Wampanoag Tribe - In the shadows of the limelight

On a remote end of the island, in a modest building that is base for tribal housing operations, Jennie Greene takes a phone call from Mr. “George,” whose family is about to take residence in a house that is being repainted and rehabilitated. “Yes, everything will be ready,” she assures him. The Georges are fortunate, and they know it. It is just before the summer rush of rich vacationers whose cash infusion cuts like a double-edged sword. These part-time visitors, many of them publicly familiar (the Kennedys…Bill Clinton…Carly Simon…Bruce Willis…Jay Leno…to drop a few names) breathe life into the island’s economy. They also drive housing prices through the roof.

For the Georges, who’ll get to pay a rent that is based on their income and (perhaps most importantly) insulated against the volatilities of the seasonal economy, this summer won’t see them put out like so many other families. When the island’s population swells from some 15,000 to more than 100,000, and rents go up in similar proportion, many of those living in the shadows of America’s social limelight, if they stay on the island at all, will live in barns, tents, sheds—whatever they can find. Some are known to rent a storage unit to keep their clothes and change every morning for work, and go to a public facility to shower.

“That’s how people live here,” says Greene, who is Executive Director of the tribal housing entity. Employment is fairly abundant, much of it to do with helping the rich vacationers play, but still not lucrative enough to cushion most server-class families through the economic boom and bust periods of the year. Even off-season rent was eating up Mr. George’s entire paycheck; the family was otherwise supporting their three children on the wife’s income.

Some families stuff three or four generations under a roof to make their housing more affordable. Many of those who get into the tribal housing program want to bring in more family members, but there has to be a limit, says Greene. “The idea is to get them out of overcrowded situations, not into new ones,” she says. Greene herself takes in one of her sons, a 31-year-old housing rehab contractor, to live with her during the summer. Because of her position, getting him into the tribal housing program would lend to a perception of a conflict of interest.

Yet many homes on the island remain empty 11 months of the year, according to Willie Marden, Wampanoag member and Housing Chairman who works as a carpenter crew chief. To give an idea of the nature of the vacationer class, he recalls a client who paid $90,000 for home changes intended to last only one summer season. And on another job, a rehab job, the windows alone cost $250,000.

Greene, a strong advocate for community development and affordable housing, got her own home thanks to the landmark Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA), which encourages lenders to deal with borrowers whom they otherwise might not serve. “If it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have gotten the loan,” she says. At the time, she was getting divorced and, with limited income, needed to find a place to live for herself and her two children. And then she got laid off from her job the day before the signing (but didn’t tell the bank). Nonetheless, she upholds the benefit of having a personable relationship with a bank, being able to talk through problems on an individual, human level, which is much more likely to happen with a small bank than a large one, and could disappear in the wake of bank merger-mania, which is a concern to her. Greene conducts her housing operations in the small business mode, getting personally involved in the lives of members in the community.

Although not Native American and not native to the island, Greene has made a life and career on this area of land where the local Wampanoag tribe (325 members on island, 1,000 in all) and the township go by the name of Aquinnah (for a period, it was Gay Head). It’s not altogether different from her childhood stomping ground of Guilford, Connecticut, which is now “a fancy town,” but in her day was rural. “We had cows, sheep, chickens.” She came to Martha’s Vineyard during college with a friend who lived here. She got to know the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribal Housing Authority’s director, who eventually left: “Then the Board told me I was running this place,” says Greene. That was 10 years ago, just as clearing was started for infrastructure and new construction.

That was also when the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act of 1996 (NAHASDA) was taking shape in Congress, and while many tribes were hailing its advent, the Aquinnah Wampanoag were not so welcoming, because as they saw it, the program’s block grant funding distribution was going to disadvantage them. So Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts raised objections to the bill, while Greene and Marden went to Washington to beat on doors and declare that the bill wasn’t being thought out well.

Rep. Rick Lazio, NAHASDA’s chief sponsor, “put in some things that we wanted,” says Marden, but he maintains that the program “isn’t such a good thing.” Greene acknowledges that assessment among many in the tribe, and although she now holds an overall positive view, she too voices some concerns, not the least of which is the cumbersome planning and reporting documentation that is required.

Basically speaking, the block grant allocation amount is simply not enough to tackle the housing demand, notwithstanding the leveraging that is part of NAHASDA’s intent. And the grant is going down while building costs are rising even farther above what the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) says they should be, based on mainland estimates. A dearth of resource-based industry on the island (“Our industry is tourism,” says Marden) means that all building materials have to be shipped from elsewhere, adding 30 percent to lumber costs, for example.

“What the government tells us is average doesn’t work,” says Marden. To make a point, Greene grabs from atop her busy desk a local newspaper and opens it to the housing available section to find a year-round rental. There is just one, a one-bedroom unit, and it goes for $1,350 a month, a lot more than the market rate of $903 a month set by HUD for its calculations. “I’ve yet to see one at that rate,” says Greene.

As to the tribal self-determination that is part of the name and intent of NAHASDA, “we’re still fighting for that,” says Marden. “Tribes don’t think it’s fully recognized.” Greene speaks of the real hazards of having to go with the lowest bid for all contracting services, recalling having to come up with a reason to fire a contractor whose plumbing had to be replaced, in order to finally get an honest one who was preferred all along. She suggests that the next round of federal-tribal negotiated rulemaking include discussion on having tribes contract directly with the government for housing assistance, as do self-governance tribes (a.k.a., “638” tribes, after the applicable public law number) for health services. “The tribe has compacted for a lot of services. I think we [housing entity] should be able to do so as well.”

“Here, you have to wear a lot of hats to make a living,” he explains. Smalley helped build the Martha’s Vineyard airport, terminal point for small propeller planes that make half-hour flights to and from Boston (plus Providence, RI, in summer). He also helped build a school in Edgartown (on the other end of the island), as well as Foxwoods, the luxuriant resort of the Pequot Tribe in Connecticut. He was a housing commissioner for a while before getting into the council.

With a wife who works (as is necessary for most families), Smalley himself often has to leave his job to take the kids to activities. “Gotta shuttle them back and forth,” he says, estimating a cost of $100 a week to maintain and fuel two vehicles, and for most practical purposes you have to have a car to live here, because the bus system provides only three trips a day to this end of the island. When the traffic is sparse, you can drive across the island in less than an hour, but in summer, you might be better off on a moped or bicycle. Indeed, finding a parking space can be a major hassle in summer, and the cops have no mercy—they don’t care if you’re just trying to get to your job, says Smalley: “They’re making their money, too.”

In winter it pays to shop on the mainland. A ferry ride will set you back $39 (in summer it goes up to $92), but on the other side you can buy gas for 70 cents cheaper per gallon. People let their cars go to “E” in order to maximize their cheap fill-up, says Greene, and they go to Walmart—“the whole island is there”—where they can get a school binder for $4 instead of $15.

Pam Vanderhoop has been enduring an abscessed tooth for more than two weeks now. The pain comes and goes. In order to get the needed surgery, she needs to prove that she is healthy enough to undergo the operation. There’s a thought at work here, that Native Americans have longer roots than others. Is that true? Is that prejudiced? She’ll need to obtain a note from the doctor she saw five years ago, when she had a debilitating stroke.

Ten years ago, Vanderhoop, a Wampanoag member, returned to the island from Philadelphia, out of necessity, she says—“and I’m glad I did”—and became the first AWTHA tenant. At the time, she had a husband and four sons; two of them now stay with the father. She now lives in a three-bedroom, 1.5-bath home that well suits the household needs of herself and the two sons living with her.

Vanderhoop, who supervises the tribe’s after school program, feels fortunate to be able to work without a lot of the debilitating effects of her stroke. During the two excruciating years that she was in rehab, the tribe, housing, and community helped take care of her children. “I wouldn’t have had this type of care elsewhere,” she says.

“I like being Indian,” Vanderhoop proclaims, “but I’m not just Indian; my mother is African-American, and I’m proud of her, too.” She plans to move to Las Vegas to take care of her mother, who is well into her golden years. But first she wants to establish a resident association to apply more supplementary grant funding. She wants to get it up and running but not be president. “This is for others, because I’ll be gone,” she says.

Ed Belain, a Wampanoag tribal member, feels a war coming on. Aliens from Brazil have discovered the island and are coming by the thousands, some illegally, not paying taxes, but grabbing up work nonetheless.

“Making a living is getting difficult,” says Belain, who also dons several hats: painter, fisherman, and mechanic. He maintains a holistic view of the situation, but tolerance extends only so far.

“I don’t mind people coming here, if they pay their fair share of taxes,” and otherwise contribute to the economy that provides them a livelihood and basic living services, says Belain. Native people trying to lift themselves honestly get stung for their efforts. “We can’t afford health insurance, but they get health care for nothing.”

Then he got into an AWTHA mutual help program (groups of participants building each other’s homes), using skills from at least one of his professions, went from rent to purchase, and now owns a decent home, with a workshop in the basement, nice floors and furniture, nice garden.

He was fortunate to get in, given the steep housing demand and a turnover rate averaging only two units a year. Many tribal members don’t bother to apply anymore, but Belain sure is glad that he did.

“If it weren’t for tribal housing, I don’t know where I’d be—probably living in a cardboard box. Tribal housing is the best thing that’s happened for the Natives here. I hope they do more. They need to do this all over the island. People need affordable housing badly.”

For Belain, an additional household challenge is that he supports his 28-year-old ADD-stricken son, and expects to do so for the rest of his life—but accepts no disability assistance. It’s a matter of principle, Belain says: “He’s my kid; I should take care of him.”

The entire Martha’s Vineyard island is Wampanoag ancestral land, but today the surviving tribe controls only 475 acres of it, and much of it is not developable due to wetlands or archaeological protections. The Aquinnah Wampanoag are the only Massachusetts tribe to be federally recognized (that since the 1980s), and relations between the tribe and the local township are generally good, although a taxpayer association—a core group of deep-pocketed people—continually creates political and legal challenges, decrying that the tribe doesn’t contribute enough to the community. Marden sees the actions as largely racially driven. “They don’t want Indians to have any power at all,” he says.

The gas company doesn’t want to serve tribal members, Greene comments, they’ll say they don’t serve Gay Head—“but they do; I see their trucks”—so then they’ll say they’re just servicing pre-existing accounts and not taking new accounts. “Why? I don’t know. I could scream discrimination, but I can’t prove it.”

It was another Wampanoag tribe, the mainland Mashpees, who had the Pilgrims over for dinner at Plymouth Rock, touching off the Thanksgiving tradition as well as a trickling in of some malignant history for the continent.

Spencer Booker, Wampanoag tribal member, points to the Seal of Massachusetts (the substantial portion of which appears on the state’s flag as well). There is a shield, and on it an image of an Indian holding in one hand a bow and in the other an arrow pointing “downward to indicate that the Indian is peaceful,” according to an official state website. That’s all fine and good, but look what’s above the Indian: a cocked arm grasping a sword—it looks poised to come down on the Indian’s head, says Booker.

“Why are we living with this—in 2005?!” he says jestfully, but he’s serious: The seal declares a hostile intent yet to be eradicated symbolically or otherwise in the endeavors of the state; no wonder the tribe finds itself getting frustrated on everything from establishing a casino (which it has been trying to do for 10 years) to gaining shellfish hatchery permit rights (which it won in a court victory, which was overturned by wealthy private interests). “My reason is: the state flag. They’re just holding to their discriminatory flag,” says Booker. He’s in discussion with the tribe to push for a change to the state seal.

In terms of his household situation, Booker is another fortunate one. Nine years ago, he was living on the mainland, working a union job with a good wage, when NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) caused his job to migrate south, and he found himself without viable options for work and housing. However, four years earlier (at age 21) he’d had the blind foresight to enroll as a tribal member, and now—coincidentally?—received notice of housing availability. He filled out the application and sent it in, still not really expecting anything to happen, but two weeks later received a notice of acceptance.

Now 34, Booker along with his wife and three children have sprawling woodlands for a backyard, which they much prefer over the suburban asphalt paradise from which they’d been cast out. Booker praises the tribe and its housing program, the way it treats members and effectively changes lives.

Which should be a hypothetical, but as Booker well remembers, untoward things can happen. Yet that sparked a positive turn of events thanks to his enrollment with the Wampanoag tribe. He ponders this as he tends to his job as Assistant Manager at Alley’s General Store (which happens to be the oldest business on the island), where nontribal members tell him stories about mold in their home.