reframing the Narrative. Photo by Benjamin Tyler/Brown University Library.
Someone talking to a group of people
Lorén Spears (Narragansett), Director of the Tomaquag Museum, spoke about the collaborative nature of the project. Photo by Benjamin Tyler/Brown University Library.

We were incredibly grateful to be able to share this project with the world on May 10 of this year in a public symposium hosted at Brown. Even as the project went live (www.stolenrelations.org), the symposium featured three panels of tribal collaborators, CDS staff members, and students who worked on the site. This wonderful day of sharing and communing concluded with a keynote address by Professor Lisa Brooks of Amherst College. Additional pictures and videos of the event can be found on the Stolen Relations blog.

We are now gearing up for the next phase of our work as we continue to expand curricular and educational materials. We welcome collaborations at all levels, so feel free to reach out!

Linford Fisher

Stolen Relations Research Cluster Faculty Fellow
Associate Professor of History
Faculty Director for the Center for Digital Scholarship, 2025–present
Principal Investigator, Stolen Relations Project

Related

Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas

This community based project, housed at Brown University, is a collaborative effort to build a database of enslaved indigenous people throughout time all across the Americas in order to promote greater understanding of the historical circumstances and ongoing trauma of settler colonialism.
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