Students at West End Primary School learned a special lesson about heritage when their vegetable garden was blessed by a Native American of the Wampanoag Nation on the Friday before Heritage Day.

West End Primary teacher Mary Tatem decided that her class would plant a ?Three Sisters Garden? after taking a graduate course. A ?Three Sisters Garden? is a Native American traditional garden that grows corn, beans and squash. The three together produce a strong garden that wards off pests.

?I was interested in knowing more about our historic connections,? said Mrs. Tatem. ?I found out in my studies that many natives travelled across the ocean to England such as Pocahontas who married an Englishman and died in England. Many Native Americans were kidnapped and taken over and eventually returned to their country.?

Annawon Weeden, who belongs to the Mashpee tribe of the Wampanoag of Southeastern Massachusetts, was in Bermuda shortly before Heritage Day to visit with local schools and talk about Native American culture. Due to a scheduling mix up, he visited West End Primary in the morning to talk about culture, visited several other schools on the Island then returned in the afternoon to bless the garden grown by students at the school.

Although Native American culture may seem remote from Bermudian life, many Bermudian families have Native American ancestry. In the 1600s Native Americans were brought to Bermuda from New England to be used as slaves.

According to an article in the July 13, 2002 issue of the Cape Cod Times written by Paula Peters, 80 Native American men from Massachusetts Bay were brought to Bermuda in 1678. They were most likely taken prisoner after King Philip?s War ended.

?The men were purchased by Captain Anthony White, the largest land owner in Bermuda at the time, and sent to live on St. David?s,? wrote Ms Peters. ? The Indians became farmers, fishermen and labourers and were most prized for their ability to build boats.?

During the garden blessing, students stood in a circle around their plot. Mr. Weeden lit a bundle of sage and then began to cleanse the spirits of the students.

He said that although children are innocent, with all the negative information they hear and see on television even children nowadays need a spiritual cleansing. As Mr. Weeden wafted the smoke over the head of every gardener, and had them lift their feet so the smoke could pass under them also, children from other classes gathered beyond the circle to watch. Sensing the mood, the onlookers were quiet and well behaved.

Mr. Weeden passed around a plastic water bottle so that each child could water the plants.

One boy squirted the water a little too hard, and giggled nervously.

A younger child who had just come to watch was horrified and whispered to his friend, ?That boy just ruined the whole ceremony. He is being disrespectful.?

His comment showed that the children at West End Primary had learned a valuable lesson from Mr. Weeden, one that went beyond cultural details ? basic respect.

Later, Mr. Weeden led the group of children in a celebratory fish dance. Again, more children gathered to watch.

When one particularly obnoxious child began to shout derisive remarks to the participating children, he was quickly hushed, not by the teachers, but by other students. He looked around at the other children with some confusion, as if to say, ?aren?t we making fun of people today??

The answer was a resounding: No.

Wanda Lynch, mother of West End Primary students Monique, 10 and Malik, 7 came to watch the ceremony. It was of particular interest to her because she recently learned that she has Native American roots.

Reggie Tucker, who has been instrumental in helping Bermudians reconnect with their Native American past, got Mrs. Lynch interested.

?My grandfather, LeDrew Fox, was from St. David?s,? said Mrs. Lynch. ?Mr. Tucker has a lot of the background about the Foxes. We started working together. He said this is your history and background.?

She said her children were very excited about Mr. Weeden?s visit to Bermuda.

?It is exciting because it is nice to know where your people come from,? she said.

Mr. Weeden works part time at the Boston Children?s Museum. He also visits schools in Boston and works on education and outreach.

When the ceremony was over and the children were leaving to go home, many took the opportunity to come up to Mr. Weeden and ask him questions.

One student said, ?Excuse me, Mr. Native American, did you kill a bird to get feathers??

?My name is Annawon,? he said patiently and with a smile, ?as in ?and a one and a two?. The turkey is one of the only birds that we hunt. Hawks and owls we don?t usually hunt. They are very sacred. We take the feathers if someone finds one dead.?

Another very little child said, ?Excuse me, do you have dogs where you come from??

Mr. Weeden then chatted with them about dogs, and the one he use to have as a child.

One of the reasons he relates so well with the children is that he as five of his own.

?The children in Bermuda ask more questions because they are not exposed to it as often,? he said. ?When I started the programme with the students this morning I tried to get an idea for what they know. When I asked them whether they had seen or heard of a tepee most of them raised their hands. That is a common thing that most kids know back here. Most of them had heard the ?woowoo? (war whooping with the hand over the mouth). Just as in Massachusetts, a lot of the children here did not know how offensive that is.?

One of the stereotypes that Mr. Weeden tries to dispel is that all Native Americans look a certain way.

?A lot of children and adults back home assume that all Native Americans look like the Italians who use to portray Native Americans in the black and white western films,? he said. ?If you don?t have dead straight jet black hair people say you aren?t a real Indian and people will actually stand in front of you and take you apart visually. hen you say you?re Native American, they say ?how can you prove that?. That is a very awkward question to me. I wouldn?t question how you know who you are.?

During his talk with the children he tried to focus on New England, because many of the Native Americans brought to St. David?s came from that area.?

He feels that his culture is in danger of vanishing, which is one of the reasons he decided to have a large family.

?A lot of us are intermarrying with other cultures,? he said. ?Some of which takes them away from the ceremonial aspects of the connection. Also with the environment is being destroyed at a very rapid rate, a lot of the resources that we depend on are no longer in existence.?

In school, Mr. Weeden was teased a lot because he wore his hair long in braids. It was only during traditional dances that Mr. Weeden felt truly free and able to be himself.

?We did have a traditional home in our front yard where I spent a lot of my time after school,? he said. ?When I grew up and became a father I remembered how my father was always there for me in school. When people said your tribe no longer exists, you gave your turkey to the pilgrims and you shook hands, and you vanished because of disease or moved away, I would know that wasn?t true because I visited my grandfather every year in Cape Cod. The Wampanoag are still out there. We have a Powwow on July 4 weekend. We are still doing the ceremonies. I grew up in Charlestown, on the South Shore of Rhode Island on the Narragansett reservation. That was my father?s community. My mother?s community was on the south shore of Cape Cod.

?So I have always been around Native people and Native American communities which is something that may have helped me.?

When Mr. Weeden was in school and asked to write historical essays he always tried to stay true to the Native American perspective.

?I hope that my children will have the ability to think outside the American mindset of their history verses ours,? he said. ?They go to a public school in Cape Cod. I do outreach at schools. The third grade in Massachusetts is required to learn about our tribe specifically because of our involvement in Thanksgiving. They are also supposed to learn key names of leaders, and how we co-existed with the environment. I do celebrate Thanksgiving. I look forward to seeing my family and watching a football game. As I got older I realised there was a lot of inaccuracy in a lot of the television shows.?

Mr. Weeden said that before the pilgrims came along, the Native Americans had celebrated Thanksgiving not once a year, but several times a year with the changing seasons and different crops being harvested.?

Mr. Weeden has visited Bermuda twice before for the St. David?s Native American Reconnection Festival. He will return to Bermuda for the festival again this year at the end of June.

?In the past we have done mainly song and dance,? he said. ?This year the organisers have realised that there is so much more to learn. They are going to have a table set up with crafts for the kids. They will have games out there, and literature for the kids to read while they are doing activities. I think the Government realised that there is more than what takes place at the St. David?s Reconnection that is why I am here this week talking to students.?