“The land needs to go back, wants to go back, just as it is to the people of the land with no restriction and no designation that me, as an outsider, have a right to determine what is done with it,” Dvora said when interviewed about the planned donation last summer. “If I said you need to do something with this land, I am right back into that same system of white people telling Natives what to do with their land.” 

As I rounded the corner beyond the condos, I found myself in a section of the river where there was no sign of the modern world. No cars or houses, docks or boats, and I imagine this is the world my ancestors would have seen. Pristine wilderness, the water lapping softly at the side of my canoe and the cattail, bulrush, and phragmite bending, gently in the breeze. 

The discovery of an ancient network of stones aligned to lunar cycles including a large monument resembling a turtle led a Western Massachusetts woman to rescue the land to preserve the remarkable work done by the original people of the land.

“They were placed there with intention, with deliberation, wisdom, pragmatism, prayer and ceremony that is beyond my comprehension and experience,” she said Sarah Kohler who gifted the 7 acre parcel to the Native Land Conservancy.

In May a group of NLC tribal friends toured some of the 440 acres of property held by the Dennis Conservation Land Trust. The Native Land Conservancy holds Cultural Respect Easements on all of the DCLT lands.

The toddler Jacki Rivero leaning into the cranberry box in Simpkins Bog. Granddaddy Jerome DiTiberio looks down on her smiling.

When the Aquinnah Shop Restaurant went on the market in June for $3.5 million hearts in the Aquinnah Wampanoag community sank fearing they could never raise enough money to save the sacred land on the crest of the iconic Gay Head Cliffs.

The atmosphere in the Camp Hayward dining hall was undeniably indigenous last October 20th prompting one guest to remark, “I have never experienced an annual meeting quite like this before,” saying it was certainly not your typical land conservation assembly.