- Details
- By Chez Oxendine
- Real Estate
A Native-led nonprofit has launched an $8 million capital campaign to acquire and restore the former Aquinnah Shop, a 3.5-acre restaurant property overlooking the Gay Head Cliffs on Martha’s Vineyard.
The Aquinnah Land Initiative, or ALI, plans to purchase the property from the Native Land Conservancy, which paid $2 million for it in 2023. ALI intends to rehabilitate the former restaurant, established in the 1940s by Wampanoag couple Napoleon and Nanette Madison, while laying the groundwork for future land-return projects.
For ALI board member Amira Madison, a descendant of the restaurant’s founders, the effort grew from a family legacy into a broader responsibility to the Aquinnah Wampanoag community. It also presented the group with the financial, administrative and environmental challenges of reclaiming and restoring property along the island’s fragile cliffs.
“Everything happens in time and everything happens for a reason,” Madison said. “If we’re not doing this, who else is going to step up in the community to take on something like this and this responsibility?”
The site has long served as a gathering point for Wampanoag families who worked and ate there and maintained a presence on the clifftops even as surrounding parcels shifted in and out of Native ownership.
The nonprofit is not a tribal government entity, but its board is composed entirely of citizens of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). Several members are direct descendants of Napoleon and Nanette Madison, who built the original shack that later became the restaurant.
“There are a few of us on the board who are the great-grandchildren of Napoleon and Nanette,” Madison said. “All of us have been impacted in terms of either working for the Aquinnah Shop, eating there every day, or connecting with most of the community there.”
When the property went up for sale, the board had to organize quickly. Madison said the group initially explored purchasing the land through a private backer, but a change in circumstances pushed the group to create a nonprofit.
“We had to spot-create a 501(c)(3) land conservation organization, which is not what we initially set out to do,” Madison said. “I think we've come to accept that this is the path that we're on, that I think the Creator has put us on, which is land back.”
The Native Land Conservancy, a nonprofit led by citizens of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, acquired the property to preserve it under Wampanoag stewardship while giving ALI time to secure the necessary funding, according to Paula Peters, the conservancy’s communications director.
“We think this is a great way to get this done, and we’re excited to support it,” Peters said.
Madison said the Native-to-Native structure allowed both groups to move quickly and maintain shared priorities around stewardship and cultural care, which she said would have been more complicated with a non-Native conservation partner.
ALI’s work was supported by a $717,500 Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness grant awarded to the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) in fiscal 2025. The state described the project as acquiring 3.5 acres at 27 Aquinnah Circle, including the former restaurant, to return the property to Aquinnah Wampanoag ownership.
The capital campaign will fund ALI’s purchase of the property, along with the restoration of the shuttered building and long-term maintenance on the cliffside site. Madison said the restored space could serve as a community gathering point, a cultural education site or a business operated by a tribal citizen, depending on what the board and community decide as fundraising progresses.
ALI intends to use the project as a foundation for additional efforts to return land to Native stewardship, although Madison said the organization has not determined what form those efforts will take. Options include gifts, purchases, settlements or conservation easements, she said.
“This will be an incredible space of knowledge and education and an opportunity to really do something huge for our Wampanoag people,” Madison said. “We're okay with the time it's taking. We feel okay about that.”
