Printer's Devil/Devil's Printer

Description

In the place currently known as New England, a place once known by other names, a Nipmuc man named Wawaus, also known as James Printer, attended the Harvard Indian College and worked as a printer's devil. My great-grandfather wrote a book about the press that he worked on, the first printing press in North America, and failed to mention the Native American labor that was used to translate the King James Bible into a dialect of the Algonquin language knows as Wopanaak, and to print it on that press. This work seeks to make some small reparation for that omission. The Wampanoag Bible has been used in more recent years as a source of reclamation for this lost language, to revitalize a people who have survived despite adversity, attempted genocide, and systemic racism. See the Wopanaak Language Reclamation Project for more information. https://www.wlrp.org/

Other Projects by Deborah Santoro