Jeremy Dennis - "Kitchaminchok, Mastic, NY" Framed 18x24 Photograph

Kitchaminchok is a sacred place to the Unkechaug people, known for its drift whaling. Historically, it is part of a boundary marker mentioned in a 17th-century agreement between Sachem Wyandanch and Lion Gardiner that permitted Gardiner to pay five pounds (potentially eight hundred pounds today) for every complete whale carcass that came ashore.

18 x 24

Archival Giclee Print

My photography explores indigenous identity, cultural assimilation, and the ancestral traditional practices of my tribe, the Shinnecock Indian Nation. Though science has solved many questions about natural phenomena, questions of identity are more abstract, the answers more nuanced. My work is a means of examining my identity and the identity of my community, specifically the unique experience of living on a sovereign Indian reservation and the problems we face.

 My images question and disrupt the post-colonial narrative that dominates in film and media and results in damaging stereotypes, such as the “noble savage” depictions. As racial divisions and tensions reach a nationwide fever pitch, it’s more important to me than ever to offer a complex and compelling representation of indigenous people.

- Jeremy Dennis