MOHAWK REPAIR INSTITUTE
Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts · Founded 2026
Studio · Archive · Native Nursery
What This Is
Mohawk Repair Institute is a research center, archive, and native plant nursery operating from a historic building near the Mohawk Trail in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. It was founded in 2026 by John F. Sendelbach, sculptor, fabricator, and landscape designer.
The name was already on the building when we arrived. We took it seriously.
The Institute exists to do three things: preserve the physical and documentary record of the upper Deerfield River watershed; propagate the native plant species of that watershed and make them available for use; and produce sculptural work rooted in the ecology and material culture of this region.
The Three Pillars
I. The Archive
Housed in the upper-level library facility at Mohawk Repair, the archive is a living repository of maps, historical documents, artifacts, and regional records pertaining to Western Massachusetts and the Deerfield watershed specifically. It is designed for serious inquiry, a space for primary evidence rather than received narrative.
The archive is organized to be cross-referenced and navigable. Acquisitions are ongoing; the Institute attends local auctions and cultivates relationships with regional institutions. The goal is to hold materials that official repositories overlook or do not prioritize.
II. The QR Network
The Institute maintains a geo-located network of evidence-based historical markers, physical QR codes placed at sites across the region that link to documented, substantiated records held in the archive. This is the archive made legible in the landscape. History, located where it happened.
The network is built on verifiable primary sources. Where the record is contested, that contestation is documented. Where official names or narratives misrepresent Indigenous history, as in the case of the Mohawk Trail itself, the QR network provides the corrected record and the evidence behind it.
III. Seven Tire Natives
Seven Tire Natives is the nursery and propagation arm of the Institute. It takes its name from the seven automotive tires left on the property by a previous occupant, repurposed as planters rather than sent to a landfill. The name is literal and intentional: it describes exactly what is here.
The nursery cultivates native plant species of the upper Deerfield watershed, the plants that ecologically belong to this territory. These are made available to anyone who wants to use them: homeowners replacing invasive species, gardeners restoring native character, neighbors who want the right plants for this soil and this climate.
The nursery is not a retail operation. It is a propagation and distribution point in service of the larger ecological mission.
On the Name
The Mohawk Trail takes its name from a history of conflict rather than from the Indigenous peoples who actually belong to this territory, the Pocumtuck, Nipmuc, Mohican, and Abenaki peoples. The bronze Mohawk sculpture installed in the late 1920s by the International Order of Red Men reflects that era's fraternal romanticization of Native identity. These are facts, not grievances. They belong in the record.
The Institute keeps the Mohawk name because erasure is not repair. We use the name as a teaching instrument while building an accurate record of what the name obscures. This is the methodology: keep the evidence visible, correct the record, make the truth accessible.
The Founder
John F. Sendelbach is a sculptor and fabricator who has operated a working studio in Western Massachusetts for over a decade. His practice is rooted in the material culture and industrial history of this region. The Institute is an extension of that practice, an attempt to bring the same rigor applied to physical objects to the documentation and restoration of the landscape those objects inhabit.
"The name was already on the building. We took it seriously."
Founding Advisory Board
The Mohawk Repair Institute is currently establishing its Founding Advisory Board, a group of individuals who lend their names and standing to the Institute's mission. Advisory Board membership carries no operational obligations. Members are asked to endorse the Institute's commitment to primary evidence, accurate regional history, and ecological restoration.
The Board exists to ensure that this archive and this work have institutional weight, that what is built here is recognized as a serious and permanent contribution to the regional record.
Inquiries regarding Advisory Board membership may be directed to the Institute directly.
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Mohawk Repair Institute does not ask permission to repair what was broken.
It provides the species, the maps, the historical record, and the methodology, and invites anyone who walks through the door to participate.
Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts · Founded 2026
