MONTAGUE — The Selectboard is applying for a $20,000 Mass Humanities grant that the town would use to create an audio tour of its pre-colonial and industrial history.
The funding is available through Mass Humanities’ Expand Massachusetts Stories initiative, which launched June 1 to support projects that interpret or share narratives about the state “with an emphasis on the voices and experiences that have gone unrecognized or have been excluded from public conversation,” the state’s website explains.
Should Montague be granted funding, it would develop the Peskeomskut Self-Guided Audio Tour that users would be able to access through their cellphones. The concept involves a multitude of speakers who would share “personal, historic and interpretive narratives.”
“What we have done is lined up approximately seven individuals who will record their stories,” explained David Brule, chair of the Montague Historical Commission and president of the Nolumbeka Project, a nonprofit that seeks to preserve and share Native American history and culture.
Brule said tourists would wind their way through the tour along the Canalside Rail Trail, listening to audio recordings of speakers that smoothly fade into the next as the GPS-equipped tour senses the tourist’s movement.
“The technology is mind-boggling, the fact that it’s all going to be GPS and accessible,” Brule said.
The project will include “Indigenous perspectives and fact-based archeological evidence recently uncovered during the Battle of Great Falls/Peskeomskut Project,” Selectboard Chair Richard Kuklewicz wrote to Mass Humanities. Kuklewicz and Brule each said the project would embody the 2004 Reconciliation Agreement between the Selectboard and the Narragansett Tribe, which sought to begin healing the “wounds of the past” that date back to the infamous Great Falls Massacre led by Capt. William Turner (after whom the town is named) in 1676.
“There’s a really compelling story to tell,” Town Planner Walter Ramsey told the Selectboard on Monday.
“It’s a complete package,” Brule said of the proposed audio tour.
According to the Mass Humanities website, final grant awards through the Expand Massachusetts Stories initiative will be announced Sept. 21.
Reach Julian Mendoza at 413-772-0261, ext. 261 or jmendoza@recorder.com.