A little over a year ago, I met Tela Troge, a woman from the Shinnecock Nation of Long Island who has since become my friend. She told me a story that seemed impossible to believe at first. 

Shinnecock Bay, the source of food for the Shinnecock Nation for thousands of years, can no longer support marine life because of nitro­gen pollution caused by human sewage. 

The community adjacent to the reservation does not have a central wastewater treatment facility. The New York Times reported that Suffolk County has more unsewered residents than any other typical suburb in the United States. Most homes in the wealthy community of Southampton depend on old septic systems that use cesspools to store human waste (75% of homes in Suffolk County, according to the Times). During the COVID pandemic, the town’s population surged as New Yorkers fled to the Hamptons, flushing human waste into the groundwater and surrounding waterways. 

The Shinnecock People have lived on Shinnecock Bay since time immemorial. The bay has served as the source of food and economic security for my Shinnecock relatives, supplying fish, clams, mussels, quahogs and seaweed. But today, 99% of these foods are annihilated due to solid waste generated by wealthy homes that depend on failing septic systems to store their waste. For 50 years, the wealthy neighboring community has failed to create a solid-waste treatment facility.

This has made it impossible for the Indigenous folks who live on the reservation to pursue their traditional livelihood. Due to pollution in the bay, the Shinnecock People have built economic development projects to earn alternative income on the 80 acres they retain in the hills. They built electronic billboards to pay for their elder food program and their preschool program. They drew up plans to build a gas station to serve summer tourists. But the community living next to the reservation has protested and blocked these projects, arguing that the billboards are an eyesore and that the gas station will bring unwanted traffic. 

The Shinnecock reservation’s residential land-base is made up of 800 acres on a spit of land below sea level. The Shinnecock were removed by settlers from the beautiful, wooded hills of their traditional homelands, now populated by some of the wealthiest people in the country. 

The Shinnecock were pushed to a tiny swampland area adjacent to three “ponds” that spill into Shinnecock Bay. With every major storm, the reservation floods because it is below sea level. Every building on the reservation is infested with black mold. Everyone on the reservation lives with black mold.

Tela told me she hopes income from the gas station will fund building remediation to address the mold. But the town next to the reservation files court case after court case, keeping Tela’s people in expensive proceedings that prevent economic development projects from moving forward. They have the money and the power to drive Tela and her people from their reservation. They can make life so hard that the Shinnecock are displaced. Tela and her people are slowly being eradicated. 

Imagine if your neighbors polluted your groundwater so that your water was filled with sewage. Imagine these same neighbors drove employers from your town, making it impossible for you to earn a living. Imagine you were driven from your home and placed in the most contaminated area, and any attempt to earn a living was blocked.

That is the situation for the Shinnecock People.

The prophet Zechariah said this to a society content with performative fasting while practicing injustice: 

This is what the Lord Almighty said: “Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.” 

But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and covered their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets.

— Zechariah 7:9-12 (NIV)

I am praying for Tela’s wealthy, powerful neighbors. I am praying for the softening of hearts as hard as flint. I have made the commitment to pray for this, for these hard hearts, for as long as it takes for the Shinnecock to be valued as fellow human beings by their neighbors. I hope you, my relatives, will join me.