Air Mail: The View from Here

Written By AMANDA M. FAIRBANKS

Every summer weekend, thousands of visitors and locals alike inch eastward on Route 27 toward the eastern tip of Long Island, encountering what locals call the “Shinnecock Squeeze”—a legendary traffic bottleneck that occurs when the two lanes narrow, becoming one.

To most, it’s an irritation en route to the East End. Few realize they’re passing through an Indigenous nation.

“I could throw a stone and hit ‘Billionaires’ Row,’” Rebecca Genia says, gesturing toward Meadow Lane, the oceanfront strip adjacent to the plot she and her ancestors have long called home. Genia’s two-bedroom home is built on land owned by the Shinnecock Indian Nation. Fifteen years ago, the Shinnecocks became the 565th federally recognized tribe.

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AMANDA M. FAIRBANKS

Amanda M. Fairbanks is an award-winning journalist and author of The Lost Boys of Montauk: The True Story of the Wind Blown, Four Men Who Vanished at Sea, and the Survivors They Left Behind. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Columbia Journalism Review, and the East Hampton Star. A graduate of Smith College and a former Teach for America corps member, she has two master’s degrees from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. The California native lives with her family in Sag Harbor.

https://www.amandamfairbanks.com
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