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Presentation on the Wangunks, Connecticut’s Indigenous Communities

Learn about the rich histories of Connecticut’s Native American cultures just before and after European contact in a talk by Dr. Lucianne Lavin on Wednesday, Oct. 4, at 7 p.m. at Essex Town Hall, 29 West Avenue. Lavin’s lecture will focus particularly on the Wangunks, a populous, powerful tribe with homelands on both sides of the Connecticut River Valley. This lecture is co-sponsored by the Essex Land Trust, the Essex Historical Society, the Deep River Historical Society, and the Deep River Land Trust.

Lavin is director of research and collections at the Institute for American Indian Studies, a museum and research and educational center in Washington, Connecticut. She is an anthropologist and archaeologist who has more than 40 years of research and field experience in Northeastern archaeology and anthropology, including teaching, museum exhibits, curatorial work, cultural resource management, editorial work, and public relations. Lavin is a founding member of the state’s Native American Heritage Advisory Council and editor of the journal of the Archaeological Society of Connecticut. Lavin is a Connecticut-born resident, having lived much of her life in the lower Housatonic River Valley.