Haverhill to Formally Dedicate First Nations Park in October

WHAV News Staff By |

The sign marking Haverhill’s new First Nations Park at the corner of South. Elm Street and Railroad Avenue was created by Haverhill Poet Laureate Daniel Speers. It features an image of a short-nosed sturgeon to honor the fish that for thousands of years has swum up the nearby Merrimack River to spawn every spring. The park stands on lands that were once important fishing grounds for the Abenaki peoples and early English settlers. (WHAV News photograph.)

Haverhill Poet Laureate Dan Speers. (Courtesy photograph.)

October’s formal dedication of Haverhill’s newest recreation area, First Nations Park, involves sacred ceremonial practices with a citizen of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc Tribe of Massachusetts, a reading from Haverhill’s poet laureate and other presentations.

First Nations Park, as WHAV has reported, was built by Procopio Companies and gifted to the city as part of an agreement to develop the mixed 290-unit apartment and commercial space called The Beck. It was named in 2023 by the city’s Native American Commemorative Task Force headed by Daniel Speers, Haverhill’s poet laureate.

“While there are many parks in Massachusetts that feature native Americans and events, this is the first park exclusively dedicated to remembering and honoring the culture, heritage and stewardship of the indigenous people who lived and prospered in pre-colonial America,” Speers says.

He further notes, “It recognizes Haverhill as one of the oldest continuously used Indigenous sites in New England. The Merrimack River’s fishing grounds are among the longest-documented Indigenous gathering places in the Northeast, with archaeological evidence stretching back more than 13,000 years.”

A dedication ceremony is set for Saturday, Oct. 3, at 10 a.m., on the riverfront at 236 S. Elm St. Mayor Melinda E. Barrett will preside with Larry Spotted Crow Mann, an enrolled citizen of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc Tribe of Massachusetts and executive director of the Ohketeau Cultural Center; Speers and Massachusetts and New Hampshire state officials. The dedication is free and open to the public. Parking will also be free and available at the nearby Bradford Rail Station.

For Mann, the dedication recognizes he river and surrounding landscape as having long been part of an Indigenous network connecting Native communities throughout the region.

“This river carries a significant meaning to Nipmuc people and to our Pennacook relatives, who are so deeply interrelated in this region,” he says. “Our ancestors came to these waterways to fish, trade, travel and gather for ceremonial gatherings.”

Likewise, Speers adds, early English settlers. impressed by number of sturgeon, salmon and alewife, later established the first industrial fishing operation in the nation on the same stretch of river.

The park is on the former Haverhill Skateland site—a Bradford landmark for seven decades—at the intersection of Railroad Avenue, Elm Street, and Sgt. Joseph C. Comeau Bridge. It features a children’s play structure, shaded picnic tables and outdoor performance area. There is also access to a boardwalk along the river, allowing observation of the local habitat of fish such as sturgeon and bass and birds like the eagle and osprey.

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