The first powwow to be held on Gay Head since the days of King Philip took place in that town last night, and the flavor and spirit of those ancient days was revived so far as possible when Loren
Every year, a new chapter has been added to “Our” Story: 400 Years of Wampanoag History, a recurring exhibit at the Aquinnah Cultural Center.
The following is an award-winning essay written by Womsikuk James for the Young Native Writer’s Essay Contest.
For more than a century on Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod, the words of the Wampanoag were not their own.
“It was prophesied that language would go away from here for a time,” Jessie Little Doe Baird intones at the opening of filmmaker Anne Makepeace’s documentary We Still Live Here. “When the appointed time came, if the people here decided that they wanted to welcome language home then there would be a way made for that to happen.”
Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Marks Recognition Anniversary
By IAN FEIN
When the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) broke ground on a
community center building in the spring of 2004, tribal leaders
envisioned it as an important gathering place, and said young members
would be shooting hoops inside the new gymnasium by the end of the
summer.
Three years later, the building is still unoccupied, sitting
half-finished on tribal lands.
When the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe received a telephone call from U.S. Department of Interior last week, formally announcing their federal recognition as a sovereign Indian tribe, members of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) looked across to the Cape with a warm heart and a jaded eye.
They had lived through a similar moment almost 20 years ago to the day, when they celebrated their status as the first federally recognized tribe in the commonwealth.
