Elder women of the
Shinnecock Nation. Photo by Andrew Brannan
The Shinnecock Indians
have lived on Long Island's famed East End for thousands of years. Like so many
other tribes along the east coast, the Shinnecocks were ravaged by disease
brought by European settlers. Today, the Shinnecock Indian Nation consists of
less than 1,500 members, about half of whom live on the tribe’s 750-acre
reservation on the island’s southeastern shore. The Nation finally earned federal
recognition in 2010 after a brutal, decades-long legal battle that one tribal
leader described as a “degrading, humiliating, intrusive experience.” Four
years later, though, some of the optimism that accompanied that historic moment
has dissipated. Economic development remains a serious challenge. It would not
be a stretch to describe the Shinnecocks as desperate.
The story of what has
happened to this proud tribe over the past century and a half involves some
fundamental questions about the American project: Who owns what? What is to be
done for those victimized by the system and left with nothing? When do grievances
from the past cease to be legitimate? As with so many other native tribes, none
of these questions have thus far been resolved in the Shinnecocks’ favor. Their
saga serves as a sobering reminder of how those who stand in the way of the
capitalist mission—merely by existing—get bulldozed and forgotten.
The Shinnecock Indian
Nation’s tribal lands are entirely within the parameters of the Town of
Southampton, which happens to be a favored vacation spot for economic elites,
including some of the most powerful people in the world. Tycoons like George
Soros and David Koch own mansions there, as do a bunch of faceless financiers,
those people no one’s ever heard of who somehow become billionaires by doing
work no one understands. They are joined by the likes of Howard Stern, Kelly
Ripa, and other big shots from the entertainment industry. Truth be told, if
you don’t have a place in the Hamptons, you’re really not balling like you
should be. It’s a place for obscenely rich white people, and P. Diddy, to just
get away from it all, and spend their summers lavishly.
Anyone who has ever
walked the streets of Manhattan—or any other major American city—has witnessed
the acutely nauseating spectacle of extreme poverty and egregious wealth
existing side by side. What makes the contrast between the Shinnecocks’
exceptionally modest existence and the virtually unrivaled affluence that
surrounds uniquely jarring, though, is that all that land on which the Masters
of the Universe play their precious golf and throw their fabulous parties once
belonged to the tribe. Today, this land is considered some of the most valuable
real estate in the world, worth billions of dollars. And the Shinnecocks want
it back.
To understand how the
Shinnecocks lost their land, we need to go back to 1703. That year, English
settlers representing the Town of Southampton completed a lease agreement with
the Shinnecocks that recognized their ownership of thousands of acres of land
on eastern Long Island. This land was to be controlled by the tribe for a
period of 1,000 years—in other words, in perpetuity. And for more than 150
years, the Shinnecocks lived on this land, occasionally fighting off raids from
other tribes, while engaging in the fishing and whaling for which they were
famous.
Then, in April of 1859,
white residents decided there was no compelling reason why the natives should
get to keep all the land that was legally promised to them. So they concocted a
transparently bogus “agreement” in which the Shinnecock leaders inexplicably
consented to transfer the “right, title, and interest” to 3,600 acres of
pristine land to these white people. Residents brazenly forged tribal leaders’
signatures and presented the document to state legislators, who authorized the
transfer in defiance of federal law, which required congressional approval for
such things. The economic stakes here were not insignificant, with a railroad
included in the development plans business interests had for this land, and
that may have been enough incentive for the state to look the other way. In any
case, there was very little legal or political risk in strong-arming an Indian
tribe back in those days, and the theft was swiftly carried out.
Fast-forward about 150
years. In the summer of 2005, the Shinnecock Indian Nation filed a lawsuit in
federal court against, among other parties, New York State and the Town of
Southampton. The Nation sought financial compensation and the removal of all
current residents from the land so that it may be returned to the tribe.
The lawsuit created an
uncomfortable buzz around Long Island; local elites were irked by the tribe’s
inexplicable act of insolence. In November of 2006, a US District Court ruled
against the Shinnecocks. District Judge Thomas Platt cited the same “pragmatic
concerns” that had led the Supreme Court and the Second Circuit to rule against
the Oneida and Cayuga tribes in vaguely similar cases in 2005. Platt’s opinion
repeatedly refers to “laches,” a seldom-applied legal concept designed to
prevent parties from waiting an unreasonably long period of time before
asserting a claim to property. Since 1859, the land has been “the subject of
occupation and development by non-Indians,” and there has been a “dramatic
change in the demographics of the area and the character of the property.” Any
sort of land transfer would therefore be prohibitively “disruptive.”
It’s reasonable to
wonder why the Shinnecocks did take so long to proceed with a meaningful
attempt to reclaim these lands. “The language barrier and lack of familiarity
with the US legal system at the time would have made it nearly impossible for
the tribe to assert their rights,” said Greg Guedel, chairman of Native
American Legal services at the Foster Pepper law firm in Seattle and a
researcher at the University of Washington, when I asked him what the holdup
was. Indeed, one of the central points the tribe made in the suit is that
“institutional barriers prevented the Nation from having a forum to
subsequently vindicate its rights.”
The Shinnecocks’
inability to take serious legal action for all those years hardly means that
they’re only now realizing the injustice of what happened. It’s not like they
were ever cool with having this land stolen. Tribal leaders did not wake up in
2005, look outside, and say to themselves, “Oh, shit. Where did those 3,600
acres go?”
The Nation credibly
claims that it has vehemently objected to the theft ever since it occurred.
There was just no realistic way for them to do anything about it. Aside from
the language barrier, the unfamiliarity with the legal system, and the fact
that virtually nobody in power at the local, state, or federal level would have
been on their side—the Indian Wars were raging at this time—the Shinnecocks
would have been unable to even prove with documentary evidence what had been
done. Guedel pointed out that all documentation from the fraudulent land deal
would certainly have been created solely “for the purpose of justifying the
seizure of the tribe’s lands” and “without any input from the Shinnecock
people.” He described it as “theft wrapped in legal paperwork.”
In short, the
Shinnecocks had no concrete evidence to prove that this was an institutional
crime that changed their entire way of life and dramatically altered their
future prospects—and even if they did, the people in a position to do something
about it would have given approximately zero fucks. These realities were of
little concern to Judge Platt, though, who ruled:
"To be sure, the
wrongs about which the Shinnecocks complain are grave, but they are also not of
recent vintage, and the disruptive nature of the claims that seek to redress
these wrongs tips the equity scale in favor of dismissal."
An appeal of this
decision is still pending.
Consider how incredibly
surreal all of this must feel to a Shinnecock Indian. They have a massive chunk
of their land brazenly stolen by white Europeans. For a century and a half, the
downtrodden tribe ekes out a meager livelihood on a small parcel of land—a
fraction of what it once had—as some of the wealthiest, most awful people in
the world turn what were once sacred grounds into their personal playground.
All this time, through all these decades, the tribe is without recourse, having
no conceivable way to do anything about what has happened. Finally, with the
help of some dedicated and highly skilled lawyers, the tribe brings its case to
federal court, to “only seek what is due us,” in the words of one tribal
leader—only to be told by an 80-year-old white judge, “Sorry, you really should
have come to us sooner, and besides, we can’t ‘disrupt’ the lives of the Wall
Street titans who now reside on your ancestral lands.”
While tribal officials
declined comment for this story, I did speak with one tribal member who asked
not to be identified due to the sensitivity of these issues. “It’s a shame that
we have to live in damn near poverty,” she told me. What seems to most upset
her is not the extreme opulence of those living on sacred tribal grounds or the
fact that the Nation “isn’t reaping any of the benefits” of the prime real estate,
but rather the general lack of respect afforded to the Shinnecocks at the local
level.
She didn’t mean
disrespect in some abstract sense, either. It’s disrespect that manifests
itself in the daily lives of Shinnecocks. “What pisses me off the most,” she
told me, is that “we can’t even go to the beaches here.”
Wait, what? The beaches
off of which the Shinnecocks have fished and whaled for thousands of years? “We
have to pay $300 for a town permit or pay $40 to park at Cooper’s Beach for one
day. I don’t have that kind of money,” she said. The breathtakingly beautiful
Cooper’s Beach, which consistently ranks among America’s top ten beaches, is
less than 10 minutes from the reservation.
Fed up, she recently
decided to take a stand and refused to pay the required $40. “You’re on our
land,” she told the beach official. “I’m not going to pay you $40 for nature
that you shouldn’t be charging for anyway.” When the official insisted on the
$40, she didn’t back down “out of principle.” The Village of Southampton
responded by serving her with a $250 ticket.
What has been done to
the Shinnecock Indians is pure class warfare, on a colossal scale, and it’s
ongoing. Given the sheer relentlessness of the mistreatment they have suffered,
and all that has been lost, it’s remarkable the Shinnecocks aren’t even more
furious. Indeed, the tribe’s overall equanimity is striking, given everything
that has happened. As Randy King, a former tribal leader, put it: “We have been
good neighbors to the very people who stole our ancestral land for their own
financial gain.” Now, after what King called “hundreds of years of lies, broken
promises, and exploitation,” it does not look like the Shinnecocks will ever
actually get their ancestral land back.
And this is not the
only bad hand the Shinnecocks have been dealt since the jubilance that
accompanied federal recognition in 2010. The Nation has struggled with internal
political squabbling, and economic development has been stagnant. The casino
project into which the tribe pushed a substantial chunk of its limited
resources remains mired in legal conflict. When their gaming plans didn’t
materialize, the Shinnecocks were “left with nothing,” as the tribal member
told me. Along with the perpetual struggle for economic survival, the Nation
continues to be saddled with the condescension and outright disrespect of its
neighbors, many of whom are ignorant of the history of where they live. (Time
studying history could be spent making money.) In fact, according to the
Shinnecock I spoke with, not only do many residents not know the history of the
area, “some of them don’t even know we exist.”
After having their
signatures forged, their land stolen, and their way of life disrespected in
myriad, unconscionable ways, how else can the dignity of Shinnecocks possibly
be attacked? By being oblivious to their very existence. They’ve become such an
insignificant blip on the radar in the Hamptons scene that they might as well
not even be there. That’s the final blow.
by Justin Doolittle
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