Setalcott Nation awarded $90,000 grant for Long Island Sound stewardship efforts

The Setalcott Nation, an Indigenous community with ancestral ties to the Town of Brookhaven, is one of 16 organizations to have been awarded grant money from a fund aimed at supporting historically marginalized communities addressing the health of Long Island Sound.

The $90,700 grant from Restore America’s Estuaries’ Long Island Sound Community Impact Fund will help the Setalcott Nation expand its environmental stewardship efforts at Conscience Bay in Setauket and in the Village of Poquott.

The Nation’s plans with the grant money include kelp farming in Poquott’s waters, exploring oyster hatchery projects, restoring native plants, creating a community garden and installing an informational kiosk about the Setalcott and their history at Conscience Bay.

Members of the Nation say the funding is both a celebration and a long-overdue recognition of their connection to the land. Historical documents show a group of Setalcotts traded area land to English agents for various goods in April 1655. Setalcott member Monique Fitzgerald described the land as being taken from the Nation. 

“It was one thing that it was celebratory, but it also felt overdue because we’re a displaced tribe,” Ariel Hart, 38, of the Setalcott Nation, told Newsday. “This is literally where our ancestors are buried, lived, lived off of.” 

The Indigenous group is not federally recognized, a status that often limits access to certain grants and resources. The Long Island Sound Community Impact Fund is a program that does not require federal recognition as a condition for support, according to Shahela Begum, the Fund's program director.

The Fund is a partnership between Restore America's Estuaries, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Long Island Sound Study, and the EPA provides funding for it.

Fitzgerald, 46, said the initiative goes beyond environmental work; it’s a step toward reclaiming cultural identity and access to the land.

“We still mourn the loss of our land, and we still work to reclaim what we can,” she said at a news conference Wednesday celebrating the 16 community grant awardees, all from New York and Connecticut.

“It’s about cultural and environmental justice,” Fitzgerald later told Newsday. “We want to make sure the stewardship continues, because no matter who claims they own land, we all are just stewards of the land, and we need to take care of it.”

In addition to community involvement and making “our ancestors proud,” Hart said involving the Nation’s youth was as important.

“When we’re all gone from our standing point and taking a relaxing as an elder, they’ll have to move forward," she said at the same news conference.

Brookhaven Councilmember Jonathan Kornreich praised the project as an important acknowledgment of the region’s Indigenous roots before the Town of Brookhaven’s founding in 1655.

“To see [the Setalcott Nation] on some kind of trajectory of rebuilding themselves and their identity is very meaningful — I get emotional,” Kornreich told Newsday.