The End of the Hamptons: Scenes from the Class Struggle in America's Paradise

6: From Clam Beds to Casinos: The Enduring Battle over Native American Land Rights

6 From Clam Beds to Casinos The Enduring Battle over Native American Land Rights The 1500 Wampanoag Indians who inhabited Nantucket when it was first charted in 1602 must have eventually evolved their own word for Hamptonization. By the height of the whaling boom, the island had grown to 10,000. The Wampanoag witnessed the arrival of these illmannered people with their cobblestone roads, their ships that clogged the harbor. And the houses! Huge! —Patrick Cooke, “Hamptonization and Its Discontents” For 363 years we have cleaned your homes, yards, cooked your meals, and raised your most precious gifts, your children. We have watched you take our land, our inheritance, and even our name for your businesses . Shinnecock this, Shinnecock that, and never once have I seen a Shinnecock benefit or even work at most of these establishments. We never asked for anything, and you never offered anything. We were given menial jobs, and with God’s help, we did survive. —Cheryl Crippen Munoz, Southampton Press, February 20, 2003 Members of the Shinnecock Indian Nation didn’t block the bulldozer this time—they cheered for it. —Selim Alger, Southampton Press, March 7, 2003 On a cold Thursday morning in February 2000, state troopers arrested the Shinnecock activist Becky Genia for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Along with a few dozen other tribal members and supporters , Genia was protesting the development of a sixty-two-acre piece of land adjacent to the Shinnecock reservation in Southampton. The de197 velopers, Parrish Pond Associates, had hoped to begin work clearing the wooded parcel and building their thirty-eight-lot McMansion subdivision . But local Native Americans argued that the land contained a sacred burial ground, and environmental groups claimed that a large residential development would result in hazardous groundwater runoff, eventually contaminating the reservation’s drinking water. Chanting “not one more acre,” demonstrators met bulldozers on Tuckahoe Road, and a standoff ensued. Genia explained that she and others had made sure they weren’t trespassing and that they planned a “peaceful protest” that included possible civil disobedience. Before any formal activities had begun, state police moved in and, according to witnesses, “severely manhandled ” some of the demonstrators. Three Shinnecocks were arrested that morning, and a fourth was arrested the next day when, once again, protesters gathered at the site. This time, however, the tribe had won an injunction against the subdivision and called in Bob Zellner, co-chair of the Southampton Anti-Bias Task Force, to help mediate the situation. Zellner had barely introduced himself to the supervising officer when he was “knocked to the ground and brutalized” by police. He, too, was arrested.1 Eventually, all four of the Shinnecock protesters and Zellner were either acquitted or had their cases dropped or dismissed. They are all currently suing state police for brutality and false arrest. The Shinnecock did, however, lose their court battle to stop the development, not on the case’s merit but on a technicality stemming from a missed deadline. Today, Parrish Pond Associates advertise 4,000+-square-foot luxury homes on one-and-one-half-acre lots “in a unique community of meadows, tall pines, and a magnificent pond.” Realtors boast about the subdivision’s location, “[o]nly minutes from some of the most spectacular beaches in all the world, the famous Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, mere footsteps from fashionable shopping and the finest dining experiences imaginable, and completely surrounded by the history, culture, ambiance, and world-renowned style of Southampton.” Starting at about $1 million apiece, the Parrish Pond Estates homes now stand as the most recent symbol of the Shinnecock Nation’s long history of losing land struggles. On March 5, 2003, just a few weeks after the last protesters had won acquittal, the Shinnecock Indian Tribal Council broke ground on a new development project that would include a casino and resort hotel lo198 FROM CLAM BEDS TO CASINOS cated on the tribes’ Westwoods property, in Hampton Bays. A high-pro- file ceremony to commemorate the event featured a few Shinnecock speakers, a brief press conference, and a “turtle walk” during which indigenous box turtles were relocated to tribal lands across the street to protect them from the bulldozers. According to Council leaders, the 65,000-square-foot casino would be the lynchpin of the tribe’s economic self-sufficiency and empowerment plans and would be constructed to meet the highest standards for...