Artistry is a staple of Indigenous culture, yet for the Shinnecock Nation and its reservation in Southampton, New York, tribal members lacked a space to call home for their art and lineage.
The Shinnecock Nation has called Long Island home for roughly 13,000 years. Holding so much tradition and culture, Jeremy Dennis, a tribal member, visual artist, and photographer, said the Shinnecock Nation had nowhere to showcase its tribal art and history for almost a decade.
“We're a nation of 600 people who live on the territory, and unfortunately, our tribal Museum and Cultural Center has been closed for about eight years now,” Dennis said. “All of us identify as artists in different ways. If you come to our powwow, everyone's selling art or singing or dancing, so it's really strange not to have a cultural space year-round.”
Honoring “Ma”
In 2020, Dennis wanted to fulfill his grandmother’s dream of turning the family’s house into a museum. Paying homage to his grandmother, Loretta Silva, also referred to as ‘Ma’, Dennis, lead artist and President of Ma’s House, began renovating his family’s home into a sanctuary to celebrate the Shinnecock Nation’s cultural heritage.
“This is where I grew up, and my mother's dream before she passed away was, ‘Oh, one day make it into a museum,'” said Denise Silva-Dennis, the daughter of ‘Ma’ and mother of Dennis. “So during the pandemic, that's when Jeremy [Dennis] came back and said, ‘Maybe we can make it into an art space and have artists come here.’”
Having lived in the home until the early 2000s, Dennis honored his late grandmother, who passed away in 1998, by completing the house renovations in August 2021 and named the home “Ma’s House.”
A newly renovated and lustrous red home that embodies and embraces Indigenous culture, Ma’s House sits at the southern end of the reservation, adjacent to Heady Creek and the Hampton beaches.
Two floors of heritage
Within the art studio is a spacious gallery area full of portraits of tribal members within the Shinnecock Nation, drawings, and paintings. It also has tribal jewelry such as necklaces and bracelets, along with dream catchers on display in the gallery space.
The basement is lit with multiple LED lights hanging from the ceiling. Silva-Dennis said visitors claim it has the best lighting on the reservation. The basement stores a library, a loom for bead weaving, arts and crafts materials for painting, and leatherwork.
As a nonprofit organization, Ma’s House serves the Shinnecock Nation’s reservation as a shared studio full of gallery spaces, cultural workshops, historical education-based programming, and even a residency program for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) artists.
“One big part of creating Ma's house is sort of a showcase of our culture and a space for cultural exchange, was just for that main reason of wanting to celebrate culture year-round,” Dennis said. “So in a way, Ma's House is part of that mission of just celebrating who we are, showing ourselves to the world in a public and artistic way.”
Growing up in the Hamptons area, Dennis understood the unspoken barriers that shaped his community. While building Ma’s House, he wanted to create a space where artists from underrepresented communities can do just that, right in the heart of the Hamptons.
“If you look at where we are here in Suffolk County, here in the Hamptons, I grew up understanding that we're such a segregated place, whether it's racially or economically or just geographically,” Dennis said. “So I really wanted to create a space that could bridge those gaps and generations of difference, generations of not understanding or talking to one another. And I always thought of art as being that connective.”
Origins steeped in violence
Dennis and his father took on the Ma’s House project in 2020, while the pandemic forced the world into lockdown. Then, the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin happened that May. It played a pivotal role in Ma’s House.
While Floyd was pinned to the ground by Chauvin’s knee, he pleaded out, “I can’t breathe…Please, I can’t breathe.” As a mother herself, Silva-Dennis noted that Floyd cried for his mother in his last words before he was killed by Chauvin.
“With the George Floyd murder, his last words were calling out to his mother, ‘Mama’,” said Silva-Dennis, the workshop coordinator at Ma’s House. “So that's the connection I make. Here is Ma's house: If you're Black, if you're Indigenous, if you're both, if you're a person of color, it's a safe place for you to come and express yourself.”
Silva-Dennis said that there are plenty of galleries and museums in the Southampton area. Yet, they lack diversity, which creates challenges for people of color to connect and express themselves artistically.
Dennis said that the murder of Floyd led to a racial reckoning and that not all people have the same opportunities. This prompted him to provide a platform for BIPOC artists to show solidarity and this was an opportunity for the Shinnecock Nation to take a stand.
“Within Shinnecock, we also had to be part of that movement and respond to the times,” Dennis said. “And so we really wanted it [Ma’s House] to be a platform for artists of color, really just to be seen, be accepted, have a safe space, and be allowed to create whatever they want to create.”
Art as language preservation
Since the Town of Southampton is primarily a White community at 72.6%, Dennis said that before Ma’s House, it was difficult for artists to illustrate their work and resonate with the community.
“Being here in the Hamptons, growing up as an artist, sometimes you also have that barrier of like, if your work doesn't sell, or if it's not for sale, it's not worth anything, or it's not going to find a place on a wall,” Dennis said. So we also wanted to create that for other artists of color who have important things to say, maybe it's something sensitive, maybe it's something in the social justice realm that maybe doesn't need to be sold, but needs to be shared.”
As a place that provides comfort to people of color and its Indigenous heritage, Ma’s House serves the community as a sanctuary of its lineage.
The Shinnecock Nation derives from an eastern Algonquian dialect. To further connect with its Algonquian roots and language, Brianna Hernandez, the director of curation of Ma’s House, said the art space promotes language preservation.
“I think primarily for Shinnecock folk, to have the space and the resources to invest in language revitalization is a huge deal,” Hernandez said. “Whether somebody gets to the point of conversationally speaking, or someone in the younger generation can just come and experience and know that this is the language, [it] is a really impactful thing to have on the reservation.”
Engaging the community in the Shinnecock Nation’s rich culture and history, Hernandez said that Ma’s House is currently piloting a virtual reality exhibition called the First Literature Project, which is on display from March 9 to June 1. The exhibition utilizes a multimedia display of photographic portraits, video interviews and an immersive virtual reality film that incorporates the original Shinnecock Nation’s dialect of the Algonquian language.
The show helps support Native nations' preservation of their languages, narratives, and oral traditions as well as immersing viewers into the stories relating to the reservation and tribal members.
Typically, exhibitions such as the First Literature Project are on view at Ma’s House on Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Viewers can also schedule appointments to visit Ma’s House and its exhibits.
Hands-on lessons
In addition to their exhibitions, Hernandez says Ma’s House integrates workshops into the art studio to further connect with the reservation and the tribal community.
“We have weekly workshops that a lot of tribal members attend, that Denise [Silva-Dennis] runs, and it's something that provides a larger sense of community,” Hernandez said. “Similar to the language revitalization, it allows people to practice their beadwork and their leather work. They prepare a lot of stuff for their regalia for pow wow, it's something that is intergenerational, and it brings people together in a lot of ways.”
The workshops can vary from painting to working with clay or even dying different materials found in the community. One of Ma’s House’s signature and most popular workshops is Silva-Dennis’ beadwork workshop.
As a retired art teacher, Silva-Dennis always dreamed of being able to teach her beadwork and pass down the art, culture, and history of the Shinnecock Nation. Now, every Friday, Silva-Dennis fulfills that dream by leading her beading workshop.
“I think the beadwork is always a hit, people are very dedicated to coming to that, and staff get to attend too, so I always enjoy it,” Hernandez said. “And Denise [ Silva-Dennis] is an amazing teacher. That's one of our anchors that people know; it's pretty consistent. It's almost every single Friday.”
“For my specialty, it's usually beadwork,” Silva-Dennis said. “Most of the time, I'm the one who's teaching beadwork. But then there are people among us who come, and they're the teachers, they have another style of beadwork, so they are also invited to come in and lead that beadwork.”
Working with such small beads can sometimes be frustrating. Silva-Dennis said the beads she uses for her workshops are called seed beads, but because they are so tiny, working with them can become challenging. So, Silva-Dennis accommodates by using pony beads, which are a bit bigger than the seed beads and easier to work with.
Meet the Artists in Residence
Ma’s House provides an inclusive Artist-In-Residency program that is open to creatives of color based in the U.S. working across visual arts, creative writing, and performance arts in any genre.
Since August 2021, Ma’s House has hosted 50 artists of color through its residency program. Resident artists typically stay at the studio for two weeks, utilizing the space to create work or as a getaway to take a break and relax by the beach.
If an Indigenous or Native American artist is interested in the residency program, Ma’s House offers up to a month of residency since the land is under their stewardship.
There is no fee to apply for the residency program; if a resident artist is accepted, they receive $250 per week of their stay.
“I think the residency is my favorite element, just because I still really don't have a studio to work in, I don't have a photo studio,” Dennis said. “So when I go to residencies, I probably get over 90% of my portfolio and artwork done at these spaces that afford me time and space. So we wanted to create that here at Shinnecock. There are just so many benefits to it.”
Megan Hicks, an assistant professor in anthropology at Hunter College, was a resident artist at Ma’s House in early March 2025. Throughout her stay, she worked on a book project called Archaeologies of Marginalization and Resilience in the Northeast.
“I'm working on two chapters while I'm here,” Hicks said. One is a chapter about a community called Dunkerhook, which is a black tenant community in the 19th century in northern New Jersey, and how they used their local environment to thrive. The other project I'm working on is an interview chapter with Jeremy Dennis about his project, On This Site, which is a digital map of Long Island and native presence on Long Island.”
What drew Hicks to Ma’s House was her prior connection with Dennis. In 2020, she met Dennis and learned about the project and his vision for residency creation. Hicks was drawn to the art studio being dedicated to the memory of his grandma, and the mission, and the community that Ma’s House entails.
As a Black American, Hicks said her community faced many phases of dispossession — whether migrating from the South to the North, relocating between cities, or being displaced by gentrification. She said it is crucial for communities with less longevity in a place to learn from those with deep roots about sustaining cultural and ecological relationships, resisting outside pressures, and building strong, responsible communities.
Working on the reservation, Hicks found her experience to be motivating.
“It's definitely so inspirational to me, to learn from a community that's been in their land for so long,” Hicks said. “I think that's something that's so important for us to think about.”
Prince Shakur, an artist, podcast host and educator, was also a resident artist in early March 2025. Shakur has been a freelance journalist since 2017 and has published a series of novels and essays. More recently, Shakur published a memoir titled When They Tell You To Be Good.
Shakur said he’s had bad experiences at other residency programs, even causing him to leave early because of poor administration. Yet, at Ma’s House, he has been able to cherish the experience.
“It's been great, I like this residency a lot because I'm meeting like family and friends, so [it] almost doesn't feel like a residency,” Shakur said. “And I've got to talk to some of the community here and meet some, like, Afro-indigenous people, which has been cool. I've gotten a lot of work done.”
Throughout his residency, Shakur has been able to work on his podcast about politics as well as research and learn more about the Shinnecock community.
With Ma’s House being a BIPOC art studio rooted in community and cultural preservation, Shakur said he felt a sense of ease and alignment with the space and its values.
“I think there's a certain level of comfort, of course, when you're around other people of color, BIPOC folks,” Shakur said. “And I also think being in an art space that's dedicated to a certain kind of political philosophy, especially like looking at decolonization or being in solidarity with other people, I think having all of those values are just really important, because if you come into a space with that, then that can also maybe be infused in your work or influence it.”
It has inspired him to consider opening a residency program of his own one day.
Future collaborations
While Ma’s House has a thriving residency program, an array of workshops, and captivating exhibits, running and funding the non-profit art studio can have its fair share of challenges.
Contrary to other Hamptons art spaces, Dennis said Ma’s House makes all of its programming free to attend and even supplies the materials for attendees, all without the cost of memberships. He said the beginning of the Ma’s House project was the most difficult period for the non-profit since it relied heavily on donations from its GoFundMe fundraiser.
More recently, Ma’s House was able to garner plenty of support from foundations as well as support from Suffolk County, local towns, and private donations.
Dennis said he hopes Ma’s House will continue to expand its impact, forging new collaborations and providing greater support for the Shinnecock Nation.
“Well, my hopes and aspirations for Ma’s House are to grow capacity, increase our partnerships,” Dennis said. “We've had really wonderful collaborations since our beginning, and really at the end of the day, we're just trying to bring more resources to Shinnecock tribal members.”
