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- By Chez Oxendine, Levi Rickert
The U.S. Department of the Interior has confirmed the Shinnecock Indian Nation’s aboriginal rights to a contested property in Hampton Bays, New York, potentially derailing state and local efforts to regulate the tribe’s development projects there.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) designated the 104-acre parcel — referred to as “Westwoods” by the tribe — as restricted fee land, a classification that exempts it from state and local control while preserving tribal sovereignty. The BIA decision, communicated to the tribe in a letter from Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland, follows a three-year investigation into the property’s status.
The federal determination comes at a critical moment for Shinnecock Nation, which is facing legal challenges over two electronic billboards along Sunrise Highway and the construction of a new gas station and travel plaza in Hampton Bays, about 90 miles from Manhattan.
“This land is and has always been restricted fee land held by the Nation and is now recorded as such,” Newland wrote in a Jan. 2 letter to Shinnecock Nation Chairwoman Lisa Goree.
The federal ruling could invalidate recent litigation against the Shinnecock Nation. In December, the New York State Department of Transportation won an injunction against the billboards, though the tribe hasn’t shut them off. Just before Christmas, the village of Southampton filed a lawsuit intended to stop development of the gas station.
“The sad part is New York State has acknowledged it — state maps list our land as an Indian reservation. That land has never been taxed, we've never paid tax on it,” Lance Gumbs, Shinnecock vice chairman, told Native News Online. “This was another frivolous lawsuit to try and bankrupt our tribe and have us acquiesce to things we’ve put up with in the past.”
Both the state and town had argued Westwoods was fee simple land outside the tribe’s reservation, requiring state and municipal permits for development. The BIA’s affirmation that the Nation holds this parcel as restricted fee land, which confirms tribal control over their lands, contradicts the state and town positions, Gumbs said.
The Shinnecock Nation’s control of Westwoods was most recently contested by the state starting in 2019, when the New York State Department of Transportation filed to stop development and use of the electronic billboards. The state asserted that the tribe required permits for the signs, while the Shinnecock insisted the land was sovereign, and not subject to state law on the matter. Ironically, during the Covid-19 pandemic, local officials used the tribe’s billboards to share health updates with New Yorkers who had fled the city for the less-populated Hamptons.
A legal expert familiar with the case, speaking on background, said the designation of Westwoods as restricted fee land undercut the state’s entire argument against the billboards’ construction. Importantly, the BIA confirmed that the restricted fee status was “uninterrupted since time immemorial,” meaning the Shinnecock never ceded control of the lands in question.
“When the federal government recognized the Shinnecock Nation in 2010, they didn’t create the tribe — they recognized that, oh, hey, there’s a tribe there,” the legal expert said. Before colonization, the legal expert explained, the Nation had thousands of acres affected by various transactions — many of them fraudulent. “The lands the Nation retained always belonged to them, and [Newland’s letter] confirms that.”
“This was a Christmas gift and a New Years gift all wrapped in one,” Gumbs said. “This is tremendous for our nation and reinforces that our land is what we’ve always said it is — ours.”
Despite the pending lawsuits, the Shinnecock Nation plans to proceed with both the electronic billboard operation and the travel plaza construction. On Thursday after, the billboards displayed a message to travelers: Welcome to the Shinnecock Indian Nation Restricted Fee Aboriginal Territory 18 U.S.C. § 1151 Indian Country.
“We’re not turning the signs off. We’re not going to acknowledge the jurisdiction of New York over our sovereign lands,” Gumbs said. “Our contention is that we don’t need a State permit to put up signs on our land.”
Native News Online contacted both the New York State Department of Transportation and the town of Southampton for comment. Neither had responded as this story went live.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to clarify the state and town as the parties that argued Westwoods was fee simple land. This story was a collaborative effort between Tribal Business News and Native News Online.
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