LONG ISLAND, N.Y.—It would seem that the Shinnecock Nation on eastern Long Island has yet again been victims of a land grab. New York State and the Town of Southampton are employing an over 500-year-old legal and religious concept called the Doctrine of Discovery that has been used for centuries to justify Christian colonial conquest. This doctrine requires that the “expectations” of non-Natives have full sway over what Native People may or may not do on their own lands.
The Shinnecock Nation has a long history on Long Island, dating back thousands of years. Yet, during centuries of European colonization, the Shinnecock Hills were stolen from the Nation. Super mega wealthy homes were built on the graves of their ancestors, and both Southampton Town, which borders them, and the State of New York have waged a constant battle against their sovereignty.
For the past five years, there has been a longstanding battle over 61-foot-tall billboards along Sunrise Highway in Hampton Bays. The Shinnecock Nation and the State of New York are battling over who controls the land on which the structures stand. As community leaders of the Nation explain, they erected billboards on their own land near Sunrise Highway Route 27. New York State built the highway through Shinnecock Land without permission or payment in 1959. Now, the Nation has to fight and pay fines in legal suits.
The Nation also wants to build a travel plaza on its land. Sixty-one percent of the members of the Shinnecock Nation are at or below the poverty line, and community leaders see the building project as an attempt to generate income for members of the tribe.
The Shinnecock people live on an estimated 800 acres of the Shinnecock Hills, which used to be 4,200 acres, and are simply fighting to retain what they have. The Town of Southampton has many residents, wealthy beyond belief, many large mansions used only a few weeks in the summer by billionaires and multi-millionaires who come there briefly while the Shinnecock, right next door, live in poverty.
Southampton, in pushing back against the building of the travel plaza, has used the racist Doctrine of Discovery to say the “expectations of non-native” neighbors have full sway over what the Shinnecock may do or not do with their own land. The Court employed the “City of Sherrill”-based “equitable defenses” analysis, a Supreme Court decision that the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she regretted writing, which is one of the worst decisions in the brutal history of relations with the Indigenous populations.
It says that any tribal action that “disrupts” the “settled expectations” of the settlers could be summarily dismissed. There needs to be no evidence of disruption. Filing a lawsuit is a “disruption.” The Court decided that, as in the Polite case, Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on this claim because “this case presents the type of disruptive land claim that would be barred under the doctrine of City of Sherrill.” The decision states that homeowners neighboring the Westwoods property (a part of Shinnecock land for thousands of years) would be adversely affected by the construction of the Travel Plaza.
The case lists all the settled expectations of the wealthy neighbors that the roadway not cut into wooded lands in a residential rural area (Shinnecock lands) and that the 20-pump gas station, convenience stores, and smoke shop would affect heavily traveled Sunrise Highway.
The residents have a settled expectation that there would not be thousands of motorists driving on Newtown Road and across the newly constructed road to the travel plaza.
The very rich neighbors have an expectation that there would not be commercial development in an area that has been “forested for centuries.”
The “equity” claim of Sherrill ignores any tribes interest in restoring its lands, which have been destroyed over centuries of settler colonialism. Further, a more recent Supreme Court decision regarding the case of McGirt v. Oklahoma refuted Sherrill because the Supreme Court, emphasizing textualism, turned away Oklahoma for not making arguments rooted in legal text.
The racism and classism the Shinnecock Nation is experiencing in regards to the building of their travel plaza is an example of the NIMBYism that people of color, immigrants, poor and working class people often experience in extremely rich neighborhoods like the one on Long Island. NIMBY stands for “not in my backyard,” refering to the resistance by residents of affluent neighborhoods to new development projects, particularly those involving affordable housing or shelters, within their immediate vicinity.
As of the time of this writing the Suffolk County judge who initially halted the construction of the Shinnecock Nation gas station said that her March 17 preliminary injunction will be modified to allow contractors for the tribe to return to the site to complete some portions of the infrastructure while the matter makes its way through the legal system.
Community leaders of the Shinnecock Nation are asking for the help of supporters and allies to get the word out regarding their continued legal battle to have the right to use their sovereign land as they see fit.
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