Birthday of Wamsutta Frank James

Nov. 8, 1923

Birthday of Wamsutta Frank James Flanked by Stonehorse, left, and Ray Fields of the American Indian Movement, Wamsutta Frank James carries ancestral bones back to Coles Hill in Plymouth in the National Day of Mourning protest on Thursday Nov 28, 1974. The bones were turned over to the group by the Pilgrim Museum.
An Aquinnah Wampanoag elder and lifelong advocate for Indigenous rights, Wamsutta is best known for the rescinded invitation he received to the 350th celebration of the Plymouth pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock in 1970. After seeing the speech he intended to deliver, Wamsutta was uninvited to the colonial celebration. Wamsutta and other activists went anyways and disrupted the colonial celebration, declaring Thanksgiving a National Day of Mourning for Native Americans- a tradition which continues today in Massachusetts. Wamsutta was also involved in the Trail of Broken Treaties takeover the Burea of Indian Affairs building in 1972, and the Longest Walk from California to Washington, DC in 1978. Wamsutta helped found United American Indians of New England, which organizes the National Day of Mourning and was their moderator from the 1970's to the mid 1990's.