Historian John Strong, a Fierce Ally of Native Nations, Dies at 89

When Tela Troge was in high school, she saw an advertisement for a lecture by Dr. John A. Strong and immediately told her mother that she needed to be in the audience.

She gathered up her growing collection of Strong’s books and carted them to Suffolk County Community College, not far from where he taught at Long Island University’s Southampton College for over 30 years. There, she and an enraptured crowd listened to him speak about his research on Indigenous communities.

When he was finished, she asked him to sign every single one of her books — and he obliged, happily.

“I was really impressed at how much he was able to get people to think about the history that he was presenting, and his ability to tie the past into the present and then out into the future,” said Troge, now a Shinnecock Nation tribal attorney. “It’s always been so incredible to me.”

Strong — a prolific author, beloved professor and respected thinker who was widely known as the foremost expert on the history of Long Island’s native nations — died on Wednesday, January 29, from complications of septic shock following a kidney stone. He had relocated to Maryland and was 89.

“It’s a tremendous, tremendous loss,” Shinnecock Nation Vice Chairman Lance Gumbs said, “and we’re just all the better for knowing him and knowing his heart.”

Born on October 3, 1935, Strong grew up in Schuyler Lake, New York, on his family’s farm with his twin sisters. His childhood was rural and idyllic, according to his daughters, Lisa and Lara Strong. He milked cows, raised chickens and a horse, participated in Boy Scouts, and joined the wrestling team.

After graduating from high school, he earned a bachelor’s degree in politics and history from St. Lawrence University in 1957 and a master’s degree in international relations from Syracuse University in 1959 — though he would go on to receive his doctorate in social science there eight years later.

In between, he met his future wife, Jane, while they were both teaching at Patchogue Public Schools, and they married on September 27, 1961. They eventually moved to Southampton, where he taught history and American studies for 33 years, starting in 1965, at what is now the home of Stony Brook Southampton College.

And it is there that he first crossed paths with Tim Bishop.

He made a strong first impression, recalled the former U.S. representative, who worked at the college for three decades and served as provost from 1986 to 2002 before resigning to run successfully for Congress. Strong was energetic and outspoken, and not one to keep his opinions to himself, Bishop said.

His breadth and depth of knowledge was remarkable, Bishop said, and he had enormous respect for native populations.

“He was passionate,” he said. “He was committed to the causes he believed in. He had a wonderful sense of humor. He was unfailingly civil and collegial. He would work with people with whom he didn’t agree and try to find common ground.”

Strong was one of the professors who made Southampton College a special place, Bishop said. On sunny days, it wasn’t unusual to see him kayaking to work, Troge said, and it was during one such trip that he noticed construction on Sugar Loaf Hill, the Shinnecock Nation’s ancestral burial grounds.

He raised the alarm, though it wasn’t the first time that bulldozers had caught his attention. During his doctoral studies, he and a group of students seized a construction site — taking over the trucks, cranes and other pieces of equipment — in an effort to stop “urban renewal” of a predominantly Black neighborhood, according to an article that ran in Southampton College’s newspaper, The Windmill, in 1979.

He and his fellow students were arrested for criminal trespassing — and the event caused such a stir that an up-and-coming musician who was playing a concert that weekend agreed to donate his gate receipts to cover the steep bail. He even joined a march on the jail to support the protesters.

That musician was Bob Dylan, his daughters said.

“I think he instilled in us a sense of civic responsibility, that if we saw something that wasn’t right, to take action in some way, shape or form,” Lara Strong said of her father. “And I think to this day, we’ve tried to live by that.”

Strong took the same position with the injustice he saw on Sugar Loaf Hill, but ultimately — despite his pleas and cries — he lost his cause and Southampton Town granted a building permit to continue construction on the home sited there.

But decades later, the town purchased the development rights to the property for $5.3 million through the Community Preservation Fund — and turned control back over to the Shinnecock Nation.

Strong was an “invaluable ally” every step of the way, Troge said.

“All of those dump trucks that he had seen from his canoe, he thought they were carting away the topsoil of Sugar Loaf Hill, but we found out that, actually, they had brought in soil — which, of course, preserved the bones of our ancestors,” she said. “When I was able to tell him that, I think that was a really significant moment for him.”

Strong wrote extensively about the Long Island tribes, including the Montaukett and the Unkechaug in Mastic. He was instrumental in helping the Shinnecock Nation achieve federal recognition, Gumbs said, a nearly 40-year fight that ended, successfully, in 2010. Over the years, Strong has served as a resource for the nation — a fount of information that felt almost encyclopedic, the vice chairman said.

“It’s just so beautiful the work that he did and he was so special to Shinnecock,” Troge said, “but there were so many communities that he was special to and that he had done this extensive amount of researching and writing for.

“It’s unbelievable, not just the amount of knowledge that he had, but the friendships that he made,” she continued. “He wasn’t just studying us. He became our friend.”

Professionally, Strong was driven, genuine, passionate and honest, and his legacy lives on in his work for the East End nations — work that he continued even in his final days, his daughters said.

But to them, as a father, he was playful, fun and freewheeling. He loved to travel and rarely sat still. He enjoyed a glass of bourbon with a cigar, and a good game of poker — especially those that he played with his five grandchildren.

He was supportive, kind, positive and upbeat, his daughters said. And to them, the man he was — and who he taught them to be — is his legacy.

“He was simply one of the best people I’ve ever known,” Lara Strong said. “He was just a man of incredible integrity and courage and compassion — and there’s very few people like him.”