Whereas Martha’s Wineyard Perhaps the best is known as a holiday place which prefers well Seth Mayors And Obamas Every summer, on its banks, the island also has a rich and complex indigenous history. Aquinnah Wampanoag writer Joseph Lee gives voice to that past in his new book, Nothing more than this land: discovery of community, power and indigenous identity.
The book has raised Lee’s own up in Martha’s Wineyard, as well as considering what is in the community with other indigenous individuals around the world. Here, he discusses the book, community sovereignty, the fellow Aquinah Vampanoag writer and historian takes inspiration from Linda Combes, learn Vampanog language as a child, and his favorite thing when he comes back to Martha’s Wineyard. This conversation has been edited and condensed.
Circulation: How does it feel to see the book out in the world?
Joseph Lee: I mean, getting out of the book is really exciting. This is a little strange because you know, you work for a long time and mostly by yourself, and then suddenly it is out in the world and people are reading it, and it’s exciting and a bit scary. Infection from just writing, where it is you and your laptops, to be out of there and promote it is very good, but this is definitely a change.
You excavate a lot in current history, including the origin of your name. What did your research process see?
It was very mixed, because I was using many different types of sources. It was a lot just talking to my parents or talking to a cousin or going back through the record of the tribal meeting, but (anything was) looking through local papers, or we have a tribal newspaper that goes out, and I have seen many of them. I was doing research online and interviewing people from other places. This was actually diverse research scope. It was trying to collect more and more different sources as much as possible.
Are there books that you feel that your book exists?
I would say almost every book written by a indigenous person before me. In fact, Linda is one of my own tribe by Combs, and it is called Colonial and Vampanog StoryI am not sure what the technical classification is, but it is a book that has a lot of history as well as a creative retailing, imagining how life was life before colonization in our tribe. Those types of books helped me factually – information in those books was useful for me – but it helped me think about being a Vampanog writer personally, being an original writer, and to do something like this in the world.
