Challenge to Shinnecock recognition is about 'unity'

FROM the outpost of his Cape May, N.J., home, Robert Stevenson envisions a day when people on Long Island with Indian ancestry are united. He says this is so important to him that he has almost single-handedly brought to a halt the Shinnecock Indian Nation's 32-year quest for federal recognition.

He says he has done this because he wants all people who trace their roots back to Long Island's Indian tribes to benefit from the recognition. Once they receive that recognition, members of the Shinnecock Nation have said they will pursue construction of a casino on Long Island. A number of proposed sites have been discussed in recent weeks - a process that has come to a halt because of Stevenson's recently filed challenge.

Stevenson's petition to the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs on behalf of a handful of people who say they are of Montaukett Indian heritage, along with a second complaint by a group called the Connecticut Coalition for Gaming Jobs, will give Stevenson his day in a U.S. Interior Department appeals court later this fall. He said in an interview that seven people are part of his petition to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He said his effort is for personal and historical reasons and not on behalf of out-of-state gambling interests opposed to the Shinnecock Nation's efforts to build a casino on Long Island. Members of the Montaukett tribe on Long Island say they are opposed to Stevenson's petition.

"We have no ill will against the Shinnecock people," Stevenson said. "This is what you'd call a family dispute. . . . There is room [in recognition] not just for the Shinnecocks but the different bands" of Indians who once lived on Long Island.

Lawyer had ties to Seneca gaming

Stevenson's attorney on the petition, Martin Seneca Jr., did not return numerous calls asking for comment. Federal Securities and Exchange Commission documents show Seneca, a Seneca tribe member, was once a board member and secretary for Seneca Gaming Corp., which operates three Seneca casinos upstate. Seneca Gaming Corp. spokesman Phil Pantano said Seneca is not acting for the gaming corporation or for the tribe in representing Stevenson.

Stevenson's petition halting the recognition process, which his critics say came out of nowhere, has angered the Shinnecock Nation of Southampton, whose senior trustee, Lance Gumbs, declared Stevenson's challenge an "act of war." Robert Pharaoh, an Sag Harbor man who says he is the chief of the Montauketts, denounced Stevenson's effort against the Shinnecocks as a "grievous injustice."

These and other critics say they wonder about Stevenson's motivations in stopping the recognition. On top of that, Pharaoh said Stevenson isn't affiliated with his tribe. He said he supports the Shinnecock's bid for recognition and says Stevenson had no business intervening.

Stevenson, 74, is the self-proclaimed leader of a small group that calls itself Montauketts, the people who lived for thousands of years at the tip of the South Fork and were among the first Indians to confront Europeans settlers in the early 17th century. He says Montauketts were the dominant tribe on Long Island; all other tribes were subservient to them.

However, when asked about his own ancestry, Stevenson said he is a descendant of Shinnecock Indians - the very people whose recognition process he has stopped with his petition. He said he recently applied for Shinnecock tribal membership and was not accepted.

Claims membership in 2 tribes

In a series of interviews last month, Stevenson detailed his family history. He said his great-grandfather was John Jacob Bunn, a Shinnecock Indian who lived on the land now occupied by the Shinnecock Hills golf course in Southampton, site of past U.S. Open tournaments. His grandfather, Hallot Bunn, and his own mother, Mary Elizabeth Bunn, were also Shinnecocks, he said, who lived in Bay Shore. He said his father was from the Nanticok tribe of the Lenape People, from Delaware and New Jersey.

That family history, he said, not only qualifies him for membership in the Shinnecock Nation, but also in the Montauketts.

"There were 20 other bands that came under the Montaukett supremacy," Stevenson said, adding that the Shinnecocks were one of them. "We had a loose-knit confederacy."

Historian John Strong of Southampton said Long Island's tribes were interrelated clans that traveled from region to region, but he said the notion of a confederacy or Montaukett supremacy was introduced by Europeans for the purposes of exploiting native groups to make land transactions.

For his part, Stevenson said his own history has made him want to bring the benefits of federal recognition to all Long Islanders who can trace their ancestry back to the Island's original inhabitants.

"Strength is in unity," he said, brushing aside critics who say he is dividing the remnants of local tribes, none of whom have embraced his effort to stop the Shinnecocks on their behalf. "It would be better for all of us to come together rather than argue among ourselves, which will always divide us . . . This was a ploy, a tool the Europeans used against us."

Long Island Indians

UNCERTAIN HISTORY

It has long been accepted history that there were 13 Indian tribes on Long Island when European settlers arrived in the early 17th century in what they saw as a new found land. In recent years, however, historians have questioned that, saying the Indians who lived here were interconnected family groups, and the names attributed to them were more than likely place names, not tribal ones.

TRIBAL LANGUAGES

Those groups, or bands, who lived on the eastern half of Long Island spoke a different language than those who lived on the western half and in the lower Hudson River valley. Except for a tiny number of Delaware speakers on a reservation in Canada - Munsee-Delaware was the language spoken on western Long Island - these languages are extinct.

ORIGIN OF THE 13

The man who created the myth of the 13 tribes was Silas Wood, an amateur historian born on his family's farm in Huntington in 1769. His findings were based on a reading of land deeds made between Europeans and Indians. He listed 13 "tribes": the Canarse, Rockaway, Merikoke, Marsapeague, Secatague, and Patchague on the South Shore, from what is now Brooklyn to Suffolk County; the Matinecoc, Nissaquague, Satauket and Corchaug on the North Shore; the Shinnecock, Manhanset and Montaukett on the South Fork and Shelter Island.

ANOTHER VIEW

In a 1997 article in Newsday's series "Long Island: Our Story," John Strong, an expert on the Island's Indian history, said, "The 13 tribes has been a staple in generations of textbooks, on maps, and in newspaper articles. There were no such tribes. It's a myth. It's a good example of how what we are told about Indian history is largely provided by outsiders, who in this case got it wrong."