Lorén Spears was born in Spokane, Washington, on September 20, 1966, while her father, Paul Wilson, was in the U.S. Air Force. Her mother, Dawn Dove, was from a prominent Narragansett tribal family. She was raised in Exeter before moving to Hopkinton as a teenager. She attended Chariho High School.
Lorén is an enrolled citizen of the Narragansett Indian Tribal Nation and the Executive Director of Tomaquag Museum. She has been an educator for over 25 years and served as an adjunct faculty member at Brown University and at the University of Rhode Island. Spears earned a B.S. in Elementary Education from the University of Rhode Island and her M.S. in Elementary Education from the University of New England. She received a Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa, from the University of Rhode Island in 2017 and a Doctor of Education, Honoris Causa, from Roger Williams University in 2021.
Under Spears’ leadership, Tomaquag Museum received the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ National Medal presented by First Lady Michelle Obama in 2016. Through the museum, she shares her cultural knowledge and traditional arts, which she has learned from her family and community. Spears also empowers Indigenous youth and educates the public on Narragansett and other regional Native history, culture, the environment, and the arts. She founded and led Nuweetooun School from 2003-2010. She also founded the Tomaquag’s Indigenous Empowerment Center to create educational, professional, and arts opportunities for the Native Community. To ensure Indigenous representation, she serves on many boards, including the RI 250 Commission, URI Native American Advisory Committee, Papitto Opportunity Connection Advisory Board, and the South County Tourism Council.
She has contributed to a variety of publications, including Dawnland Voices: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing of New England; Through Our Eyes: An Indigenous View of Mashapaug Pond; From Slaves to Soldiers: The 1st Rhode Island Regiment in the American Revolution; and Repair: Sustainable Design Futures. Spears co-edited a new edition of A Key into the Language of America by Roger Williams, and recently co-authored “As We Have Always Done: Decolonizing the Tomaquag Museum’s Collections Management Policy,” published in the Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archive Professionals.
Loren Spears is guiding the museum to its new location in Kingston. She establishes many partnerships to ensure outreach to the community via the Indigenous voice.
RISD and Brown students have collaborated on architectural and exhibit designs to envision the new museum and research center; URI students have developed landscape designs; and JWU students have worked on the attributes of the café plans.
Spears has received numerous awards including the National Association of Secretaries of State 2024 Medallion Award; Association of Tribal Archives and Museums’ 2022 Guardians of Culture and Lifeways Leadership Award; Mashantucket Pequot Museum’s 2022 Three Sisters Community Meesumôk Neetop Award; the RI Council for the Humanities 2016 Tom Roberts Prize for Creative Achievement in the Humanities, and the New England Museum Association 2016 Excellence Award, to name a few.
Spears is married to Robin Spears Jr., a Narragansett artist, retired environmental police officer, and mason. Together they have three grown children, two daughters-in-law, and one grandson. Everything she does is for her family, community, and future generations.
She was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 2025.