Join Aquinnah Wampanoag artist and cultural steward Elizabeth James-Perry on an educational nature walk! This guided, family-friendly activity will highlight Indigenous cultural cuisine, architectural tribal uses and responsible stewardship practices in the lands and waters now known as the Back Bay Fens.

Register below. If the registration form does not appear, try opening this page in an Incognito/private browsing window.

About Elizabeth James-Perry:
Internationally known 2023 National Endowment of the Arts Heritage Fellow Elizabeth James-Perry is an enrolled Aquinnah Wampanoag whaling descendant who engages with Northeastern Woodlands cultural expressions primarily in sculptural wampum carving, naturally dyed textiles, and watercolor paintings including the Bear Map series. Her work explores the connections between the arts, sustainability, Native identity and sovereignty, maritime traditions and environmentally restorative Native gardening. Her garden project Raven Reshapes Boston was part of a year-long collaboration with artist Ekua Holmes to bring diversity to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. James-Perry has a Marine Science degree from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, attended Shoals Marine Lab, and Rhode Island School of Design CE, and holds a certificate in Digital Tribal Stewardship from Washington State University. She was an advisor for many years for the New England Foundation of the Arts Native program, gave workshops in the Evergreen College Longhouse Program. For over a decade she was employed first with the Natural Resource Department and then the Aquinnah Tribal Historic Preservation Office, she was the Federal Tribal Co-lead of the Northeast Regional Ocean Planning Body and participated in the United South and Eastern Tribal Conferences as a member of the Heritage and Culture committee.

Acknowledgement:
For millennia before and in the centuries since Frederick Law Olmsted designed the Emerald Necklace park system, the lands and waters of and around Greater Boston have served as a site of exchange among communities including the Massachusett, Pawtucket, Wampanoag and Nipmuc peoples. The Emerald Necklace Conservancy acknowledges the Greater Boston region as their unceded ancestral territories. This acknowledgement is a starting point toward right relations with Indigenous neighbors and their understandings of land stewardship.

View other Opening Our Doors programming here.

This event is supported in part by: