Independent Lens

The Hamptons are at the very east end of Long Island. We have some of the wealthiest people on the planet. The contemporary class struggle in the Hamptons is represented by many complicated layers, and there's such an antagonism towards the elite. You could feel it on a visceral level. On the other hand, the whole economy is based on this elite. And right in the middle of that, we have a native American Indian reservation. Filmmaker Treva Wurmfeld captures this layered tale of wealth, colonialism, and its continued effect on native peoples. The Southampton town board has made massive efforts to protect their colonial sites, but they don't make an effort to help us preserve our Native American sacred sites. We have to live here together. "Conscience Point", now only on Independent Lens.

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Morning. - Hi. How's everything? Good morning, Grandmother. Are we ready to get ready? Okay. Good morning, poopsie.

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, my baby. Henry, hurry, hurry, hurry. Give me one second. He'll be right here. I love you. - Love you. See you later. Shinnecock Nation, it's a small tribe. On the reservation, 500 people or so... and we're surrounded by the wealthy folks who are living on our land. As native people, you feel a responsibility to your ancestral territory, to protect the land as much as we can. It's nearly impossible in this day and age, but we're still gonna do the best we can.

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I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. We're a maritime community. People are coming here with large amounts of money. The conflict now is over development. More often than not, I hardly recognize this place I call home. In the last ten years, we've lost right-of-ways to the bay. This property was transferred from the town without the town board understanding this agreement. You watch what happens with all this preserve land. They're gonna be encroaching on it. They're gonna be putting driveways through it. That guy down there changed that place into his Hamptons, and you took our Hamptons. I don't feel so alone today. I feel what the farmers are feeling. I feel what the people are feeling, and we're gonna do something about this. Oh, my gosh. It's so beautiful today. Little blue jay. No, that's a woodpecker. What is that? These are mostly clam shells. We are at Conscience Point. This is where our Shinnecock ancestors met the first Europeans, pilgrims. Some people say, you know, "Well, my family's been here for four, five, six generations." Well, we've been here 400 generations-plus. As far as land was, it was just a total different way of thinking, like to own your land-- we're just caretakers. I love this spot because it is beautiful, and it is preserved land over there, but it's a good place to commune with the ancestors and let them know how much we honor and respect and care for them and try to be good people... and think about them.

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For at least the last century, the Hamptons has been a spot for the wealthy to get away from the hustle and bustle. They can drive their limousines right past this indigenous community and not even know that we exist. We're a small community. We're finite in this greater community of the Hamptons. The land base that we have here is approximately 1,200 acres. This is a small piece of our original territory. Our original territory extended from the East Hampton town line all the way to the Brookhaven town line. One of the first things that we did as a people in 1640 when the first settlers arrived is we gave them 8 square miles of land to use, which is now current day Southampton Village, and we've paid the price for it ever since. Here we sit, you know, in the middle of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," and yet 60% of our people in our community are below the poverty level. That's a problem. You know Modell's shopping stores? That's Modell's house. It's funny, the people that live out here. You see this house right here, house on an acre? That's $8 million right there. That huge house back there I sold to a 29-year-old ten years ago for $15 million. The owner of Coach just built that house. He paid $25 million for the land right there, and a farmer sold it that owned it for hundreds of years. It's a crazy place. Almost everybody who's successful financially in New York, they want to be here, so we have a lot of people chasing not that much property. It just keeps going up... but there's something about it out here that they all want to come. I just happened to enter real estate in 1996, and I call it the best 20 years in real estate in 10,000 years. We were selling $18 million houses in '06 and '07 to hedge fund managers like they were candy. Being a finance guy, I like to turn things quickly. I call it the "velocity of money." The big complaint out here is overdevelopment, and I agree with them, but people are gonna continue to want homes and buy homes. Doesn't the next generation deserve a house, pool, and tennis in the Hamptons? I mean, that's how I see it. This is a very unique area. Besides having a population of close to 60,000-- that's a year-round population. In the summer months it quadruples, and it's very culturally diverse and economically diverse. We have some of the wealthiest people on the planet, heads of multinational corporations, the 1% of the 1%-ers. Then we also have very modest people who work two or three jobs to deal with the high cost of living here. So the disparity between rich and poor is probably no greater anywhere else than right here in the town of Southampton, and of course that makes things complicated because you have to serve and protect all people.

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My family's been out here since the early 1700s. I grew up in a farming-fishing community. You know, it's still gorgeous place--don't get me wrong. but it's pretty much been bought up. 20 years ago, that would've been stuffed with scallops... for weeks. This is called sputnik grass. It's kind of the only thing that every scallop larvae has to hide in these days. It's heavy.

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With all the toxins that are going into the bays, it makes it really difficult. You know, God knows what goes into these bays. In the morning, you see 'em spray, vector spray, for mosquito control. You're like, "Ugh." Juvenile fish eat mosquito larvae. You know, that's how that whole cycle works. A lot of the locals back in the day didn't really want to build on the water. That's why land next to the water was so cheap because there was too many mosquitoes. You'd get eaten alive, you know. And now as everything is kind of changing ecologically, there's no mosquitoes. Well, that's why there's no juvenile fish kind of making their way back up into the marshes and stuff like that. The Shinnecocks are the only ones that have respectively kept it, you know, undeveloped. You know, if you look at that bay around where the reservation is, it's gorgeous. And then everywhere else has built-up on, so I mean, for me it has basically destroyed my livelihood, the development on the bay. All right, see you guys later. Okay.

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We're gonna go over to where the fish usually show up in the early season. What I do catch, I eat myself. I also give it to people for free, free of charge, up here on the reservation. I do the same thing with hunting. You know, I shoot a couple deer. I shoot a few ducks. I give 'em away to people here on the reservation. People like it, you know-- my dad taught me that. One of our traditional ways, at the end of a prayer or at the end of a ceremony, we say Wamme Neetompaog, which means "all of my relations." And when you're saying "all of my relations," you're acknowledging the connection not just between your immediate family, but you're acknowledging the connection you have to everything, all of creation, and that what you do with one thing affects the other thing. There's actually different kinds of fish than there were when I was a kid. And I was out there right in front of Calvin Klein's house actually, and I pulled up a sand shark, and the boat right next to me pulled up a sand shark, too, and he was like, "I've never seen a sand shark in Heady Creek." I was like, "Me either."

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Our reservation's a peninsula, and on the east side is Heady Creek, and half of Heady Creek in just in 2015 got shut down for shellfish. And that

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because of runoff from all the houses, the golf course, things like that. For the most part, what you see in all of the Hamptons are assets. You know, they don't actually really live there for the most part. In the summertime, they come out here to vacation, but for the most part they're assets. If they were there year-round, there'd be a lot more pollution that is detrimental to our health here and economy on Shinnecock. You know, so our biggest thing is that we have to continue to protect our front line.

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You want a clam rake? - Uh...no. We're not doing good here. Hunting and fishing to near extinction of everything-- it happened so fast. There's barely any more scallops left. We had a tribal oyster hatchery for a while, but that closed down, unfortunately, so there's no tribal shellfish business like they do on the outside. Hi,

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! We're just back to sustenance living. You know, go out, get some clams, some mussels, scallops, for our own supper. Fish to eat, you know, for the week or so. Lookit! - Let's open up our bucket. Yay! Now we get to eat here. - Ha!

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I absolutely, unequivocally see a correlation between the overdevelopment, and especially our waterways. We are people of the shore. Our livelihood over the course of time has been derived from the waters. We as whalers basically established the economy out here in selling whale oil for the streetlamps and things like that. We have to live here together, and it's not getting any better. It's getting worse. The groundwater pollution, the contamination of the pesticides 'cause your lawn has to be spotless and bright green and unnatural, and the chemicals--everything that's polluting this Earth. And we're drinking it, and people are dying of caner left and right. Can't you see? It's got to stop. Right here will be the tennis court. In the back is the pool, and this house will sell for about $10 million, but I'm confident it will sell in the next 90 days. Do you speak English? A little, yes. I need that shut off for five minutes, Oh, okay, okay. - Okay? While we do something. Thanks, bud. As you see, it's, like, so wide open. This has changed with our clients who are now in their 30s and 40s, and they want more modern and very open, so people pay for that, and there's no woods. People don't really love the woods. They want openness. But you know, you'll drive up the street, and you'll see four of my houses in a farm field, and that gets people crazy. So how do I defend myself against that? You know, I didn't buy the farm and cut it up and sell it. You know, the farmer did. Brocs, fennel. Looks like forage in there. These are all perennial herbs. Cardoon over there. Edible violas, nasturtiums. We do a lot of edible flowers. People discovered kale. Now we have about six or eight different types of kale. Yeah, this is a real working farm, as you can tell. As the landscape has changed, we've had to evolve, and it's constant. Nettles, $12.99 a pound. The family farm has been here since the 1600s, and we are the 11th generation. We were growing up in this very sweet provincial little town, and there was so much land. I mean, I... it's really amazing what's happened in a short amount of time, with the waters being polluted and the overbuilding and-- You know, even in the past 10, 15 years, a lot of acreage that we used to rent from family members, now that's all gone and developed. It's a lot easier to sell an acre of land for, you know, half a million dollars than it is to, you know, struggle and work, you know, 50, 60 hours a week.

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Since 1640, there were all these different disputes about land, people challenging whether the land was theirs, whether they had the right to graze there. The town of Southampton approached the tribe and said, "Okay, this is how we're going to try to resolve this. We will give to the tribe a lease for a thousand years," and that includes the lands for where we live now-- Shinnecock Neck, the Shinnecock Hills. We were able to hold this lease, and then the tribe would sublease to the farmers and other people and still be able to use our own lands. That's how we were able to get a lot of our basic needs met. We were given a lease for 3,000-plus acres. That was whittled away, whittled away, whittled away until 1859. 1859, the robber barons, the railroad people, wanted to build the railroad line from Manhattan out to Montauk, and in blatant disregard for the Non-Intercourse Act, which said that no state, no town, no village, no farmer could take land from an Indian or an Indian tribe without an act of Congress. Well, New York state, they had 20 signatures supposedly giving the land to the state. Well, ten of those signatures were people that were dead. They had gone and gotten names off of headstones. The other ten were not Shinnecock. This is what they put before the judge. They got the land, and our people, from that next day when we found out about it, proceeded to fight for it. But we as Indian people were not considered citizens, so they would not allow us to take this into court. This land was stolen from us. Flat-out, no questions, hands down stolen. Now what sits on the acreage is some of the most prestigious golf courses in the world. You have a national golf course. You have a brand-new one, Sebonack Golf Course, and you have Shinnecock Hills, which will be hosting the U.S. Open, and you have a multitude of multimillion-dollar homes that sit in what was once our sacred Shinnecock Hills. "Property under video surveillance." This is the Shinnecock Hills Golf Course. This was a--This is a sacred place to us, and it was a long time ago, and it still is. We can come here, but still we're on the outside. We're not allowed in here. We're not allowed any access to our sacred sites. They use our name for whatever they want. Their logo is a native chief with a headdress on. It's that in-your-face kind of, you know, boldness. We know we have still to this day ancestors buried in this golf course, buried with respect and ceremony and love and honor. Shinnecock men were hired to help construct the golf course. Stories handed down to us say that they witnessed hundreds and hundreds of their ancestors' bones being desecrated during this construction and couldn't do anything about it. And to host the U.S. Golf Open here, it's just a slap in the face. We're not trespassing you. This is none of your business right now, so good-bye. No, it isn't. This is public property. Good-bye. And I'm a Shinnecock Indian, so leave us alone. Good-bye. I don't care who you are either. We're on public property. Leave us alone--leave us alone. This is--Are you kidding me? Sure, go right ahead! - Okay, ma'am. Well, I'm not even on the golf course. I'm on the doggone shoulder of the road, and this guy's harassing me. Well, that's how the Parrish Pond fight started. You know, we were on the shoulder of the road having our peaceful protest, and the New York State Police showed up with a chip on their shoulder. Someone told 'em that there was a bunch of Indians on the side of the road protesting the desecration of the land. We were well within our rights where we were standing. This is the Parrish Pond development, 62 acres of beautiful pristine land with some of the last of the marine plant life. "Heathland" they call it. It's gone. It's now someone's lawn. It's gone forever. We are protecting our sovereign territory. You're talking about our land. Where's that "Not one more acre" sign? You read that? I hope everybody here can read, 'cause that's what we're here for. Not one more acre. Not one more acre. State Police were just hollering and cursing at us. One in particular, after the bulldozers fired up their engines... He came from behind with all his might and pushed me into the middle of the road.

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We know that bones were dug up here and construction workers were instructed to put them in the dumpster. When we ride through the Shinnecock Hills, you know, and you see what we consider the destruction of our land, you know, you hear about the Sioux and their famed, you know, Black Hills. Our Shinnecock Hills here held the same meaning, the same historic value, that any of these other tribes around the country have held with their land. We've had several digs up in the hills there that have traced our lineage in this area back over 10,000 years. Our ancestors would bury people on the hilltops. The villages that we would live on would be on the east side where the sun rises, and then the burials would be all facing west, and so that's so the sunset can bring them into the spirit world. Good morning, everybody. Did you guys have a good Memorial Day weekend? Ruthie and I, we have a special guest here with us today. Our town supervisor, Jay Schneiderman, is here. Thank you. It's an honor for me to serve as your supervisor. The town is in great shape. We continue to work really hard on protecting drinking water and surface waters and open space, keeping taxes low, which I know is important. We have the U.S. Open coming, you know, the big USGA golf tournament. That is coming next week. It brings a lot of money to the economy, and that's a good thing. My question's about taxes. - Sure. Taxes have really become a problem. Are you concerned about that? So I realize a lot of you pay property taxes, and property values are going up in general, and I know most of you are on fixed incomes. The high cost of land complicates a lot of things out here, and it acts as a filter. So a lot of people who may be third, fourth, fifth generation kind of grew up out here, they see the cost of living go up, but their property values are going through the roof. Their taxes are going higher and higher. They end up selling those houses, and then that house will become probably a second home, and somebody will have to service that second home to take care of the landscaping or fix the boiler or mow the lawn. That person probably isn't gonna be able to live in the community, so a lot more workers are commuting in from further and further away, and you'll see that in the mornings

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00. The traffic eastbound is unbelievable. So we're creating a demand for labor that can't live in this community. Southampton town officials say the most horrifying violations they found at the Bel-Aire Cove Motel. Town code officers this week issued 215 code violations against 28 landlords. Officials say they found 17 people living in this four-bedroom house.

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A lot of people are struggling. If a three-bedroom house costs you--I don't know, 3,000 a month and you're only making, you know, $15 an hour and they're only letting you work 25 hours a week because they don't want to, you know, give you insurance, we have people that don't have places to live that are sleeping out in the woods or making little shacks for themselves to live because they're poor and homeless. People hear that, they're like "Oh, you're in the Hamptons. "What are you talking about? Are you kidding me? You're in the Hamptons." It's a kind of classic town/gown in the Hamptons. The professional middle class is so far from the elite, and there is such an antagonism towards the elite. You can feel that on a visceral level. On the other hand, the whole economy is based on this elite, and so it's really hard not to kind of continue to market and cater to this elite at the same time that you resent them. I think the Hamptons represents a historical microcosm of the class struggle here in the United States and in many cases, around the world, because it begins when Native Americans who had lived here on the land had that land taken away from them, and the only thing left is really for them to become the initial working class here in the Hamptons. Did you have fun on the playground? Did you go to the playground or to the beach? To the park. - Okay. One child sleeps on that couch. Two sleep on this couch. I sleep on that bed, and when another grandson comes over, he sleeps, like, right here. He'll put the pillows down and sleep here, and then Nasha and her daughter sleep in one bedroom, and my mother sleeps in that bedroom, so we have to take care of each other. The housing situation doesn't get any better around here, and I mean, the oppression runs deep. Every member of the Shinnecock Nation is a member of the town of Southampton, and so they're entitled to everything that any town resident would have. They certainly vote. They get permits to park on the beaches. They use all town facilities. There are tremendous things that members of the Nation can take advantage of without paying any property taxes. But we do, you know, have high-valued properties that pay high taxes that provide services, youth services, transportation services, park services, roads. The Shinnecock Nation, they benefit from all those things. The same things that I could take advantage of, and you know, I pay property taxes. We're obviously in a very strong fiscal position. We're improving our roads. We're fixing drainage problems. We're addressing infrastructure. We're improving our parks that everybody enjoys. What happens when you do that? People want to live in a community like that. What we've done is tremendous for the town. 400 homes we've built, and the average tax bill's got to be $30,000 on my homes. It's really helped keep up with the ever-growing budget, you know? The town needs the development to keep going. They'll never say that, but what would they do without it?

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The Hamptons as a place of paradise and respite was something that, you know, Walt Whitman wrote about and inspired a whole generation of artists to leave New York to go out. It became a place that symbolized nature. It symbolized this authenticity. As the Bohemian, you know, pioneers do in all forms of gentrification, the artists brought out the very rich people who saw this place for its natural beauty but also as a place that they could put their mark on it. Very wealthy people from New York City went out and built these huge summer cottages, and it became kind of the place for the rich and famous to go... on the one hand celebrating its naturalness, but also bringing in electric lights and bringing in the golf clubs and bringing in all the different trappings of their New York high society. Hi. Welcome back to "Talk of the Town." I'm your host, Jay Schneiderman, and we are talking about the U.S. Open, the 118th U.S. Open. You have been here for two years planning this event. We've been in the community for a while, but now it's real. Well, we certainly like having you guys here. We try at the town level to be as accommodating as we can, and we recognize over $100 million in economic flow into the community. Despite the bumper-to-bumper traffic and the hassle of getting to one of golf's premiere tournaments played right here at Shinnecock Hills Golf Course in Southampton, it's estimated about 30,000 spectators will attend the week-long event, helping business boom in the area, including here at Melrose pizza where pies are flying out the door. And they are certainly happy to get a piece of the U.S. Open pie. You guys sat right at the table with us in that last meeting, and I feel personally that you misled us. So as far as I'm concerned, you could've mentioned that then and said, "Well, we really have no need for overflow parking," when Sage and Williams said to you all the people coming from the east could be parked on the res. You never mentioned that you had already established parking east. So you know, you can sit there and you know, try to spin it, because that's what you do as a media person, but we still have to answer to the people, and the people right now didn't even want us to continue any negotiations. That was the sentiment in the meeting Wednesday. Hey, Phil, hit it in the holes, baby. Yeah, baby. "Don't even--Don't even continue the negotiations. Like, let's just go out there and protest."

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Hi, Rebecca. - Hi. How are you? Okay. - Yeah. He said if we need anything, just let him know. - Oh. Oh, we need our land back. You know, they're sitting on one of the most valuable pieces of land in the country, and they could generate income from that land. Like, they could all be millionaires literally, but they can't seem to get behind any one idea and stick with it for very long. I don't know what's the right economic development direction for the Shinnecocks. It's really up to them... But they have opportunities to, you know-- I'm not--The town is not standing in their way. It's the multimillion-dollar question-- where will the Shinnecock Indians want to build their casino now that they've cleared a big hurdle in gaining federal recognition as a tribe? There was a tribe in Connecticut that owned one of the largest casinos in the country. They excelled. They went by us like we were standing still. And in terms of creating economic development, when we started the gaming, there was a lot of hope in our community. As soon as we did that, we became public enemy number one. I've been living here 43 years. I have no desire to have that around here. The island's narrow. We have traffic problems as it is. Certainly, revenues from a casino can be quite high, but the community does not want to see a gambling facility out on the east end. A lot of people had concerns about the traffic and the problems that are sometimes associated with gaming. It's gonna cause traffic? Have you been out there on 27 lately to understand the traffic out there? We didn't create that. You did. We were going to start a small facility. We weren't going to go into the big billion-dollar facilities or anything like that. We went through that whole year, and it was really a nightmare. The developer backed away. The whole thing just fell apart. Literally, it fell apart. You know, while we were good neighbors, everything was okay. You know, "As long as you Indians "stay up on the reservation and in your place, you know, we're fine having you here." I'm not really sure what else the town can do for members of the Nation, but I think that they can improve their economic situation in a lot of ways, and I'd love to work with the tribal council moving an idea forward as long as it's one that is, you know... really supports the community. It's not gonna be a problem for the community. The Hamptons itself has become a brand. It's become a commodity. And one of the things that's buttressed the image of the Hamptons as the land of the rich and famous is the marketing to the rich and famous. That makes it even harder for people who are struggling. That makes it even harder for the people who are in the back room doing the dishes or the people who are serving and being ignored or the people who are cleaning the streets or the people who are in places like the Shinnecock Reservation where you essentially have whatever cultural capital having "real Indians" gives to a location, but without any knowledge of the history, struggle, and what those different locations actually mean.

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We've seen more Porsches and Mercedes.

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Whoo! Thanks,

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. Hi. How're you doing? - All right, and you? I'm well. So I saw the signs, and I wanted to see what was going on. So there are, um, remains that are just-- Our ancestors are still buried there. What do you think should be done for them to right a wrong? What do you think? Really? Give us our land back. Yeah. You want the whole forest back. It would be nice if we got our whole... That would be nice. - 360,000 acres-- I don't think that it would actually happen. They can start with the reconstruction of the graves so that they don't play golf on the graves of our ancestors. And at least acknowledgement to Shinnecock, the people, not Shinnecock the golf course. No, I know. I was really curious because I know there's millions and millions of dollars being made. Like, how can you right, or how would you want the right to--the wrong to be-- I just told you. I just told you. Yeah, to give back the land. - I just told you. Give us back the land. - Right. They probably won't. Why is it fair to continue on committing this crime of stolen property? Just because you stole it a hundred-and-so years ago doesn't mean the crime goes away. You take our land. You desecrate our graves. You play golf. You make gazillions of dollars. What is just or fair about that? Nothing. You got to start from square one. Sure. Yeah. I'm with you. - Okay, thank you. You have the logo on your shirt, so I'm-- Yeah, that's the real logo, not that fake Shinnecock Open logo. My grandmother was one of the matriarchs of our community. She was born in 1889. I think one of the things that she instilled in us-- I had two uncles. They caddied. They used to caddy right over here at Shinnecock Hills, and every day that we rode on that golf course, she would say to us, "Little man, this is your land. "This is our land, and you have to get this back for us. It's gonna be your generation that does it." The land battle has been ongoing. From 1978, we started this battle, this fight, for recognition and land. In the last 15 years, we finally had enough funding to really fight it in court. So it was 2005 that we first officially filed our land claim. They are claiming laches, and what laches is-- laches says that, "Well, you waited too long. You didn't fight for it," and we're like, "Are you kidding?" In the equitable doctrine of laches, you can't disrupt the expectation of current landowners. And because the Court of Appeals just dismissed our claims, we weren't able to delve into the facts of the case, so I put together a petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court for our land claim-- It's kind of the last way to really exhaust your claim through the system. But the Supreme Court decided not to review our claim. You know, in that sense, it's still alive. If it was an unfavorable decision, that would really have ended our claim, but they didn't, and because of that, we still have ways that we can bring our claims. We have a saying. "We have to preserve our way of life for the next seven generations." What that means is that we have to understand who we are. We have to understand our history, and we have to be able to tell that to our children. There was a famous quote. "To save the man, you must kill the Indian," meaning not literally kill the person, but you have to kill the Indian spirit inside of him. You have to kill their way of life and turn them into a civilized person. It was actually illegal in the United States and Canada for Native Americans to practice our cultures, for us to hold ceremonies, for us to wear our traditional regalia. They would say that we couldn't have been worshiping God because we weren't Christian, so we must've been worshiping the Devil. We were forced to assimilate to the colonized world due to what I call institutionalized colonialism. A lot of our culture was lost. A lot of our history was lost. There used to be a stockade downtown, and our people used to be put in that stockade if we were caught speaking our language.

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The Hamptons has its own sense of its own history, and who gets to tell that history? There are two ways that people who kind of come to an area and conquer and settle an area try to both imprint their own identity on it and then naturalize it in a way as if they've always been there. The first way is to establish the aesthetic of their lives. They build buildings that look like the buildings that they're used to. So you bring with you and you build what you know, but eventually you need to suggest that this always was. You start to look at the history and who gets to tell the history and where do you start your history? You start to look at how things are named. You start to create a kind of historical sense that this has always been your place. You are of this place. And so if we're really going to have an accurate picture of history, you know, whose voices aren't being portrayed in this and what do they add to the story?

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The Southampton Town Board has made massive efforts to protect their colonial sites and their colonial cemeteries, their colonial old houses, but they don't make an effort to help us preserve our Native American sensitive sacred sites. They just--they don't see it as the same. The acquisition of lands of Romeo in Shinnecock Hills. We have been before you many, many times and always have said the same thing. The goal is to preserve the 13 acres. Good afternoon. I am Rebecca Genia, and this is Nasha, my granddaughter. We're from the Shinnecock Indian Nation. I believe the town of Southampton needs a reminder that life did not begin in 1640 when the pilgrims arrived on our shores from Europe. Native people lived on this land in harmony with nature for thousands and thousands of years before your arrival. Public hearing number five, to consider the acquisition of lands of Parrish Pond. The source of funding would be the Community Preservation Fund. Those lots were historically sensitive, and what they're planning to do with it to preserve it, does anybody know? Today we're talking about preservation, primarily land preservation, and the Community Preservation Fund. When property transfers, the buyer pays 2% of the purchase price into a dedicated fund. This 2% tax has been generating quite a bit of money. In the town of Southampton alone, the fund has generated over $700 million, yes. Right, wow--$700 million. - Yes. Previous to the 1990s, there was your small year-round population here as well as your summer resort homeowners. I think in the 1990s, Wall Street started to sort of get bigger. The Hamptons became an attractive place to have equity. With the pace of development, we're losing open spaces and woodlands, which are important habitat. We're losing farmland, which was part of our, you know, agricultural character, so we started to buy a lot of these properties. It really kind of protected our rural character. People who spend a lot of money on homes out here really love to drive past farmland. Community Preservation Fund was to preserve our community character, which is defined in part with our scenic landscapes. You know, one of the things that accompanies this new wave out to the Hamptons is a kind of aesthetic that really creates a new sense of nature. If you look at some of the photography of the disappearing farms, and there's this kind of romanticisation of the farms at the same time that farms are becoming vistas and not working farms. They don't produce food, right? They produce views. Photographers kind of create this whole nostalgia around the farms at the same time that they kind of naturalize their extinction. It really turns farms into this kind of caricature of something that's historical. And on the other hand, it's a distortion of the historical narrative itself because it suggests that the farms themselves are what's indigenous to the place, and of course the farms only represent that wave of conqueror that clear-cut the land and destroyed the Native American economy and brought in their own kind of commercial agricultural economy. Shinnecocks do alert me to properties that they think are important. They will get involved particularly for a subdivision on a property that they feel is important to explore preservation. It has to do with timing and persistence and also with the Shinnecock tribe members educating landowners and helping them to understand why it's important. We've been able to preserve... I think it's less than 20 acres of land, fighting tooth-and-nail, telling them these are graves. We have to protect them. This is sacred land. This is ancient burials. New York is one of four states in the whole country that don't have graves protection laws. Walter Richards of Shelter Island speaks with awe about the discovery he unearthed on the grounds of his Osprey Road home, a mass grave containing the remains of Native American Indians, skeletal remains buried in fetal positions about 4 feet into the ground. It's not too late, and it's not over till it's over. There's not one foundation up there yet. A horse barn was built over a massive grave site on private property. Despite the good intentions and the goodwill of individuals and town people, they went ahead and built it.

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You have a known grave site. You have a known--it's on county land or public land, there are laws. There are rules and regulations in place to protect those sites. But if they're on private land, then it's a different story. Everybody watches Discovery Channel. We thought this was something that, you know, was gonna be really neat and be able to uncover. We had a really good time uncovering it and looking at everything and studying it. It was a real-- It was really exciting. We thought it would be in the best interest of the remains to be encased within the four walls of our structure and basically preserved forever, which when you get into the whole-- that's when things went awry, because we didn't know that their belief system was not similar to our belief system where we bury people in concrete vaults all the time. Don't imagine how we feel. Imagine how you would feel if it were you. Shelter Island prompted us to start writing legislation. When these issues are brought to our attention, we address them like a fire drill. Seeing that, the Shinnecocks have proposed that there be a systematized approach to this, namely a colonial and Native Americans graves preservation act. This draft has been with the Southampton Town Board probably since 2003. You know, archeologists have helped. Over the past 13 years or so, every time we go to the Southampton Town Board, "Okay, well, here's another draft. We'll have to run it by the attorney." We have--We're probably on our fourth town supervisor. George? - I think the real experts on this are sitting in front of you, the Shinnecocks. Of course. - What you said to us in the follow-up phone calls is that it's in the attorney's hands. What has your attorney come up with in 4 1/2 years of reviewing this draft of graves protection? There is a working draft, but it's been through at least three different attorneys. We've been through many supervisors, many different board members, many different town attorneys, and everybody has the same story. "Oh, we're looking into it, and we'll, you know, pass it by the attorneys." The people that buy the property don't know the property. They only see the value. I don't blame them for that. That's all we show them. Southampton town needs to say, "There's graves. If you find one, you're moving your house. You're moving your driveway." Okay, but I want to get you there legally, okay? Legally. - And we've talked about this, and I know it's all cumbersome and complicated, and I'm asking my town attorney to please pay attention so that you can move it through the town attorney's office. It's only complicated because you've never done it before. It's not complicated. This is very simple. If you want it done, you do it, and anyone who buys property here, that is part of the gamble they take when they buy a piece of property in the town of Southampton, and it can be done at your next meeting. Well, if it's that simple, we will try it, but I'm telling you I don't think it's that simple. We're not going to settle for this each and every single time a grave is unearthed. So within a month, we're gonna regroup. We're gonna give our town attorney some time. We will get back to you, and Becky, you're our main point person for heading up the task force. A number of you have come to approach the board of Native American graves burial site protection. If you all could just--That's fine. We're on our fourth supervisor since 2003, and we have not really gotten too much anywhere. You're saying the owner's rights are over yours? Is that presently, and you're looking-- Yes, over the rights of the desecration of the grave. Do we have a committee for relationships between the Shinnecock Nation and the town? No. - All right. Probably is a good idea. Whether it would be twice a year or something like that, I don't know. I don't either, but in order for us to accomplish certain things, we have to kind of keep it separate. And I just want to make sure. Today you're speaking as a representative of the Shinnecock Nation or as an individual? I am on the Shinnecock Archeological Advisory Committee, the

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, so I don't know what you're asking. I just want to know if this is-- Plus I am general counsel of-- Your position today, is it an official position of the Shinnecock Nation, or is it an individual position? I am an official representative of the Shinnecock Archeological Advisory Committee, and I'm no stranger. Maybe to you all, because I predate-- I don't really remember anybody's face. So I just want to make sure you're speaking on behalf of the Nation. And I have been since 2003, and it's in black and white right in front of you. Okay, okay. - Okay. Appreciate it. - Thank you. We think a simple procedure to protect these inadvertent discoveries. You know what my fear is, right? I know what it is. That a developer--You know, developers are good people, you know, but that if we make the process too onerous, that they're not gonna tell us. They're just--They'll simply pretend they never saw it. That's what's been happening. - And so we have to make sure-- That's what's been happening. Okay, but there're remedies for that, though, right? If you dig up wetlands, don't you have a remedy for that? Yeah, that's what I-- - Okay, so if you dig up a place where there are certain fish that are protected or certain trees that are protected, don't you have a remedy? And it includes potential criminal prosecution, right, or potential violation or withdrawal of your permit? There are penalties for all of this misbehavior. Now, we want people to do the right thing, but when they don't, there's a consequence to misbehavior. The fear is that graves are being encountered when homes are being excavated? Oh, we know that. We absolutely know that. And no one's being notified? - No one's being notified. Not even the M.E.? - Not even the M.E. Yeah. So I mean-- - Well? We have to enforce that somehow, and why don't we look at the laws that are on the books. John, what are you finding here? This is total news to me, so I want to research this and find out what your-- what you--what we have here as far as it all goes. Isn't it just common sense if you dig up bones, you-- I understand. - How come you didn't know this before when you first came here? You know, too, the tribal council has changed, too, at Shinnecock, and then-- This has nothing to do with the tribal council. This is absolutely nothing to do with tribal council.

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Paige, can you go hand me her belt please? Give me five. Give me ten. There we go. Turn this way. Let me see. Oh, check you out! You coming back with more? Chief Little Fox, you're in the same space. Okay. All right. Marianne

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. My grandfather was one of the cofounders who began the powwow. He had a vision that it was going to bring the people together.

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And from Nassau County to Suffolk where a grim discovery happened in the Hamptons-- human remains found at a construction site in Shinnecock Hills. Now, the remains were taken to the office of the Suffolk County Medical Examiner. We became very defensive when we saw officers going down there with shovels and sifters. That was very offensive. Yeah, they were treating it like a crime. It was treated like a crime scene. I didn't even want to pull it out because I'm afraid that I'm gonna damage something. I don't want to see it turn into a long thing that--

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As an archeologically sensitive site, it could mean CPF-- we don't know yet. Construction is being halted in parts of Southampton this morning. The state's asking Southampton town to consult with members of the Shinnecock Indian Nation. It's very hard to see what the profile is because it's all different, because it's all been disturbed, so things are falling down on top of each other. I can't get a good look at what the soil even looks like. Charcoal down there falling out of the wall... Yeah. It looks like it's charcoal. Which could have something to do with the burial. Looks like it, looks like-- - You could probably date the--do carbon-14 on the charcoal. Typically you find freshwater, so-- It's right here. - It's right there. Shinnecock Bay was freshwater until the hurricane.

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Members of the Shinnecock Tribe in Southampton are fighting to protect the graves of their ancestors. Rebecca Genia tells me she believes the remains are likely three centuries old. In the Suffolk County Homicide kept telling us we have to make sure it's not an MS13 murder, so it was kind of like almost insulting from day one. Konstantin, the homeowner, unearthing this grave, he did not take very lightly, and he comes from a country where there's war-torn mass burials, so he was very sensitive to this site. We asked the Community Preservation Fund to possibly make the offer so we can put it back as much as a natural state as we possibly can, you know, after all of this destruction. Why is that? You guys promised that you were gonna take care of this, and now you're canceling the meeting. You know, he's in a bad position. Now he's having problems with his lender 'cause his lender saw this in the paper, so you know, now they could call the loan on him 'cause he hasn't started. He's stopped. You know, I don't know what to do at this point. All right. Bye. The day you were there, you heard everything you needed to hear when they said, "What, do you want us to buy every piece that had bones on it?" I mean, you heard. That's where--We should've known in the beginning where that was going. Hey. How are you? They canceled the meeting. They don't want to get in a battle right now 'cause they know the powwow's going on, and what they're gonna do is they'll say there's not enough money or didn't appraise high enough, and they're gonna try to throw it as Konstantin, the bad builder. Meanwhile, he's willing to sell for exactly what he has into it. I mean, it's probably $1/2 million, you know, and they've spent billions almost in that fund. I can feel it slipping already. I will just take excavator there tomorrow, and if it's nothing resolved, then we'll start. Their offer is what it is, and there's still $185,000 that he's put into this project. Yes. That's the amount he's short. You know, we're trying to do this. I need support from everybody to call him and say, "Look, we are going to raise this money. We're going to do this." Konstantin wants to come back Tuesday and finish his project. The worst-case scenario, let's say he's allowed to come back in here, and he said, "Okay--" I can monitor. - Okay. I can watch. The problem with monitoring is the backhoe gets to it before you can see it... - Yeah. So even if you say "stop," which they stop, things are already disturbed. Right.

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You know it is an emergency, and the last text I sent you, I said, "Why can't we purchase the land and put the land into trust?" It's ours--we can own it and put it into trust. My question is who would control the land? Us. We will draw up a contract where we're stewards of the land. They don't want another thing to do. They proposed this in the past to us, and now you're board of trustees, but other boards of trustees, "Please read this. Please read this. Please read this." A year, two, three? Come Tuesday, I got to beg that guy to come here instead of going over there to start developing, to come here so he can hear it from someone else besides me. Okay, all right, we've got to find some more money. - Yep.

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We're trying to get the man all the money. He needs all of his money back, and he deserves to have all of his money back, and that should be no question, but it's always got to be the Native people who stand up and begin something good.

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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Once again, thank you all for coming to our lands here at Shinnecock. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a situation going on. Right down the road from here, there is a piece of land that the remains of one of our ancestors was found. The leadership of the Shinnecock Indian Nation feels very strongly that this piece of land should be returned to the tribe. We call upon you to stand with us. I'll have relatives going around passing out fliers with that information to see how you can contribute.

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Members of our Historic Preservation and Repatriations Committee has been trying to get them to put legislation and policy in place for incidents just like this and what transpired. So they're aware of the long history of us going at it with them, and so for me, it's really about... sticking to your word. We're here today to pray, so today we are gonna ask that the ancestors please help us.

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Thank you, Creator, for this land. Thank you for our ancestors. We pray today, Creator, that you can be with all of us however this goes. And I pray that our energy, our ancestors, feel strong and they feel honored and respected. I pray that any division that our tribes have, Creator, and this town has, and this government has, I pray that we can understand, Creator, that this is unhealthy for all of us.

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Suffolk County Tax map number 900 to 32 to lot 35. If the town decides to buy this property today, it's a very historic time, you know, for our relationship between Shinnecock and Southampton. We are concerned about our house on a private street that we do not lose the value of our home. We are doing our best. That's very difficult sometimes when your emotions are struck. We hope that we all can uphold our word. Thank you for meeting with us when our tribal leadership has called for meetings. You know, this is not going to be the last time that this happens, so I really hope that there are policies and protocols put in place for the next time. Anyone else on the motion? I'll call the vote. All in favor?

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Aye. Any opposed? Opposition? It is approved. So clearly a win? - More to come, more to come. We will acquire this property. It will be protected, and it's not gonna stop here. So I felt a sense of... like we had almost turned a corner, that this was part of a healing process. No more accidental unearthing. There's no such thing. I'd do a jig, but my legs hurt.

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Our goal is to purchase every single vacant lot in the hills and protect for all time. See you soon.

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Meet me at the fire. When people realize you take care of your ancestors, you take care of the Earth, good things will happen. That's what I believe with my heart and soul. Looking at the history of the Shinnecock struggle, it's their struggle that gives us a sense of what the future might look like, that it's their continued desire for dignity, for recognition, and for not even a return of the land to their ownership, but a return of the land to the spirit of their history, of collective ownership of collaboration of human survival and subsistence in a sustainable way with nature, that really is the vision for what a future world might look like. -

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Mmm! My name is Rebecca Genia. I'm calling from the Shinnecock Reservation. The Graves Protection Group here, we would like to have a work session meeting, you know, get on the agenda so we can talk about the graves protection laws. We haven't accomplished that mission yet.

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