The Fine Arts Work Center acknowledges that it was founded and built upon unceded Native homelands of the Wampanoag Nation, People of the First Light, in Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod. Provincetown is on the lands of the historic Paomet Wampanoag tribal village, near the villages of Nauset and Potanumicut, to name just a few. 

We share a breath of gratitude for their ancestors and modern day descendants, and for the birds, insects, animals, and other beings that continue to grace the air, rivers, grasslands, bogs, cedar swamps, forests, and beach, that are both seasonally and permanently here, as well as the whales, dolphins, seals, turtles, sharks, fish, shellfish, and crustaceans in the Atlantic ocean surrounding.

We echo the existing Federal tribal nations of Mashpee and Aquinnah in recognizing these lands and waters as important Relations with which we are all interconnected and dependent on to sustain our life, culture, and wellbeing. Mashpee and Aquinnah were places of refuge for tribal communities on Cape Cod and beyond, and who encourage responsible and sustainable stewardship of Turtle Island.

The Fine Arts Work Center would like to thank artist Elizabeth James Perry for her collaboration on the creation of this land acknowledgment.

James Perry is an enrolled member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe on the island of Noepe (Martha’s Vineyard). Her fine art work focuses on Northeastern Woodlands Algonquian artistic expressions, including Wampum carving, weaving, and natural dyeing.