Joseph Lee on the Sprawlng Portrait of Aquinnah Wampanoag Identity at the Center of His New Book, ‘Nothing More of This Land’

Although Martha’s turn is probably known as the holiday location that works well in the summer of Seth Mayors and Obams, the island also has a rich and complex indigenous history. Ekna Vampanog Author Joseph Lee voice this past in his new book, Nothing more than this land: search for community, power, and indigenous identity.

In the book of the book Martha, Lee’s own upbringing has been created, as well as consider what is meant to be in society with other indigenous people around the world. Here, they discuss the book, community’s sovereignty, and fellow Ekna Vampanwag influences the author and historian Linda Cumbus, learn vampanogs in childhood, and when they return to Martha’s turn, their favorite thing. This conversation is edited and thick.

Wogg: How does it feel like to see a book in the world?

Joseph Lee: I mean, it’s really interesting to be out of the book. This is a bit strange because, you know, you work on something for a long time and mostly by yourself, and then suddenly it comes out into the world and people are reading it, and it’s interesting and a little scary. Only transfer from writing, where you and your laptop are, it is great to talk about and advertise it, but this is definitely a change.

You dig a lot in the current history, including the beginning of your name. How did your research process look like?

It was very mixed, as I was using many different sources. Many of these were just talking to their parents or talking to cousins or returning to the records of the tribal meeting, but (some were present) were searching through local papers, or we have a tribal newsletter that goes out, and I have seen many of them. I was also conducting research online and interviewing people from elsewhere. It was a really diverse research scope. It was just trying to collect more and more and more different sources.

Are there books that help you in your book?

I will say almost every book written by a indigenous man before me. Actually, by Linda Combus, is one of my own tribe, and it is called Colonialism and Vampanog Story. I am not sure what the technical rating is, but it is a book that has many history as well as creative re -communications, in which it is imagined how life was before the colonialism in our tribe. These kinds of books in fact helped me – the information in these books was useful to me – but it also helped me to be a Vampanwag writer, to be a native author and think about putting something like in the world.