We are the Wampanoag Tribe of Plymouth, known Present-day as the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe
We have lived on these lands for thousands of years and continuously maintained our connection to the land and the community. In the spirit of our ongoing relation to the land, we formed the Sacred Earth Land Conservancy, so that we may come together in the shared interest in the implementation of Indigenous conservation, land management, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge as a climate change resilience strategy.
At the heart of Sacred Earth Land Conservancy is the preservation of Native Lifeways
and acccess to waters, and the encouragement of sound conservation practices rooted in our ancestral knowledge.
Meet Our Officers
Jaime Hoctor, President
Jaime Hoctor is an attorney based in Sandwich, Massachusetts with over 19 years of experience practicing real estate law on Cape Cod. Jaime holds has extensive experience in many areas of commercial and residential real estate, including acquisition, sale, financing, and leasing for local and national commercial development projects.
She has been recognized for her pro bono representation of a local non-profit mental health and social services agency and in 2017, Jaime was honored as a “40 under 40” award recipient by Cape & Plymouth Business Media.
Kerina Silva, Secretary
Kerina is a tribal citizen of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe located in Plymouth, MA. She serves as the Secretary of the
Sacred Earth Land Conservancy and is an advocate for the conservation of land, protection of local natural resources, and
the preservation of sacred sites in the traditional Wampanoag homelands. Through her service to Sacred Earth, she hopes to
continue to support initiatives that will help provide education, resources, and guidance in the preservation and sustainable use
of the precious natural resources we all share.
In addition, Kerina is a practicing attorney in Massachusetts with offices in Falmouth and Taunton, where she primarily practices in
the areas of family law, guardianship, and conservatorship. She also provides pro bono legal services to the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe, and recently worked with Tribal Chair,
Mellissa Ferretti and Tribal Citizen, Jaime Hoctor, Esq. to achieve state recognition of the Tribe via Executive Order 637 in November of 2024. Teaching has always been a passion she
wished to pursue, and she currently teaches two courses at UMASS School of Law, where she graduated from with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 2019. She looks forward to continuing to carry on the mission of land conservation and preservation with Sacred Earth Land Conservancy!
Melissa Ferretti, Treasurer
Born in Plymouth County (Wareham), the daughter of Bernard Marsden Harding (Herring Pond Wampanoag HPWT), raised in Cedarville/South Plymouth and Bournedale by Verna May Harding (HPWT Elder). Melissa attended Plymouth Carver School system. She
attended Cape Cod Community College and studied Information Technology. She is a happily married Mother of two wonderful sons and a proud Grandmother of four.
Her professional career began in early 1998 in a position at the Town of Mashpee, Town Clerk’s office. She then worked for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe as the Executive Administrative Assistant for a few years. In 2003 Melissa went on to become a Commonwealth of Massachusetts licensed Real Estate Sales Associate and Notary Public — she still holds these designations today and is currently affiliated with Jack Conway & Company. She is the former Vice President of Operations for Select Staffing of MA, a position she held for over 6 years. Currently alongside her real estate work she does freelance research, consulting, and back office/bookkeeping.
Melissa is proudly of her fourth term as the elected Chairwoman of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe located inPlymouth/Bournedale MA. She dedicates much of her time to better her community. In her role as Tribal chairwoman, she has worked tirelessly on the many initiatives and challenges that indigenous communities face in our society today. Some of the work she has dedicated her time to, includes but is not limited to the protection of sacred sites and ancestral burial grounds, tribal archival research, documentation and digitization, advocacy for tribal rights and self-determination, environmental justice, mental health, substance use, addiction and prevention, youth empowerment and grant programming.
She is passionate about educating the non-native public about the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe and its rich, well documented history. In the Spring of 2020, she co-taught an undergraduate course alongside Dr. Amy DenOuden at the University of Massachusetts Boston in the Women’s Gender Studies Department, namely Indigenous Women’s Leadership and Tribal Nation Self Determination. In 2022 Melissa ran a successful campaign for public office in the Town of Bourne as a Select Board Member and was elected on May 17, 2022 and is currently on her second term and newly appointed to Chair. Melissa is the first Wampanoag woman to ever hold this role, and quite possibly the first ever person of color to ever be elected as a Selectman in this municipality. She has enjoyed her second term as Chair and hopes to do great things in the remainder of her time on the select board. Melissa also serves on several committees.
Board Affiliations
- Sacred Earth Land Conservancy – Officer, Treasurer
- Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project – Former – President, Current – Board of Director Member at Large
- Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women – Commissioner – Appointed by the Speaker of the House
- University of Massachusetts Boston New England Institute Native American Studies INENAS- CAB Member
- Commonwealth of Massachusetts Environmental Justice Council – Appointed by the Governor Energy Transformation Advisory Board – Member – Appointed by the Governor
- Indigenous Mascot Steering Committee – Member – Intertribal
- Massachusetts Women of Color Coalition – Member
- Herring Pond Watershed Association – External Advisory Board Member
- Jones River Watershed Association – External Advisory Board Member
