National Grid and the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Launch New Internship Program Focused on Cultural Preservation and Stewardship

WALTHAM, MA – National Grid today announced the launch of its new Tribal Historical Preservation Internship, a first of its kind program designed to provide Native American students with hands-on experience in helping preserve and protect culturally sensitive lands, heritage resources, and areas of cultural significance.

The program offers paid summer internships, funded through a National Grid grant – and a direct result of the Indigenous Peoples Initiative at National Grid – to expose Native students to career paths that support tribal historic preservation. Candidates will work alongside Mashpee tribal historic preservation staff to understand the identification and preservation of culturally important sites and landscapes.

“As energy and transmission projects continue to expand throughout the region, Tribal Historic Preservation Offices are increasingly involved in consultation processes, archaeological monitoring, environmental review, and cultural resource protection efforts tied to infrastructure development,” said David Weeden, Tribal Council Member and Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, Mashpee Wampanoag tribe. “While we welcome the engagement, we often find ourselves facing capacity challenges. At the same time, there is a limited pipeline of Indigenous students entering fields connected to historic preservation, environmental review, archaeology, cultural resource management, and infrastructure coordination.”

Recognizing the challenge, National Grid approached the Mashpee Wampanoag last year to propose the new internship program as part of a company-wide commitment to identifying better, more thoughtful ways to engage and partner with local tribes.

“National Grid is undertaking a significant amount of work to build the energy infrastructure of the future and, while doing so, we continuously try to improve our community engagement, which includes identifying new opportunities to partner with local communities,” said Chris Laird Chief Operating Officer, Electric, National Grid New England. “This pilot demonstrates how community investment and social impact initiatives can directly support operational goals by helping strengthen relationships, improve coordination, reduce project risk, and build a more informed future workforce that is equipped to balance infrastructure development around Tribal cultural resource protection.”

The program will support two paid Indigenous interns participating in a 12-week placement this summer within the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Historic Preservation Office.  This summer’s interns are:

• Samantha Jonas, a Mashpee Wampanoag scholar and recent Tufts graduate from Vernon, Conn., who will begin her PhD studies at Harvard this fall, and 
• Anna Gelormini, a recent George Washington University graduate from Medfield, Mass., who has a double major in Biological Anthropology and Archaeology.

Both interns bring strong experience in research, cultural resource work, and community engagement that aligns closely with the goals of the pilot and the broader effort to build long-term Indigenous preservation and workforce pathways.  

For the duration of the program they will gain hands-on experience in cultural resource management, Tribal historic preservation operations, archaeological monitoring, consultation processes, archival research, mapping, and community engagement while working directly alongside Tribal preservation staff.

The internship program reflects a broader relationship-based approach to Tribal engagement, intended to support stronger coordination, earlier communication, greater cultural awareness, and long-term trust-building between Tribal Nations and the utility sector while helping build future Tribal capacity and creating a pathway for the next generation of Indigenous leaders and professionals.