Watchlist: ‘How A Native American Artisan Keeps the 4,500-Year-Old Practice Of Wampum Alive’

By Kamiah Koch

Social media/digital journalist

In a recent video published on Dec. 4, 2021, Insider interviewed Narragansett Tribal member Allen Hazard, who is working to preserve and reclaim the tradition of making wampum, a purple and white material made from shells and often shaped like a bead or as jewelry.

The video explains that today, wampum is referenced as a Native American currency, but Hazard says it was never currency and offensively given that label.

Traditionally it was given as a gift but colonizers inaccurately adopted it as a form of money, leading to it being legalized as a form of currency by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637. The video’s narrator explains that an oversupply of wampum led to its devaluation as currency and it was no longer used as such by 1701.

Now in the 21^st century, Hazard has made it his life’s mission to correct the misinterpretation of wampum.

Hazard is shown making wampum with traditional and modern tools. Using a wet saw and power-operated tools, he now shapes and produces wampum beads and jewelry to sell in his Rhode Island shop.

Allen Hazard holds up a wampum bead and a quahog shell in the Insider video “How a Native American Artisan Keeps the 4,500-Year-Old Practice of Wampum Alive.” Hazard is from the Narragansett Tribe and has made it his life’s mission to correct the misinterpretation of wampum. (Smoke Signals screenshot)

He also explains that he has two apprentices from regional Tribes who are learning the history of wampum and how to make it.

Hazard said that although he uses modern technology to shape the shells now, it is important that the traditional ways prevail.

“It was my wish that they understand the tradition and the meaning to each nation that had [wampum] way before they could learn anything else,” Hazard says in the video. “Making money wasn’t even in the story of it, it was respecting the tradition of our ancestors and our Elders.”

The seven-minute video shares Hazard’s step-by-step process of making wampum with power-operated tools and with traditional tools like a drill bow, deer antler and a 40-year-old sandstone rock.

To watch how wampum is made and learn about its true history for yourself, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3RJ0OcJ3A or find the video in the Watchlist playlist on the Smoke Signals YouTube channel.