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      Yin Yu Tang: A Chinese Home is closed to the public from 7/27-7/31 and 8/3-8/7

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      Panel Discussion

      Living Histories: How Communities Shape What We Remember

      Saturday, August 29, 2026 from 2—4 pm

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      The Friendship of Salem

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      Location: Morse Auditorium

      Free; preregistration encouraged. Registration link coming soon. 

      2-3 pm: Panel discussion

      3-4 pm: Light reception

      Attributed to Guiseppi Fedi, Friendship of Salem, early 19th century. Watercolor and gouache on paper. Gift of George W. Williams, 1891. M165.

      In a discussion for the North Shore AAPI Coalition’s Salem 400+ exhibition, Afterimages: Retracing BIPOC Histories, director Rachel TonThat speaks with Erika Lee, Thomas Green and Sarah Kanouse on the gap between written records and living memory, and how regions and communities preserve and pass down history in ways that often differ, particularly in tone, from official archives. Sharing their own experiences, panelists will discuss how oral tradition, community projects and grassroots organizing can help shape a fuller, more accurate picture of the past.


      The North Shore AAPI Coalition's community history project was created through collaboration with other members of the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color) community, with contributions from regional organizations and historians. Their work will be on view in Salem's Old Town Hall beginning August 24.

      Explore our other Salem 400+ events. 
       

      About our collaborators

      Erika Lee

      Dr. Erika Lee is the Bae Family Professor of History, Radcliffe Alumnae Professor, and the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. She researches and teaches the histories of the United States, with emphases on immigration and Asian American history and the histories of race, xenophobia, law, gender and society.

      Thomas Green (Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag)

      Thomas Green is Vice President of the Massachusett Tribe, Tribal Council Member and Chairman of the tribe’s History Preservation Committee. He is an Indigenous artist focused on quahog shell, seed bead jewelry and traditional Indigenous regalia. Green is also an Indigenous Culture Steward/ Educator/Consultant and cultural interpreter specializing in the Indigenous history of Massachusetts and Indigenous land acknowledgments.

      Rachel TonThat

      Rachel TonThat (she/ they) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer. She works with her mother, Flora, at the Northey Street House B&B, co-publishes Oreades Press and runs the contemporary art project space Airtight Garage. Read more about her work with the NSAAPIC.

      Sarah Kanouse

      Sarah Kanouse is an interdisciplinary artist and writer examining the political, colonial and racialized ecologies of landscape. Migrating between video, photography, sound and performance, her expanded nonfiction media projects shift the visual dimension of landscape to allow hidden stories of transformation to emerge. Native Spaces (2024-ongoing) is a platform co-designed with Elizabeth Solomon of the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag for sharing artful, place-based narratives of Indigenous presence, pasts and futures in the traditional homelands of the Tribe.

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