Letters

Accept as given that the historic treatment of Native Americans has been atrocious. Does that justify the Westwoods atrocity currently in progress on the shores of Peconic Bay at the hands of the Shinnecock Nation?

Clearly, a nonpermitted, over-sized gas station is just the camel’s nose inside our tent. Who knows what the rest of the beast will bring?

Thanks to an article in Construction Journal this Friday, announcing a request for bids on a major new hotel-resort complex, we know whose nose is in the tent. And it’s not a camel. It’s Godzilla.

Specifically, bids have been requested for a “five-story, 200-room hotel resort at the Westwoods property in Hampton Bays, 20 acres, 100,000 square feet, $250 million cost, in conjunction with Woodglen Investments (NYC), four villa-style hotel suites, restaurants, retail and a technology incubator.”

As a 50-year town resident, I’ve always heard that the property was public land reserved for the Shinnecock’s hunting, fishing and gathering firewood. We now recognize the property as occupied by a rapacious entity claiming independence of our town, county, state and nation, and hell-bent on squeezing every bit of profit it can by transforming Hampton Bays into Las Vegas East.

Their claim traces its origins to interpretations of arcane provisions in a pre-revolutionary agreement as to what is “aboriginal” land. For argument, let’s accept this sovereignty premise and assume that the property of a foreign power has suddenly been recognized in the middle of Hampton Bays. It need not be a hostile North Korea. It could be a neighborly Canada. That’s up to them.

Begin by recognizing that each nation will act in its own best interests, protecting the health, safety and quality of life of its citizens. If the Shinnecock Nation believes its people are best served by having 30 gas pumps and 200 hotel rooms for high-rollers, they have sovereignty within their borders. But so do we.

The cross-border grandiose commercial schemes of the nation are their own business. But we have no obligation to abet what clearly is an egregious exploitation of the property. Access from the roads we pay for is not the privilege of a hostile foreign power. And neither is free rein across scores of administrative, physical, legal, security, and safety barriers and intersections.

In this new reality, to paraphrase Robert Frost: “Good fences make good neighbors.” Stay on your side. We’ll stay on ours.

Bill Muir

Hampton Bays