Where They Still Remain

“Where They Still Remain” is a photographic project that serves as a memorial to the African American and Wampanoag indigenous communities on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. These two groups have had their histories intertwined on the island as they have faced centuries of displacement and oppression—often finding stability only in each other and the land on which they persist. Through my own photography alongside archival photographs and texts, I aim to evoke the countless lives and stories lost to time and systematic erasure. Martha’s Vineyard has a thriving Black seasonal community–which I am a part of–that has held the island sacred since before Emancipation. Meanwhile, the Wampanoag people have lived on the island they call “Noepe” for over 10,000 years. Their kinship has led to their history being woven together through community and family. In addition to my photographs made using medium and large format film, the project includes vernacular imagery of the island’s Black and indigenous communities from the 19th and early 20th centuries. I have also sourced archival newspaper articles from that era concerning stories of the enslaved and the indigenous on the island. Through my own redactions of these texts, I highlight the language of that time–specifically the way in which Black and indigenous lives were regarded and discarded. I was first inspired to launch into the project after hearing about the 1854 story of Randall Burton. Burton was an enslaved Black man who escaped an offshore ship and made his way across the island’s wilderness to its western point. While hiding from pursuers, he was discovered and given aid by a Wampanoag woman named Beulah Vanderhoop. Vanderhoop sheltered Burton in her home before ultimately securing him safe passage off-island where he then made it to freedom in Canada. His story was covered in real time in the island’s newspaper, in addition to being carried on through tribal oral histories. Many of Vanderhoop’s living descendants became my photographic subjects.