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Land. Heritage. Roots. No matter where you come from, these things are what tie you to your past, help you explore your present, and inform your future. There is simplicity to this ethos: you are a product of where your history began.
For the Shinnecock Indian Nation, though, things are not so easily explained. Ten thousand years ago, the Shinnecock were charged by the Great Spirit, their god, with managing better than 200 miles of pristine lands in and around what became Long Island , New York . By the 1800's, failed treaties and soured deals left the Nation with little more than 826 acres, around which today sit massive mansions, subdivisions, highways and factories.
Unlike other Indian Nations, whose reservation lands exist in the middle of vast ranges, allowing them little connection to the modern business world in a condition of forced poverty, the Shinnecock are right in the middle of one of the wealthiest summer communities in the world: the Hamptons . Yet many are still poor.
The socio politically downtrodden status of the Native American is nothing new: here on idyllic summer days, while white folks pack up their Benzes and head to their private, unwritten-ruled "white only" beach clubs, many Shinnecocks get out of bed and go to minimum wage jobs. When the movie premieres come to town, bringing with them stars and paparazzi, cluttering the roads but also business to their few small subsistence stores on the edge of the reservation, they shake their heads—torn between the necessity of earning money and the excess of a Hollywood-obsessed culture. All the while, some tribe members try to make ends meet on state government assistance as they sadly watch their kids fall into the same pattern that poverty begets—drugs, jail, alcoholism and sometimes, death. Others see a better way: those who got through school fight inertia by being teachers, lawyers, writers, fighters—determined to help their people retain dignity and a sense of place.
Like most historically oppressed peoples, there is one thing that keeps them going through the hard times. For the Shinnecock people, it is the land: they believe they are "of the land," not just living on it. As the only eastern tribe who was never displaced from their ancestral region, even as they were relegated to their 826-acre reservation, the Shinnecock Nation began where they still are—Southampton . And no matter how many "McMansions" spring up around them, they will fight for what was once theirs alone.
"The Last Piece," a feature length digital video documentary, will chronicle eight years of struggle by the Shinnecock people to preserve historic areas like Parrish Pond, the Shinnecock Hills and Shelter Island , which contain burial grounds and are all that remain of their ancestral lands. To be shot over 25 remaining days, footage already captured includes the Shinnecock Nation fighting development on 62 acres at an area adjacent to the current Shinnecock reservation, "Parish Pond" that saw several tribe members arrested for trespassing. It also includes material on the Shinnecock Hills, a sacred burial ground which is being desecrated and whittled away, falling to large homes as tribe members look on sadly; the Hills represent an ongoing struggle between the tribe, the State of New York , and property owners.
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