Chappaquiddick

The Wampanoag Tribe of Chappaquiddick continues to be a functioning Tribal community, living on and stewarding our unceded homelands for over 12,000 years.  We are the only Chappaquiddick Wampanoag Tribe whose members live on Chappaquiddick and across Noepe (Martha’s Vineyard). Acknowledged by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a Historic Tribe, our ancestral homelands include Chappaquiddick, Cape Poge, Katama, present-day Edgartown, Muskeget Island and Nantucket.

 

We acknowledge the entirety of the Island of Martha's Vineyard as Wôpanâak lands. We continue to care for all the living creations of Maushop, which in reciprocity care for us. The Chappaquiddick and Aquinnah Wampanoag communities have continued to protect our natural resources and live sustainably with Ahkee, practicing our hunting, fishing, trapping and gathering rights. The preservation of land, culture and ceremony are intertwined with being the Wampanoag stewards of this land since time immemorial.

 

Today The Wampanoag Tribe of Chappaquiddick owns no common lands.  After occupation, the Chappaquiddick Wampanoags were forced to live on two reservation areas on Chappaquiddick: The Cleared Lands Reservation part of North Neck and south of Chappaquiddick road, the Woodlands Reservation which included Sampson Hill in the 1800s. In 1869 the Massachusetts Indian Enfranchisement Act removed our sovereign land rights, and continued land divisions and theft of lands left very few individuals with small lots often illegally stolen by settlers without proper title transfers.

 

In the 1600s, Wampanoag Nation was made up of more than 45,000 Wampanoags, living in over 69 Tribal communities across present-day southeastern MA to Narragansett Bay. Today in Massachusetts remains Chappaquiddick Wampanoag Tribe, Herring Pond, Nipmuc, Assonet and two federally recognized Tribes of Aquinnah and Mashpee Wampanoag. On Martha's Vineyard  the Wampanoag Tribe of Chappaquiddick and Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah are the only two Tribes which remain with a total of about 1,600 enrolled members, of which less than 500 are able to remain living year-round on the Island.