For the featured billboard on the homepage.
“What’s that saying, ‘We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams’?” (Quote from Blood Sisters by: Vanessa Lillie.) Vanessa Lillie is a best selling author, citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and lives on Narragansett land in RI. Her thrilling achievements include: Her debut, Little Voices, was an Amazon best seller, about a postpartum mom trying to solve […]
When a whale dies, sometimes the ocean delivers it back to us. Whether it drifts ashore in a quiet cove or crashes onto a crowded beach, its body becomes a stage upon which humans project meaning: grief, gratitude, and even opportunity. This past spring, a minke whale carcass washed up against the shoreline at Bold […]
As the Museum Coordinator for the Wampanoag History Museum at the Aquinnah Cultural Center, I have the responsibility of making sure that the belongings in our collection are properly cared for. This work can be unglamorous, but it is a privilege. To ensure that the belongings in our collection are well taken care of for […]
When I set out to curate this collection of writing on “sovereignty,” I knew it was a mammoth to explore. Among original peoples of the Northeast, the word – the idea – is layered with centuries of entanglement between dispossession and self-determination, belonging and constraint. By its simplest meaning, sovereignty implies the authority or autonomy […]
In creating the cover of Motif’s Indigenous Peoples Month issue, artist and visual arts teacher Ella Mahoney took her inspiration from her birthplace, Aquinnah, in Martha’s Vineyard, MA. “Every year, the members of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe go to the cranberry bogs, and pick cranberries together,” she relates. “From that, I took images of the […]
This year’s RI Food Truck & Drink Awards managed to dodge the rain clouds and have a beautiful night by the Pedestrian Bridge, in lovely, view-encrusted District Park in the Guild Garden. We detailed the victorious brewers last issue – below, you’ll find all the truck winners: Good Vibes, the new mobile beverage truck, received […]
Okee dokee folks… So, I am EXTREMELY angry. This disastrous regime has been assaulting immigrants as well as US citizens and making some disappear. That in itself is disgusting and enraging, as we are a nation of immigrants, but they have gone way too far with their xenophobic crackdown on people trying to enter the […]
On September 9, Motif celebrated the 9th annual RI Food Truck and 4th RI Brewery Awards! No one died, some pink monsters came out to dance, and the sun set on an overall good time at 195 District Park. Below is more info on all the winners of the Brewery Awards; keep an eye out […]
Silence = Death Under Brian McEleney’s direction, the much-anticipated Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika, wowed audiences just as much as part 1, Millennium Approaches. This continuation revisits the lives of its beloved, memorable characters as they confront illness, identity, the shifting tides of history and the human heart. Highly regarded as the greatest play […]
Okee dokee folks… Parking. That is what is on my mind today. In my opinion, if a venue – or any business for that matter – does not take easy parking access into consideration as part of their operating scheme, then they are missing the big picture. Nowhere is this more important than in this […]