It was standing-room only Wednesday night at Stillpoint in West Tisbury when a group of Aquinnah Wampanoag women publicly unveiled a mission years in the making: to restore the relationship between tribal people and the land throughout Martha’s Vineyard, or Noepe.
The event was also an introduction to the Aquinnah Land Initiative (ALI), a nonprofit land conservation organization formed in 2023 led by five women of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), as well as a way to educate residents of Martha’s Vineyard about tribal connection to the land and the concept of the land back movement. It lastly revealed a plan for 27 Aquinnah Circle, property that includes the former Aquinnah Shop Restaurant location at the cliffs, where $8 million is needed for the purchase, restoration, and future care. Though the board of ALI is made up of members of the tribe, it is not the tribal government, a distinction that was made several times during the discussion.
ALI was “formed out of a need to return land to Wampanoag people, to not just return the land, but to restore our relationship with our land,” Wenonah Madison, board president of ALI, member of the Aquinnah tribe, and owner of 7a Foods, said in a video about the organization played at the start of the event. “We are the land, and the land is a part of us, and we both need each other to be here. We have been realizing the squeezing out for some time, none of it really leaves space for Indigenous people.”
“Our language tells us that we cannot exist without the land, and I always think of myself in this way: I grow from the land; I wouldn’t exist without the land, and land has memory,” Amira Madison, board clerk of ALI, councilwoman for the tribe, and manager for tribal nations strategic initiatives at Harvard University, also said in the video. “So all that knowledge that’s passed down generations — that is also embedded in the land, and I can’t exist without that.”
For Wampanoag people, land isn’t about acreage or viewed as an asset, Amira said. A return of land to “long-term care” by Wampanoag people, she said, strengthens the Island for everyone through ecological care, local food, and protected views and habitats. This can happen, she said, through purchase, donation, partnership, conservation arrangement, or a cultural access agreement. (“We’re not going to just kick people out,” Amira said.)
The hope for ALI is to not only return land to tribal people but to also protect, restore, and steward that land. And to exemplify that, they’ve turned their eyes back to 27 Aquinnah Circle, a property that was purchased by and is temporarily stewarded by the Mashpee-based Native Land Conservancy (NLC) for ALI.
The property, which was initially opened as a commercial building in the 1940s by Napoleon and Nanette Madison and was part of the land allotted to the tribe when Aquinnah was incorporated in the late 1800s as its former name Gay Head, was placed on the market in June 2023 for $3.5 million, and the concern was that the land would pass out of Wampanoag hands.
“In August of 2023, the NLC stepped in to purchase this special place with the intent to be the temporary caretaker until the newly formed [ALI] is able to fundraise the purchase price,” NLC’s website states. The owner sold the property to NLC for $2 million.
The “27 Aquinnah Circle [property] is the first opportunity, not the entire mission,” Berta Welch, board director of ALI, member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag, and a leader on several other boards within the tribe and Island community, said. It is, however, a “powerful first test,” Amira said, of ALI’s vision. It was actually the property that inspired the five women, which also includes Tiffany Smalley as board treasurer and Camille Madison as board director, to start ALI, but they’ve since been approached by owners who want to hand over other parcels of land.
The board presented a working vision of what could become 27 Aquinnah Circle, which included first restoring the land itself with engineers and other specialists who understand the cliff that faces severe erosion, drainage, settling, and vegetation for safe use. They want to remove invasive plants, restore native ones, create an upper path within the three-acre property, and make room for outdoor gatherings. The vision also includes what to do with the existing restaurant building, and a restored eatery with the potential for communal dining and traditional foods is part of the discussion as well as rotating art exhibitions and cultural programming.
“A restaurant is a meaningful possibility, but it is not the whole purpose of this land, and it is not yet a final operating decision,” Amira said. She added that for a non-native visitor to the property, “welcome should lead to understanding and respect,” but “for a Wampanoag person, welcome should also mean belonging and not feeling like a guest on ancestral lands.”
ALI is currently developing a model for funding that can include individual giving, leadership gifts, foundations and grants, partnerships, mission-aligned earned revenue, and dedicated resources for stewardship. Their next steps include raising the funds to take over ownership of the property from NLC and care for the property, which they’ve already started to do with the permission of the conservancy.
Concrete plans are in the distance at the moment, but Wenonah said that in terms of how to use of the restaurant building, she hopes to “have someone who’s willing to run it and take care it, and we believe in our members and believe that there’s someone out there that can do that,” though conservation did eventually lead to the difficulty of securing affordable housing, for both native and non-native people, on the Island.
The question of state grants was also brought up. While funds are available, Wenonah came to realize that only a municipality, such as the town of Aquinnah, can hold a conservation restriction over the land, a requirement when a nonprofit makes a property purchase with a state grant. And the board wasn’t comfortable with that partnership in the long-term.
It felt like another version of colonization to Wenonah, who said, “It’s not that I don’t trust the people that are there now. It’s just you don’t know. I’m not going to be here forever. The people who are working in the town aren’t going to be there forever.” Tribes, even those federally recognized, on the other hand, aren’t allowed to hold a conservation restriction, according to state law.
Nevin Sayre, a hall of fame windsurfer who recently was the recipient of the Art Buchwald Award, also emotionally spoke about one collaboration already in the works between ALI and Sherriff’s Meadow Foundation, in which the foundation is holding a conservation restriction over a property of an anonymous family so the land can’t ever be developed. Though they said they aren’t a replacement for the Native Land Conservancy, Land Bank, or other conservation organization, the board said they’ve started to have discussions with other groups, like Vineyard Conservation Society.
“In a time with very few win-win situations in this world, to me, this sounds like a win-win,” Sayre said through tears.
The conversation ended with a door open to future discussion with the audience and broader Island community, but one of ALI’s guiding principles is that Wampanoag voices lead.
“We are willing to come to the table to feel and move forward together because we have to. There is no other option,” Amira said. “We’re all here, and realistically, the land is going to be out there, and we’re going to have to still manage with other people.”
