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No Room for Her on the Reservation

By Steve Wick | Staff Writer

Since early last summer, Rose Eleazer Cuffee Samuels has lived in a homeless shelter in Bellport. She would like to live on the Shinnecock reservation in Southampton, but her requests to the tribal trustees have been rejected or ignored.

"They tell me there's no room for me," she said. "I recently found out from a relative that my father's home still sits on the reservation." She said she also discovered that the home is occupied by a distant relative.

"As a people, we have our problems. Nor do I feel that I have to live there in order to be Shinnecock. Yet I have that right. How can they keep me out?"

The Shinnecock reservation is governed by three trustees, who are elected each April. The current trustees are Peter Smith, Brad Smith and Kevin Eleazer, who is Samuels' cousin. Asked about Samuels' efforts to live at Shinnecock, Peter Smith said, "I'm not going to get involved in that," and neither Brad Smith nor Eleazer would be interviewed for this story.

A Shinnecock who asked not to be identified said, "There's a lot of politics on the reservation and people have been hurt by it."

Samuels is not the only Shinnecock to be turned away. Janine Tinsley-Roe, who is Shinnecock and lives in Bellport, also has asked to build a home on the reservation and been rejected, even though her aunt was living there at the time she applied. Today, she runs a group called the Shinnecock-Sewanaka Society, which promotes tribal history and serves as an umbrella group for Shinnecock who live off the reservation. The group has more than 100 members.

"They turn down some people but let others live there," she said. "Our goal is to organize off-reservation Shinnecocks and try to affect change there. Under the current system, non-reservation Shinnecock cannot vote in trustee elections, which is unfair. I think the trustees have lost their way. They need to be put on a rightful path."