Shinnecock tribe starts work on second billboard as state police monitor

The Shinnecock Indian Nation on Thursday began work on a second billboard on the north side of Sunrise Highway, and the state Department of Transportation quickly issued a new stop-work order, tribal members and the state said.

The foundation for a second sign has been in the ground for more than a year, on Shinnecock tribal property at Canoe Place in Hampton Bays. The tribe owns a large parcel of land known as Westwoods, to the north of its Southampton reservation.

Lance Gumbs, former Shinnecock tribal vice chairman, speaking from the construction site on tribal land, said State Police and a state Department of Transportation officials "just pulled up" Thursday afternoon as a crane was lifting pieces of the second billboard’s structure into place.

"We’re putting up the superstructure and waiting to see what the DOT and the State Police are doing," he said. He called their presence on tribal land "harassment."

"This is just a continuing pattern of harassment," he said. "We did everything the DOT asked us to do," including securing insurance, and putting up safety lighting and signs along the highway near the work.

State DOT spokesman Joseph Morrissey, in a statement, said, "The state has issued a stop-work order against the Shinnecock Nation to halt construction of a new billboard along State Route 27 and will continue to pursue legal remedies to uphold safety under the law."

The original sign on the south side of Sunrise has been operating since 2019, despite a Department of Transportation lawsuit that sought to dismantle it. In May, a state Supreme Court judge denied the state's request for a preliminary injunction to remove the billboard, saying the state’s request to prevent its operation was "unwarranted" because the state would suffer "no irreparable harm."

The first 61-foot billboard features commercial ads and public-service announcements, including COVID-19 alerts by Southampton Town. The tribe said the monument is an important economic engine and that the state’s crackdown on it has kept some potential advertisers away.

But Gumbs said the tribe won't give in to the state's efforts to stop the work or operate the monument.

"Make no mistake, this is tribal land and we are going to continue our economic endeavors," he said.

It’s even more important to the tribe in the COVID-era, said Gumbs, as expenses for protecting the tribe’s 800 members increase and as the revenue-generating annual Shinnecock Powwow was canceled in 2020.

Revenue from the billboards, Gumbs said, "will help the tribe become self-sustaining. It will help our nation take care of social programs, especially in a year we didn’t have the powwow. We lost one of our biggest money generators."

Gumbs said the tribe would like a meeting with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on a "government-to-government basis" to discuss ending state opposition to its monument billboards, as well as ways to boost tribal economic development. Other members have said the state has interfered in their efforts to obtain needed state approvals for a medical cannabis facility and impeded on tribal fishing initiatives on Shinnecock Bay.

A spokesman for Cuomo did not provide a comment.

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.