Nantucket is an island about 30 miles (48 km) south from Cape Cod. Together with the small islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget, it constitutes the Town and County of Nantucket, a combined county/town government in the state of Massachusetts. Nantucket is the southeasternmost town in both Massachusetts and the New England region.
Aquinnah is a town located on the western end of Martha's Vineyard island, Massachusetts, United States. From 1870 to 1997, the town was incorporated as Gay Head. At the 2020 U.S. census, the population was 439. Aquinnah is known for its beautiful clay cliffs and natural serenity, as well as its historical importance to the native Wampanoag people. In 1965, Gay Head Cliffs were designated as a National Natural Landmark by the National Park Service.
The Wampanoag, also rendered Wôpanâak, are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands currently based in southeastern Massachusetts and formerly parts of eastern Rhode Island. Their historical territory includes the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.
Wampum is a traditional shell bead of the Eastern Woodlands tribes of Native Americans. It includes white shell beads hand-fashioned from the North Atlantic channeled whelk shell and white and purple beads made from the quahog or Western North Atlantic hard-shelled clam.
Appeal to the Great Spirit is a 1908 equestrian statue by Cyrus Dallin, located in front of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It portrays a Native American on horseback facing skyward, his arms spread wide in a spiritual request to the Great Spirit. It was the last of Dallin's four prominent sculptures of Indigenous people known as The Epic of the Indian, which also include A Signal of Peace (1890), The Medicine Man (1899), and Protest of the Sioux (1904).
The visual arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas encompasses the visual artistic practices of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from ancient times to the present. These include works from South America and North America, which includes Central America and Greenland. The Siberian Yupiit, who have great cultural overlap with Native Alaskan Yupiit, are also included.
Teri Greeves is a Native American beadwork artist, living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is enrolled in the Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma.
Linda Jeffers Coombs is an author and historian from the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). Coombs is the former program director of the Aquinnah Cultural Center.
The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) (Wampanoag: Âhqunah Wôpanâak) is a federally recognized tribe of Wampanoag people based in the town of Aquinnah on the southwest tip of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, United States. The tribe hosts an annual Cranberry Day celebration.
Jane Stuart was an American painter, best known for her miniature paintings and portraits, particularly those made of George Washington. She worked on and later copied portraits made by her father, Gilbert Stuart, and created her own portraits. In the early 19th century, she assumed the responsibility of supporting her family after her father's death. She first worked in Boston, but later moved to Newport, Rhode Island, where she was the first woman who painted portraits. In 2011, she was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame.
Rachel Perry is an American artist. She is known for conceptual works using drawing, photography, video, collage, sculpture and performance, which address “the fleeting nature of experience, the elusiveness of desire, and the persistence of objects in a throwaway culture.” Art critic Jerry Saltz has written that her work "not only grappl[es] with consumerism but [she is] just about swallowed whole by it.” Her work also considers themes of gender identity, narcissism, privacy and information overload.
Dyani White Hawk is a contemporary artist and curator of Sicangu Lakota, German, and Welsh ancestry based out of Minnesota. From 2010 to 2015, White Hawk was a curator for the Minneapolis gallery All My Relations. As an artist, White Hawk's work aesthetic is characterized by a combination of modern abstract painting and traditional Lakota art. White Hawk's pieces reflect both her Western, American upbringing and her indigenous ancestors mediums and modes for creating visual art.
Julia Csekö is an Artist, Educator and Independent Curator having worked at multiple learning, non-profits, and cultural organizations, including Montserrat College of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Helen Edith Vanderhoop Manning Murray was a Native American historian and writer and enrolled citizen of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe. She is known for her book Moshup's Footsteps: The Wampanoag Nation, Gay Head/Aquinnah: the People of First Light (2001), as a tribal elder, and as serving as education director for her tribe.
Keri Ataumbi is a Kiowa artist, who paints and sculpts, but is most known as a jewelry maker. Her works have been featured in exhibits and permanent collections of various museums including the Heard Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Peabody Essex Museum, Philbrook Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. In 2015, she and her sister, Teri Greeves were honored as Living Treasures by the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Hannah Claus is a multidisciplinary visual artist of English and Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) ancestries and is a member of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte First Nation.
Everett Gardiner Weeden Jr., or Tall Oak, was an artist, activist, survivalist, and historian of Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe stated that Weeden was "a documented descendant of the Mashantucket Pequot, Narragansett, and Wampanoag tribes".
Sherry Pocknett is a Mashpee Wampanoag chef and caterer. She is the owner of the Sly Fox Den Too restaurant in Charlestown, Rhode Island. In 2023, Pocknett received the James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Northeast. She is the first Indigenous woman to be honored by the James Beard Foundation.
Julia Marden is an American artist based in Vermont. A member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe, Marden specializes in traditional Wampanoag arts and crafts, including basket and mat twining, wampum belts, and painting.
Roen Halley Kahalewai McDonald Hufford is a Native Hawaiian Kapa artist who was named as one of nine National Heritage Fellows by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in 2023. Her work has been displayed in the Bishop Museum and the Hawaii State Art Museum.
