They are our neighbor; they have been our neighbor for almost 400 years. Before that they controlled all of our land in Southampton Township, a sovereign nation whose people understood: no one owns the land. You use it, you care for it, and when you pass on, it is your children who use it and care for it in trust for their children. But no one owns the land, period.

As they traded with the first, and then the many, white visitors, they in no way could comprehend that their land would be taken away from them "forever." The many meetings over the years between the Native Americans and the white authorities, where, each time a new parcel, lot, section, or parish was created for exclusive white use requiring Native approval, always included a bottle of rum on the table, ensuring that the Natives would be unable to comprehend the deal.

Pushed from Old Town, from Mecox, then from Sagaponack, and even from the barren Shinnecock Hills, they were eventually left with only a section of low, poor sandy soil on part of Shinnecock Bay on which to dwell. At least they were "allowed" to have a parcel back of Good Ground (Hampton Bays) to cut their firewood.

We, the white folks, have polluted the fields with chemicals, the ponds and bays with sewage and run-off, and the miles of pure quartz sandy beaches with houses that wash away in storms, leaving stone, timber and debris littering them. We have cut our forests and drained our marshes. All in the name of "ownership."

Where is justice?

Turn on your TV, day or night, and you will see New York State-sponsored ads asking you to bet on the numbers (in the name of education). Do you mean to say that the state can sanction gambling but that the sovereign nation of the Shinnecocks cannot, on their own land? We took most of their land, and do with it what we will. Where lies our right to further impose on theirs? Don't talk about traffic—we made the traffic, and are living with it daily, searching for someone else to blame.

When I attended school as a child, in the 1910s and 1920s, many Shinnecocks lived in the area and attended local schools; it was not considered necessary that one live on the reservation to be a Shinnecock: blood determined that. Some Shinnecocks worked on our farm in Bridgehampton. I remember a Mr. Cuffee, who used to work for my grandfather, and later came around selling "scrubs." (Do you know the difference between a Shinnecock "scrub" and a Montauk "scrub."?) A quiet, dignified, polite man. The first radio sound I ever heard (in the early 1920s) came over earphones from a "wireless" set owned by Court Marshall, a Shinnecock, who had it in an old chicken shack. No lights, just moving coiled wire, from which came the words, "This is KDKA, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania." A brilliant man, Mr. Marshall had the first radio in Bridgehampton and sold and repaired radios all his life. We all looked at the Shinnecocks as one of us and good citizens of our community.

Today, they must still fight us in court: our courts, our laws. We have the power; all they have is their rights. We left them only the worst land. Now that it's valuable waterfront, we want to ensure that we reap the benefits, not they, by retaining economic control, control that is lost if they start making money.

We have to learn to share.

RICHARD G. HENDRICKSON

Bridgehampton

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