Interview with Two Shinnecock Tribal Lawyers part 1

[Music] Oh see Oh hello and welcome to my show pathways of the dream large cafe and today I have two wonderful young women from the Shinnecock and hath sent immiscible tribes what we want to do today is dispel some of the ugly myths about Native Americans what you probably don't know or realize is that the Shinnecock nation is on Long Island it is the home of the Hamptons they have taken the land from the Shinnecock nation and so what we want to do is tell you a little bit about the Shinnecock first mine my guests are Kelly Dennis and Tila trudge so ladies welcome I'm so glad you could come so could you please please tell us a little bit about your nation well first we want to thank you as a Boonton a in our language from Algonquin language for having us here and hello Quay and yes we are from the Shinnecock Indian nation in New York as well as the hispana Misco Indian nation of knit monk band in Grafton Massachusetts and we are both attorneys actually first in our family to go to law school and graduate and pass the bar in New York which is pretty amazing so we've upon graduation and passing the bar and trying to help out our tribe in several different ways and one of them was with the Supreme Court getting our land claim heard we didn't quite get all the way but we did at least put a petition for a writ of certiorari which was read and considered and we worked on that with the Native American Rights fund narf that sounds wonderful I'm glad that you're getting some sort of representation and people are finally hearing you do you think that Obama's influence helped a little or when he suggests about time what do you think - oh yes we're very thankful for President Obama under his administration we were actually received our federal recognition we were in a court battle for over 32 years just trying to obtain this recognition by the United States government and it was President Obama who finally extended the olive branch and formally recognized the relationship with our tribe in the United States government so we're hoping that the next administration continues helping us with our quest to regain some of our ancestral land and territory that was actually sorry in October of 2010 that we got fairly recognized so we're coming up on our sixth anniversary of recognition now um could you tell the audience the difference maybe just a little bit about the difference between being state recognized and being federally recognized what are the advantages or disadvantages well under state recognition the New York State has basically taken us on and provided us some services helped with you know making sure that we we do at least have a little bit of a land base left and that's what we own and fee as a nation and we do get some services from the state just when we may recognize they'd help us with health just as you know some kind of recompense from taking all the land and really putting us at a very bad disadvantage of where we are but with federal recognition you know we have so many different opportunities where we still have to come together as a nation and decide how to move forward but we have that recognized government-to-government relationship and with that there are certain sovereign powers that come in more so where basically you can get more into different services whether it be fur for health or environment and also getting into different commercial enterprises an economic development there's actually some Christian Indians who decided that they didn't want to remain on the East Coast with the they're trying to save their culture by going west so they ended up in Wisconsin they're known now as a brother down Indians oh that's good are you all still in contact do you like go to visit do they come the only reason I ask that is because I was at skom ittsan you know with the Pequots it's a large powwow if you all don't know what powers are these are Native festivals that happen starting maybe in May and go to October and it's like a big block party but it's all native and we have dancing we have food we have everything and at this because a lot of people don't know about Indian slavery and a lot of the East Coast people were taken to the islands to the Caribbean and some of the the East Coast nations Narragansetts Pequots and whompin augs have been in contact with some of the people from Bermuda and they brought them up to skim itson and they danced and you know it's really wonderful to see that they still had this connection and and we still have our annual powwow we always invite everyone out and we'll have family reunions and people from Brotherton will come I'm sure I haven't personally I don't know about Fela but gone out to you know out west more so into Pennsylvania in other areas my brother has and met with some Brotherton people but we try to keep the connection open we have several different connections across the water with Narragansett and Wampanoag and all kinds of intertwined family relationship yeah intermarriages and everything you know that's what I found that was really because a lot of people don't know about East Coast Indians that's one of the reasons that I wanted you all to come on today and talk about what you do and something very important happened in the 90s for the women in your nation um could you tell us a little bit about that would you like to start Tina I'm sure so originally our cultural our culture was matrilineal so women had a lot of the power and kind of made a lot of the decisions and one of the ways we lost our land was that the Europeans came in and they forced our tribe to adopt their ways and they put the men in charge when they had never been in that leadership role before so starting in 1792 the New York state government made sure that women had no voice in the government of the tribe any longer and it wasn't until 1992 that women regained the right to vote in tribal elections and even to speak at tribal meetings hmm about 200 years that women you know we're put on the sidelines recently we just got our first two women trustees we adopted a new constitution our first written constitution and we're progressing towards the future that's because what people don't realize is they talk about women's suffrage these women susan b anthony and others were influenced by the whole nashoni people from upstate new york because they lived there and they were just amazed because European women had no rights the men could do anything they want I was shocked when I found that the men could do anything they wanted to them and their children and so being around native women and seeing the what they thought was power they were astonished but it was just a way of life it isn't about power or anything women give birth so they have a right to say well what's going to happen with their children I mean the European Way is entirely different and so I wanted to know what led you to ladies to come well you know I think our whole family is just very active politically and socially within our tribe tribes and our mothers are very strong influences and and our lives and very powerful in just their presence among the tribe and everything that they get into Tila's mom was helping with this the shellfish hatchery and the Rhode Island Indian Council she's a director there she it also also serves on the economic development Shinnecock sovereign holdings as the director my mother has been in education for the last 21 years just retired and she's always given different cultural lessons within the tribe whether it's speed work or dancing singing she's always tried to keep the culture alive and for a time my father was trustee of the Shinnecock nation before women got the right to speak and you know my mother was that entire time and what happened was amazing under their leadership really because it really was my dad who's great and everyone in the tribe respects him and my mother and you know not only were they able to accomplish that but also get a health center for our tribe and a playground going and you know we had it under oak a playground growing up but it was like all rusted and everything yeah they got a safer one and the the health center I don't know where we'd be without the health center today so and with the federal recognition that gives you more power or more money in the health center and it gives an opportunity to maybe form partnerships with the IHS the Indian Health Service federal programs wherever state programs might be lacking um Tila your specialty is education could you tell us a little bit I remember years ago I was involved with title four and now they've changed the title names to may be title six or they keep changing them but at least they still exist to a degree sure so one of my focuses on helping Native children in the public school system just because we do come from a different culture and we do have different needs and we want to make sure that our children are receiving the best education possible so we just are helping students in need who may not be receiving appropriate services or we had one student who was told you know he wasn't Native American the Native Americans don't exist and like he shouldn't have long hair and he shouldn't go to powwow so unfortunately our children have to face yeah our children are facing these issues and they might not have the coping mechanisms and just growing up as a native person you kind of become used to so many in Justices throughout Shinnecock history it was just one injustice after another but between our land being lost our economy being destroyed our language being taken and so that's another reason that Kelly Anna and I chose to go to Walt law school and become aware so your culture is a lot of it was around whaling and fishery and things of that sort and that's some wonderful history in itself what about the Child Welfare Act I remember everyone was up in arms within the last year or two about baby Veronica that was taken from her father do you could you give us a little bit of information on that or if it still exists I don't understand why they were allowed to take her sure there's a very unfortunate decision that came out of the Supreme Court that it basically misconstrued the principle of who is Indian and who isn't Indian and you know it's really a cultural thing if you're a part of your tribe you're a part of your tribe and the court took it in a different direction and they they broke it down into the amount of Indian blood that they thought they'd be Veronica had and they used that basis to basically remove her from her culture and from her family but the Indian Child Welfare Act is an important piece of legislation that protects Indian children and it kind of promotes you know every effort has to be made to keep a child within its native community and to ensure that the child grows up in their culture so that cultures and that is not lost we've had cases within our own tribe actually where there was an adoption issue happening and we've we were actually successful and getting visitation from extended family you like to call it and so it's it's always like a process because you know we there's mechanisms built into the Indian Child Welfare Act understanding that you know this other family may have a connection built a connection but still there needs to be an appropriate not just you know off the sleeve like oh we can take this child to like you know a Cherokee thing or something like you know it has to be their actual tribal experience and and you have to you know teach them about their culture because otherwise you know there are so many children from back and 1800s and before that maybe even 1900s actually who were sent to boarding schools taken away from their families and so everything is it's really that latina and I are about are kind of confronting that historical trauma that really has kind of put our tribe and others into a spiral of just not getting things done kind of unfortunate areas of corruption well internally and just not being able to you know focus and get yourself together so we can deal with these problems and and move on with the outside world as well an appropriate way and there's so many different issues that go into that environmentally is one of the the things that that we are working on as well we have issues we around our water we're on a peninsula the reservation that we got moved to and unfortunately there used to be an oyster project in moisture hatchery but with the red tide and the brown tide it's been very difficult to be able to have successful hatchlings and go forward with that mode of economic development which was it's upsetting and you know another issue is just with the super storms with Sandy and the Hurricanes that come in and what's that what is that doing to our what's left of our tribal land that we are allowed to build homes on and the the erosion that's happening I mean we have traditional ways of dealing with that with eel grass and seaweed but you know our original territory was more in the Shinnecock Hills and on the other side at good ground and was called that for a reason because it didn't flood as much over there and we could actually plant and have you know harvest and get our timber and everything and it's not where the Shinnecock golf courses it's that part of how many acres do still have I believe 800 there's I think about around 800 on the the I think 840 on the the NAT questioning neck and then another 80 acres at West woods yes let's talk about west woods because there seems to be a constant fight I mean I've been there and it's so beautiful but the neighbors seem to think it belongs to them and they're taking it a little bit at a time and so what is there anything we could dude can we write letters or what can we do to help in your fight to regain your land or keep them from encroaching which is what they do I know you're on Doreen was in a demonstration her and Becky about them taking more of the land and so does there anything you think we could do to help well one of our main problems were the West woods is that again there is this encroachment by the neighbors whether it's a fence or an extension of their yard or just I'm not thinking that just vacant land they're building structures and one of the things that we desperately need as a survey unfortunately those cost a couple of thousand dollars which the tribe doesn't have but a survey would go to show what our original boundary was and then another issue is we had a court case and the judge he he ruled that you know we had to follow building codes of the state and local government because they did a title search and the title search didn't come up with any source of title but if you look at our other land the source of title is in the original land patents and when you look at the original land patents especially the first Indian deed you can clearly see at the end of the document that we reserved rights to a wood land west of the what is now the Shinnecock Canal it used to be a small Creek some of the Hurricanes that Kelly was speaking about earlier and some mean man made efforts kind of made that into the canal that we know now but that land was specifically preserved for us in a land and known as the first Indian deed so just getting a court to acknowledge that would go a long way to help us in our in our pursuit for sovereignty over our ancestral territory okay you are the lawyers out there we need you to help us form together yeah well I want to thank my guests Kellie Dennis and Tina troll and we're going to continue with another part because this is so much I want to know about the woman who is being nominated for the Supreme Court Hopi woman miss Maddie you are and we'll talk about that on our next show again this is Candis Tarpley at pathways to the dream Lodge cafe I hope you enjoyed our show please come again [Music] [Music] [Music] 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Channel: Pathways to the Dream Lodge Cafe

Views: 1,168

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Indigenous First Nations, American Indians, Native Americans, Coastal Peoples, Tribal Affairs

Id: YEUtaYObf6Q

Length: 27min 58sec (1678 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 06 2018