Thawn Sherenté Harris has some big plans for this coming Patriots’ Day and some big shoes to fill while he is at it. Harris is training to run the Boston Marathon to honor one of his relatives, who not only ran it twice but won it both times. Harris, 47, is the great-nephew of the […]
“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 foliage falls and the weather cools, a call to celebration and remembrance beckons to the Narragansett Nation. The whistling wind says this is the season for tradition and celebrations that keep the Nation strong. The Great Swamp, Naming, and Harvest Thanksgiving ceremonies foster a sense of interdependence that has allowed the people to maintain […]
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 […]
“The Indian nations have always been considered as distinct, independent, political communities retaining their original natural rights as the undisputed possessors of the soil from time immemorial.” – Worcester v. Georgia(1832). “There is little or no pure aboriginal blood among these people, who partake of the African race with which they are largely mixed.” – […]
I believe that sovereignty within tribal context is a double-edged sword. As Indigenous people, we have lived on this continent for thousands upon thousands of years, always subsisting within a tight-knit community with people who have roles and jobs; however, after our communities were split apart through colonization, we were given the scraps of what […]
My great, great grandmother was a Ramapough Lenape Indian and one of the only ancestors we have a picture of from that long ago, around the late 1800s. While we may only have an image to look back on, we do have this person, a woman, a piece of our history that reminds us of […]