This coastal tribe has a radical vision for fighting sea-level rise in the Hamptons

This story is the third feature in a Vox special project, Changing With Our Climate, a limited-run series exploring Indigenous solutions to extreme weather rooted in history — and the future. There’s a modest hill in Seneca Bowen’s yard that gently slopes upward, away from an inlet that leads into southeastern Long Island’s Shinnecock Bay and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean. In 2012, when Hurricane Sandy ripped through Long Island, those few feet of elevation were the only thing standing between the flood waters and Bowen’s house. On a recent August afternoon, Bowen and I walked around his land as he recalled how Sandy wiped away the small beach at the edge of the property, where Bowen grew up swimming and fishing. Bowen showed me exactly how high the water came that year: 100 yards past the usual high tide mark. In the years since, that beach has become a grassy wetland that floods regularly, encroaching ominously on his home. Bowen, who is 36, lives on the Shinnecock Nation reservation on the eastern end of Long Island, where his community is facing a dire situation. About half of the Shinnecock Nation’s 1,600 tribal citizens live on an 800-acre reservation that includes 3,000 feet of shoreline on Shinnecock Bay. Of the roughly 250 homes within Shinnecock territory, around 50 are on the coast and in immediate danger from rising sea levels and increasing flooding. Powerful storm surges, which are also becoming more frequent, make all of this even worse. “We’re running out of space,” Bowen, who is the treasurer of the Shinnecock Nation Council of Trustees, told me. “Our population is going up. We haven’t been able to acquire more land.” But water isn’t the only thing hemming the Shinnecock in. In every direction, they are surrounded by the multimillion-dollar homes of Southampton, sometimes mere feet from the border of the Shinnecock Nation. As Bowen stood facing the water at the edge of his land, he pointed out the Southampton Yacht Club, a private club directly across the water from his home. “We’re surrounded by some of the most wealthy people in the country and then you have us sitting here struggling to just make ends meet,” Bowen said. “I mean, hell, I’m a council member and I live paycheck to paycheck.” For nearly 400 years, since Southampton was settled in 1640, the Shinnecock have fought to stay where they are. Now, climate change is making the fight to stay on their homeland even more difficult as sea levels rise and storms grow stronger and more frequent. In the past few years, the Shinnecock have employed a combination of strategies to protect themselves against rising seas, like planting beach grass to strengthen dunes and developing oyster reefs to blunt tidal energy. But unless the pace of climate change can be slowed, these solutions will not be enough to save Shinnecock lands, which currently represent only a fraction of their ancestral territory. The tribe’s 2013 climate adaptation plan predicted that nearly half of the Shinnecock reservation will flood after a major storm in 2050. Forecasts have only gotten worse since then. “At some point — I don’t want to say in the near future, but certainly by the time my kids are old enough to be in charge — half the rez is going to be underwater,” Bowen said. “We obviously don’t want to leave our homeland, but at some point we’ll probably be forced to do that.” What Bowen is talking about is known as managed retreat: the strategic relocation of people or communities away from areas vulnerable to climate impacts like flooding. Centuries of colonization have robbed Indigenous nations of most of their land, but as the Shinnecock grapple with climate change and retreat, they’re pursuing a solution that’s radical in the face of contemporary history: expanding their territory. “[Other] Council members and I have realized that we need to start making some serious money so that we can start purchasing land, not just for commercial use, but for residential purposes,” he said. Unsurprisingly, most people are not excited about having to move away from their homes, especially when the impacts of climate change can sometimes feel abstract. But projections show that more people in the coming years — those who live near the coast, in overgrown forests, or in paths of destruction like tornado alley — may be forced to relocate. On Shinnecock territory, coastal areas represent such a large portion of their land that they will feel every inch they lose. Even without storms, Gavin Cohen, the Shinnecock Environmental Department’s natural resource manager, estimates that at least 7 percent and 15 percent of the current Shinnecock territory will be completely lost to water by 2050 and 2100, respectively. While all of Long Island, including Southampton Village, is projected to lose land, many of these communities have more land to fall back on, not to mention more resources to deal with climate change. [Image: https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/MHHW-1ft.png?quality=90&strip=all] [Image: https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/MHHW-7ft.png?quality=90&strip=all] The map on the left shows what 1 foot of additional mean average sea level rise would look like in the area near Shinnecock Bay; the image on the right shows what 7 feet of additional mean average sea level rise would look like. | Source: NOAA.gov The Shinnecock are far from the only ones who will need to deal with this. Around 129 million Americans — nearly 40 percent of the population — live in coastal communities. Even if the world can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the average sea level in the US could still be about 2 feet higher in 2100 than it was in 2000. With less aggressive climate action, projections show that sea levels in the US could rise by over 7 feet by 2100. Sea level rise at these rates means that millions of Americans will have to move, which will lead to devastating impacts on roads, schools, and other critical infrastructure. By 2050, for example, damaging floods are predicted to be 10 times more frequent than they are today. “It’s getting bad, and it’s only going to get worse because Mother Nature is far more powerful than we are,” said Sunshine Gumbs, project manager of the Shinnecock Ethnobotany Project. In July, the Atlantic hurricane season got off to a deadly start when Hurricane Beryl, the earliest Category 5 storm on record, made landfall, leading to dozens of deaths and billions of dollars in damage. The hurricane season, which NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center forecast to be above normal, extends to the end of November, and many of the strongest storms may be yet to come. These storms come with violent winds, storm surges, and rainfall that can cause flooding and other damage in coastal communities. As climate change makes these storms more frequent and more devastating, many more coastal communities must reckon with their increasingly precarious positions. But relocating an entire community is an enormous task. When Shavonne Smith, the director of the Shinnecock Environmental Department, thinks about possible relocation, she thinks about her massive extended family, nearly all of whom live on the reservation. “How do we take as many of us together as we can?” she said. “Because when people say that, you know, ‘you just have to move,’ it’s not that simple just to move. It’s not like me moving by myself. We’re talking whole families. How do you have somewhere for whole families to restart again?” --- Why I wanted to write this story I met Bowen at the end of a day trip I took from my apartment in New York City to Shinnecock territory, about an hour and a half east. I was especially interested in learning about the Shinnecock because of where I come from. I’m a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe on Martha’s Vineyard, another wealthy East Coast vacation destination. For decades, my tribe, like the Shinnecock, has coexisted with some of the country’s richest families. The dynamics in these communities is complex, and climate change is exacerbating social and economic inequality. I knew that the Shinnecock Nation’s conversation about managed retreat — the prospect of retreating away from the coast, from their ancestral lands, to protect themselves from rising seas — would sound a lot different from the conversations happening in adjacent communities. I wanted to explore the story of a place and its people who have, despite decades of economic pressure and racism, maintained sovereignty over their land yet are forced to reckon with the effects of climate change today. — Joseph Lee --- Smith, who has worked for the tribe for nearly 20 years, says she understands that some people may never leave, even as the waters reach their door. But she believes it is her job to prepare everyone for what’s coming and give them the tools to make choices. To do that, Smith has partnered with Malgosia Madajewicz, a Columbia University economist who is running a three-year study of community adaptation to coastal flooding. The study consists of four community workshops and is designed to help the tribe develop a multifaceted response to flooding. After just one workshop, Madajewicz says she is already finding valuable lessons in the Shinnecock approach. “They’re really planning for a few generations, whereas in other communities, there’s often a time horizon that revolves more around political cycles and is much shorter,” Madajewicz said. “If we have a hope of rescuing life from this crisis, protecting it into the future, we have to lengthen our planning horizons.” But relocating an entire people — especially around some of the most expensive real estate in the US — will take a massive amount of money and land. If the Shinnecock do buy more land for the community to relocate to, they would prefer for it to be in their ancestral territory, which covers thousands more acres and several adjacent towns. But Bowen says he and a few others have floated the idea of land in the Catskill Mountains, a forested area about a hundred miles north of New York City, and far from Shinnecock ancestral land. Leaving Shinnecock lands would be devastating, Bowen says, but buying land in the Hamptons is prohibitively expensive and rife with nimby — not in my backyard — opposition. In the past five years, the Shinnecock have embarked on a number of economic ventures, such as a gas station and travel plaza, only to see them delayed by lawsuits and local opposition. Bowen says they have had to fight for every dollar and permit, especially for proposals on land that the Shinnecock own outside of the reservation, in nearby Hampton Bays. “Every project that the tribe has ever tried to do has been slowed or stopped by some special interest group that’s in this area, by the town or the village itself,” Bowen said “What should have been a money-making opportunity has now turned into a revenue stream that goes to our lawyers to fight our battles in court.” As a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe on Martha’s Vineyard, I’m used to the juxtaposition of tribal communities and wealthy summer homes, but the level of ostentatious wealth on display in Southampton was jarring, even to me. On Southampton’s main street, I walked past real estate offices advertising homes in the tens of millions of dollars. I saw summer crowds flocking to boutique shops and restaurants. Minutes from Bowen’s home are verdant streets where tall hedges shield multimillion-dollar homes, pools, and tennis courts from view. Despite living just minutes away, Shinnecock territory residents are excluded from resident parking rates for Cooper’s Beach, a nearby beach that proudly advertises its recent ranking as one of the top beaches in the country. William Manger Jr., the Mayor of Southampton Village, did not respond to a request for comment. On the reservation, Bowen says that the median income is around $30,000, which is a tiny fraction of what some Southampton homeowners likely pay to maintain their manicured lawns. To be clear, that’s just the grass, not the horses, private chefs, cars, boats, or any of the other trappings of Southampton wealth. “As soon as you walk off of our territory, we’re surrounded by millionaires and billionaires,” Bowen said. “You know what that does to a person?” Michael A. Iasilli, the Southampton Town Council liaison for the Shinnecock Nation, is trying to build bridges with the tribe. He acknowledged that some Southampton residents outwardly discriminate against tribal members. This October, Southampton Town will recognize the first Shinnecock Heritage Day, an initiative led by Iasilli, which he says is part of a broader mission of healing old wounds, educating the town about Shinnecock history, and finding ways for the tribe and the town to work together. “Look, they’re not going anywhere, and they were here before us,” he said. “And so I think we really need to try to work as best as we can with the most honest and sincere effort to really build this relationship together with them. I’m really hoping that we can, but it’s going to take time.” According to Iasilli, Southampton has the resources and the Shinnecock have the vision. Southampton already has funds in the form of its Community Preservation Fund and a Community Housing Fund. These are the kinds of financial resources that Seneca Bowen and the Shinnecock government are trying to build up. When I visited in August, Cohen, the Shinnecock natural resource manager, showed me drone pictures he had taken of the Shinnecock coastline. The alarming images showed just how close the water was to encroaching on not just homes but the powwow grounds and other important gathering places. The cemetery, which sits just feet away from Shinnecock Bay, has already flooded on multiple occasions. Charles Cause, a 26-year-old Shinnecock musician, thinks that the cemetery flooding more severely could be the trigger that fully wakes up the community to the dangers of climate change. “I think once that starts to happen, you know, people are going to kind of get that, ‘holy moly, this is real’ feel and we’re going to take a lot more action on things,” he said. Even as she leads community conversations around relocation, Shavonne Smith is not ready to leave either, even though she understands there may be no other option. “This is all I’ve ever known,” she said.