As summer reaches its peak, I spoke with Aquinnah Wampanoag author Joseph Lee about tribal history on Martha’s Vineyard. We discussed the challenges of maintaining Indigenous identity amid tourism and displacement and what “green colonialism” looks like today. Joseph also shared how time abroad reshaped his understanding of sovereignty—and who gets to define what being Indigenous means.
Joseph Lee teaches creative writing at Mercy University, and his writing has been published in The Guardian, Vox, High Country News, and more. He has won multiple awards from the Indigenous Journalists Association, and most recently, he’s the author of Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity.
