There is an Indian reservation on Long Island. It has been there since the 18th century. But the people have been there, on that very land, for thousands of years.
The reservation is in the middle of The Hamptons, one of the wealthiest enclaves in the world, with expansive multi-million dollar houses all over the place, with manicured lawns maintained behind high hedges.
The indigenous Shinnecock people are not wealthy. Sixty percent of them live below the poverty line; some have no running water and many dwell in housing that is substandard in other ways. Substance abuse is a continuing crisis, as is unemployment.
They were originally allowed a 3600 acre reservation… but since 1859 much of this land has been gradually (and illegally) appropriated by wealthy white people, who devoted it to railroads, highways, developments, and a very fancy golf course (built on ancient burial grounds). The current de facto reservation is a fraction of that, almost all on a single peninsula in Shinnecock Bay.
There are in the world a few inflection points where the collision between settler colonialism and indigenous peoples, is particularly acute. Palestine is one of them. Shinnecock is another.
The Shinnecock Nation is a hold-out of life against the spreading, corrosive cancer of a money-grubbing, polluting, thieving, arrogant white supremacy that treats everything and everyone as a commodity to be extracted, used up, and converted into private wealth and toxic waste. There is no way to look positively upon the garish monstrosities that consume the land, poison the water, and exploit underpaid labor in The Hamptons. The Shinnecocks are making a stand in favor of living simply in harmony with creation*, and against an insatiable machine of unmitigated evil devouring everything in its path.
The big difference here is world-views, and it is, in my opinion, the basis for centuries of mis-communication and one-sided violence. The two groups see time and creation from opposite perspectives. The modern, white people see God’s creation in terms of “resources” to be exploited, which is to say, turned by force into private wealth. And they see time in a similar way, apparently believing that it only began in 1639 when the forces of European “progress” arrived. Everything prior to that is all but nonexistent, as is anyone not participating in their metanarrative of privilege and “development.” Most of all, the English brought with them a corrosive individualism that severely devalued and even negated all senses of community, from creation to the family. For the settlers, only individuals exist, with priority given to the rich and powerful. Upon this assumption we have based all our law, religion, morality, and values.
The Shinnecock people, on the other hand, see reality in terms of communities and wholes. The land is held by the tribe (which makes even having street addresses problematic for white institutions). And they see their ancestors as still part of their community, which is why disturbing their resting places is so offensive to them. They understand themselves to be part of a larger community of creation itself, including the land, the sea, the animals, and others.
And they don’t particularly care about money. Each one of them would instantly become wildly wealthy were the tribe to sell their land and split the proceeds among the members. For white people this refusal is utterly incomprehensible. It seems insane to them. They intuitively realize it is a judgment on their own reflexive greed, and they react with fear, anger, and hatred.
To Christians, the Shinnecock people present a challenge. Because it is absurdly evident that indigenous peoples live in a way close to that of Jesus Christ, who owned almost nothing, walked lightly on the Earth perceiving God in nature, founded inclusive communities, and was subject to the tyranny of both reactionary religion and colonialist laws. We who claim the name of Christ, on the other hand, too often find ways to rationalize and justify the continued abuse of God’s creation and poor, indigenous, and working people.
The racist and individualist “values” of settler colonialism run so deep in our European DNA that the words of the gospel are often quite opaque to us.
At this point abandoning those habits of thought and action would necessarily demand a change in the very way we think. More importantly, it would mean a thorough and comprehensive reassessment of everything about the character of the presence of Europeans in this hemisphere at all. In other words, repentance. Metanoia.
Not that there is any going back. But we will have to find a way forward that is more just and humane than the steamrolled highway that brought us to this sad, degraded point in history. I am not just talking about this particular case, or even of indigenous rights in general. The same regime that is oppressing the Shinnecocks is also kicking the whole atmosphere of the Earth out of balance, generating a global rat’s nest of crises from wildfires and massive floods, to increasingly frequent and severe storms, to a rise in refugees… and what we are now experiencing is just the beginning.
We need, in short, to follow Jesus and is Way of humility, simplicity, community, and healing. In other words, we need humbly to learn from, and be more like, indigenous peoples.
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