Lincoln St House - Wampanoag Land

The place where I spent so many cherished childhood moments. The house my grandfather built for my grandmother as a wedding present. The place where my mother and her beloved sisters grew up together. The place built with only 2 bedrooms, forcing the sisters to bond immensely from having no personal space. The place where my grandmother taught me to befriend the animals in the backyard (photo attached). Where I learned to love the smell of mold because it reminded me of visiting her. The place where the rest of the quaint neighborhood cottage-houses were torn down and huge modern houses replaced them. The place where my grandparent's house still stands, as long as they live they live in that house. It represents them. It is them.

The photo attached is of my aunt and I, the aunt that I referenced in my I Am poem, who bonded with me over a similarly carefree youth and hosted me over the summers. We are standing in my grandparent's kitchen, one of my favorite places to be. The place where Papa would sneakily give me Cracker Jacks too close to my bedtime when my mother wasn't looking. The place where my Nana always had a tea kettle piping hot by the time I'd walk in the front door. The kitchen where my seat during Christmas dinner would be a step stool and how I loved sitting in that step stool because my Nana convinced me that it was a special seat. Not the real reason (because they didn't have enough chairs for the huge family that we all were apart of).

While it holds great meaning to me and my family's history, the land also holds the memory of the Wampanoag. The tribe once lived in this area and was the same tribe that were forced out and murdered by the first set of settlers in nearby Plymouth. They existed on the land for 12,000 years prior to colonization according to one source. In a predominantly wooded area but also with robust waterways, they were hunters and fishers and thrived in a community of over 40,000 people prior to the massacres of settler colonialism. The tribe still exists today in New England.