New photo exhibit by Shinnecock artist explores Native people's connection to the land

One striking photo in a new exhibit by Shinnecock artist Jeremy Dennis features a woman in a fringed dress sitting on the lip of an earthmover’s bucket. The machine looms behind her, surrounded by green trees and mounds of soil.

Dennis said his aunt, Doreen Dennis-Pepe, inspired him to stage the photo after she sat in the path of construction equipment in 1996 to protest development on land later ruled to be part of the Shinnecock Reservation.

Some of the earliest of the 23 photos in the exhibit grew out of questions about his own family history and the land around him, said Dennis, 36, a lifelong resident of the Shinnecock Reservation in Southampton.

“Where did my ancestors live? Why did they choose these places? What happened to them over time? Do these places still exist?,” he wrote in his artist statement.

Dennis, who founded Ma’s House on the reservation as a community center and exhibition space, began work in 2016 on the first of three projects on display, which connect the contemporary Indigenous experience to the thousands of years of Native people’s history on Long Island.

“I always remind people that we’re, of course, still living,” Dennis said in an interview. “Our culture is always evolving and telling new stories.”

The show called “Living Conduit — Indigenous History and Present Day,” is on view at South Ocean Gallery, inside the South Nassau Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Freeport, through Nov. 21.

“I always remind people that we’re, of course, still living,“ Dennis said in an interview. “Our culture is always evolving and telling new stories. “Dennis said the congregation approached him last year about exhibiting his work, whose focus, he said, is from “On This Site” alongside portraits of Shinnecock people to “emphasize the fact that we are still here as a community,” an effort he said aligns with the congregation’s social justice goals.

Gallery visitors will encounter landscapes paired with historical text in the first of the show’s three section, titled “On This Site”; staged photographs about land in “Sacredness of Hills”; and portraits paired with interviews in the “Shinnecock Portrait Project.”

For “On This Site,” Dennis researched archaeological, historical and oral accounts, then photographed culturally significant locations as they look today.

His 2017 “Garvies Point Site” photograph, for example, shows winter woodland in Glen Cove where erosion exposed evidence of Indigenous life along the shoreline. Archaeologists found a shell midden — evidence of repeated shellfish gathering and food preparation — along with stone tools showing Native communities used the coast long before European colonization.

The archaeological site was first documented in 1953 on a bluff overlooking Hempstead Harbor, just north of the mouth of Glen Cove Creek.

In “Fort Neck-Massapequa Site,” photographed in 2016, a historical marker commemorating a 17th century Massapequa Indian fort that stands beside a playing field occupying land Dennis identifies as part of the Massapequa homeland. His account introduces Tackapousha, a Massapequa sachem, or leader, who appears in 17th century records negotiating with Dutch and English authorities.

“I want viewers to understand that Native people have lived throughout Long Island for thousands of years, that we are still here, and that our relationship to these places continues,” he said in his statement.

OLD NAMES REMAIN

That history does not fit neatly within the boundaries most Long Islanders know today.

Archaeologist Allison McGovern, cultural resources manager at Brookhaven National Laboratory, said names such as Merrick, Matinecock and Massapequa historically referred to Indigenous villages and settlements rather than divided territories.

“Communities across present-day Nassau, Suffolk, Queens and Kings counties were connected through social and kin bonds,” McGovern said.

Sandi Brewster-Walker, a historian, genealogist and Montaukett Indian Nation citizen, said movement between communities was part of everyday life, with people traveling seasonally as resources became available — a more fluid pattern than the rigid tribal divisions described in older histories.

Colonial land records can complicate the picture. Brewster-Walker said Native leaders and European settlers did not always understand land agreements in the same way: Native people could view them as arrangements to share access, while Colonial authorities treated written deeds as transfers of exclusive ownership.

Tracing the people behind those records often means searching documents created by settlers themselves. Brewster-Walker looks through the papers of Dutch merchants and English Colonists for evidence of Native families and communities.

“We are hidden in their personal papers,” she said.

SACRED GROUND

Dennis’ photograph of Sugar Loaf Hill in Shinnecock Hills gives little sign that it is revered as an ancestral burial ground. His accompanying account records the destruction of the site during residential development in 1988.

“Sacredness of Hills” grew from his research into such places. His staged series of photos traces the path of human remains uncovered during residential construction on Hawthorne Road in Shinnecock Hills in August 2018.

“Our community’s relationship to the land does not disappear because ownership changes or because a burial has no visible marker,” Dennis said in his statement.

In another work, a figure in Native dress lies across a mound of construction stone, a large unfinished house rising behind her.

“Some figures stand or sit in protective opposition to development; others lie as if cast aside, recalling the treatment of ancestors whose graves have been disturbed,” Dennis said in his artist statement.

Scout Hutchinson, associate curator of contemporary art at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, co-organized the museum’s 2026 exhibition “Regeneration,” which featured works from Dennis’ “Sacredness of Hills” series. She said the series has “a very dramatic cinematic quality” that draws viewers into images confronting Colonial histories that extend into the present.

“These images kind of imprint on your mind, and you can’t forget them,” she said.

Protecting burial sites before they are disturbed can be complicated. McGovern said New York’s unmarked burial law establishes a protocol once a burial site is accidentally uncovered, but “it does not establish a process for protecting a burial site from development.”

For Dennis, protection means leaving those places undisturbed. 

LIVING VOICES

In the “Shinnecock Portrait Project,” Dennis turns the camera toward members of his community and asks them to speak for themselves. Upper-body portraits of volunteers accompany interviews about their lives, changes they have witnessed and what they want people outside the community to know.

Dennis said the portraits are meant to counter the idea that Native communities belong only to the past. Even some nearby Southampton residents do not realize the Shinnecock Nation has its own government, he said.

“Despite colonization and assimilation attempts, we’ve been able to retain our identity and sovereignty,” he said.

Brewster-Walker pointed to the Matinecock, Montaukett, Setalcott, Unkechaug and Shinnecock nations as examples of Native communities maintaining their heritage and culture on Long Island today.

“People must understand that these communities did not disappear,” she said. 

For Dennis, “Living Conduit” connects ancestral places with those living communities. He said he hopes the Freeport exhibition will lead to connections with Nassau school districts and social studies classes, and that visitors will carry what they learn into their own neighborhoods.

As he put it, “If you live here on the Island, you have a local connection.”