Shinnecock Tribe Gets Pequot Gift

Aided by a $200,000 gift from the Mashantucket Pequots, owners of the wildly successful Foxwoods Resort Casino in Ledyard, Conn., Southampton's Shinnecock Tribe is forging ahead with plans to build a 5,000-square-foot cultural center and museum, much as the Pequots themselves have recently done, though on a far smaller scale.

The Pequots' gift, announced this week, is the latest in a series of contributions the tribe has made to Native American historical and cultural projects around the country since 1993.

Beaver Creek Log Homes of Oneida, N.Y., which is staffed in large part by Native Oneidas, has been hired to build the center. The shell is expected to be completed by December. It will be constructed of white pine logs harvested on Iroquois lands near upstate Binghamton.

White Pine Exterior

The idea has been in the talking stages, on and off, for about four years, though only this year, apparently, did it begin to seem doable. A New York architect with a house in Southampton, Campion Platt, has met regularly with a committee of Shinnecocks since January, he said Tuesday, to discuss the project.

Mr. Platt is donating his services. "I am mindful as an American about what has happened to the Indians," he said this week, "and I want to be as helpful as I can."

The Shinnecocks intend to duplicate a museum built by Beaver Creek upstate, Mr. Platt said. That structure is featured in the current issue of Log Home Design magazine.

The architect described the firm's approach. First, workers assemble the complete building near the site where the logs have been cut. Then the logs are taken apart to be moved. Finally, they are reassembled on their permanent site. No nails are used in the process.

A Healing Spirit

One of Beaver Creek's principals is Jules Obomsawin, an Oneida. His wife, Robbin Obomsawin, is a subcontractor. "Our largest piece of equipment is a chain saw," she said this week.

Mrs. Obomsawin, a photographer as well, said the 14 to 18-inch, 40 and 60-foot white pine logs that will be used in the building are hand-selected for the clarity of the wood. Each, she said, will be hand-peeled and their cambium (sub-bark) will be hand-washed.

White pine, she noted, is believed to have a "healing spirit." For generations, she said, Native Americans have been taught to lean against a tree in a white pine forest if they feel ill.

The two-story cultural center, according to Mr. Platt, will contain a longhouse with a vaulted ceiling reaching some 17 feet, to be used for exhibit space and as a craft center, and a grade-level area, faced in stone, for classrooms and cultural activities.

The exhibits will contain original archeological and other native materials reflecting, said the architect, 10,000 years of Shinnecock heritage.

From a design point of view, the Shinnecocks' cultural committee was interested in making the center "as simple a construction as possible, in keeping with traditional longhouse style," Mr. Platt said.

A Learning Facility

The tribe had intended at first to renovate an old building on the reservation formerly used for oyster-farming, said Mr. Platt. That idea gave way to a more ambitious one, to construct a new facility on a new site, and to create a "learning museum, not just a building housing artifacts."

"That donation will go a long way to completing the structure," Mr. Platt said. About $100,000 remains to be raised, sources said.

The Pequots do not reveal how much their casino earns, nor how much they donate to charity. Under an agreement with the State of Connecticut, however, Foxwoods reports its gross winnings from its slot machines only - $600 million last year - and pays 25 percent of that to the state.

Pequot Beneficence

The Pequots' seven-person tribal council made the decision to donate the $200,000 to the Shinnecock Museum, said Arthur Henick, a spokes man.

The Pequots have in the past contributed $10 million to the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of the American Indian, $500,000 to the Hartford (Conn.) Ballet for a new version of "The Nutcracker" that will incorporate Native American themes, and $100,000 to Connecticut branches of the Young Men's Christian Association.

Additionally, the tribe has invested some $700,000 in what Mr. Henick called the "first-ever mainstream film project by and about Native Americans." Called "Naturally Native," it is being written and directed by a California woman who is part Sioux, part Cherokee, Valerie Red Horse.