CAMDEN — As a part of Discover History Month, the Camden Public Library welcomes eco-historian, researcher, and author Kerry Hardy for his presentation “River of History” on Tuesday, Oct. 24, at 6:30 p.m.

Hardy’s talk will introduce how he uses different disciplines (geology, linguistics, ethnography, primary source historical documents, and human ecology and economy) to understand a place, and produce what some people call a “public history.” In this case, Hardy investigates the area at the mouth of the Hudson River, which might better be called the Mahicannituck. Hardy will show how its development has been shaped by glaciers, oysters, beavers, Native Americans, pirates, enslaved people, and assorted events and accidents, into what we today call New York and Jersey City.
 
This talk stems from Hardy’s work for the last five years as the lead researcher and cartographer for the Public History Project, under Dr. Jack Tchen, who currently heads the Clement Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers-Newark.

“Our contention is that these cities, and this nation, have been built with substantial and unrecognized subsidies like the dispossession of Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans, and the sacking of a bountiful environment,” says Hardy, in a CPL news release. “A greatly revised, and much fuller, historical narrative is needed.”
 
To find the Zoom registration link to attend virtually, visit the “What’s Happening” adult events calendar at librarycamden.org. Or click here for the Zoom registration link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_7lSTPCNzQ6C1mqlPaqLK-w. 
 
Kerry Hardy is a researcher, eco-historian, and author who studies the human ecology of pre-Contact Native Americans, primarily through geographic and linguistic analysis. He is the Lead Researcher and Cartographer at the Public History Project, the Stewardship Coordinator at the Vinalhaven Land Trust, and author of Notes on a Lost Flute: A Field Guide to the Wabanaki that delves into the Native American foodways, languages, place names and ecologies of Maine in 2009.
 
He has presented talks at Maine Audubon, the Conference on Endangered Languages and Cultures of North America, Algonquian Conference, and was a keynote speaker at the Common Ground Fair. He was the former executive director and education coordinator at Merryspring Nature Park, a nonprofit organization in Camden.
 
He holds a Master’s Degree in Landscape Architecture from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Studies.