To kick off Indigenous Peoples Month, the statewide DEI committee is featuring a panel discussion about indigenous people’s history around NYS entitled “Erasing History and Stealing Futures” – featuring Melissa Parker Leonard, M. Ed, & Jeremy Dennis MFA.
Date: October 29, 2025
Time: 1:00 pm
Register HERE »
Melissa Parker Leonard is a Seneca Educator and advocate founder of the 7th Gen Cultural Resources and Jeremy Dennis is a Shinnecock Photographer Founder of Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio.
The discussion will be focused on Ely S. Parker’s life and legacy and the Shinnecock Nation’s path to federal recognition. Ely S. Parker was an engineer, U.S. Army officer, aide to General Ulysses S. Grant, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and the ancestor of Melissa Parker Leonard. In highlighting his life and legacy here, she is directly combatting current attempts to erase his contributions to the United States that are occurring under the orders of the current department of Defense/War.
Jeremy Dennis is a contemporary fine art photographer, an enrolled Tribal Member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, NY, and the founder and lead artist of Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio, Inc., a nonprofit art space and residency program on the Shinnecock Reservation dedicated to uplifting Indigenous and BIPOC artists.
His work center’s Indigenous identity, culture, and the legacies of colonial assimilation, using photography to stage cinematic, otherworldly narratives rooted in Native oral stories, history, and contemporary experience.
