The Last Piece

Proposal for a documentary
Directed and produced by Karola Ritter

"The Last Piece" is a feature length digital video documentary, nearly a decade in the making, by German and Swiss filmmaker Karola Ritter. Working closely with members of the Shinnecock Indian Nation (the only eastern tribe never totally displaced from their ancestral home on Long Island, New York), she chronicles years of the Shinnecocks' confrontation with local and State interests to save what little remains of their ancestral lands in one of New York City’s most elite suburbs, "The Hamptons" .

"Any legal agreements that were made between your people and them... these are legal agreements. When we are talking about these things it is not a moral issue or an ethical issue, although that may be part of it...it is a legal issue, it is in the foundation of their papers."
-- John Trudell, Native American poet and philosopher at the Shinnecock Community Center, November 2003.

" The Last Piece" spotlights the little known culture of the Shinnecock which translates as "Peoples of the Shore", known in the past for their whaling expertise and skill at crafting wampum from sea shells, showing the Hamptons from the point of view of its First People, for the first time. Beyond the Reservation, the film examines local sensibilities and the reactions to the Shinnecocks' need to right the wrongs of the state's aggressive land deals with the tribe since 1640, when the first settlers landed on their shores. Over all the examination is of present day "small town" America, before and after 9/11, confronted with its disputed past and a future of rapid change and social fragmentation.

Most of the film has been shot and recorded by Karola Ritter, working without a crew, in order to shoot as intimately as possible. The imagery of the film is a mixture of cinema verite, chronicling events as they unfold through police footage, TV news, clippings and photos, juxtaposed with footage of private life in the small often crowded Shinnecock homes. The director has chosen to use very few interviews. The elegance of the pow wow’s public performances of ritualized dance and artistic/filmic interpretations of sacred Shinnecock ceremonies, used where filming would be blasphemous, defines a timeless culture transcending everyday American life, within changing seasons in a landscape of inordinate beauty.

The Shinnecock, who for 10,000 years were stewards of miles of land on Eastern Long Island that was to become the famed "Hamptons," are among the oldest self-governing tribes in the United States. Unlike other Native Americans displaced to remote and often arid, isolated areas, the approximate 800 Shinnecock on the Southampton Reservation, live on land right next door to some of the wealthiest people in the world, including A-list celebrities and Fortune 500 CEO's. It is no coincidence, that to protect their small community, strangers are discouraged with KEEP OUT signs posted at the gates..

Through the Shinnecock voices, we hear centuries of struggle against racism, disease and greed competing with present-day woes -- beset by the materialism and lack of social and environmental care that surrounds them. In this most unique location, the Shinnecock people fight from their first breath to save what matters most: The Last Piece

It was the filmmaker's personal friendship with Shinnecock elder/spiritual leader Elizabeth Thunder Bird Haile that allowed her access to this protective community and permitted her to video-document important changes as they took place on the Shinnecock Reservation over one generation (seven years, in the Native way of speaking). Karola's camera captures the empowerment struggle and social changes within the Shinnecock Tribe from the time the Shinnecock, whose history dates back 10,000 years, were all but invisible -- their existence unknown to most of the surrounding community -- to their emergence as a fully politicized First People facing a fight for survival resonant of indigenous populations throughout the world.

One of the radical changes the Shinnecock were confronted with, and directly affected by, is the real-estate boom, occurring in the Hamptons over the past ten years, which peaked after 9/11. The population swelled from 380,000 to 1.5 million residents in Suffolk County over the last decade. Multi-million dollar secondary homes were erected around the reservation at a pace never seen before, on lands once theirs.

In February 2000, members of the Shinnecock Reservation rose up to confront bulldozers clearing 62 acres of pristine land adjacent to their reservation. The Shinnecock had used these grounds (the last remnant of the Sacred Shinnecock Hills they had lost in a questionable treaty), for the past 200 years to hold ceremonies, gather plants, hunt, and carry their canoes from one bay to the other to facilitate fishing and clamming. This standoff with the bulldozers and State Troopers was, as Becky (one of the characters in the film) states, the moment the Shinnecock "woke up from a 200 year coma" and take a resistant and protective stance to protest the taking of their ancestral lands, once again.

The historical background to this on-going struggle is the 1859 land grab by the Long Island Railroad to build a train line from New York City to Montauk, on the very tip of Long Island, opening it to weekenders. In 1859 the Shinnecock were chased from the Shinnecock Hills and relegated into the "swamps", an 826-acre marshland reservation on Southampton Bay, where they live to this day.

Three Shinnecock were arrested at the year 2000 standoff: Becky Genia, Chuck Quinn and Gordell Wright. Becky's scream in front of the bulldozer, at the moment of her arrest, is recorded by a police camera. Her cry echoes throughout the film and her songs of protest flavor the soundtrack. On the second day of the Shinnecock protest, the Shinnecock were joined by civil rights activist Bob Zellner, son of Alabama Ku-Klux-Klan parents and one of the few white members who, during the civil rights movement of the sixties, joined the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "snick"). ***
Zellner, as he was arrested, was trampled to the ground and his arm was dislocated by state troopers. His act of solidarity subsequently develops into an enduring friendship with the Shinnecock tribe.

Karola's camera follows Becky, Chuck, Gordell, and other members of the Shinnecock Nation over the next years on their trail from court hearing to court hearing, documenting their lives on the reservation, their self-education and their joint efforts to implement new laws protecting sacred grounds and Native American graveyards concurrent with their economic struggles to become self-sufficient.

On June 15th, 2005, the Shinnecock Indians seek justice in Federal Court with the largest Land Claim ever filed by an Indian Nation. This multi-billion dollar lawsuit, filed against New York State, Governor George Pataki, Suffolk County, Long Island University, the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) and the Town of Southampton asserts Shinnecock ownership of approximately 3600 acres of ancestral lands stolen by the state in 1859, when a 1000-year lease agreement with the Shinnecock was broken. "Not one more acre" is the watch phrase of Shinnecocks in their enduring effort to save the "last piece".

However sympathetic to the Shinnecock struggles, the film also addresses how the rest of the community in this world-renowned place reacts to the new empowerment of local Indians. Some of the interviews on Main Street in the town of Southampton echo the mixed feelings the Shinnecock endeavors provoke. Statements vary from "What Indians?" or "They are not even Indians, all they want is publicity to get their casino." or "I don’t care if I have to pay rent to the Shinnecock, as long as I can go on fishing" to "wouldn't that be great if they win!"

The film also shows how one local family, in particular, the Richards, were affected, when a Native American mass grave was unearthed on their property as they constructed their dream home on Shelter Island. Tension mounts as the Richards rush to finish their horse barn and suggest the remains be cemented in the walls and floor. The incompatible points of view held by the Richards family with their supporters and the Shinnecock were fought out at the Shelter Island Town Hall meeting and debated throughout this expensive, desirable island community without resolution. The camera stays neutral. When at the end of a year's struggle over the burial ground in their back yard, the Richards' new house, almost finished, explodes in flames, the viewer may well feel sympathy for both sides. It is an educational and cultural issue.

During the decade of filming of this documentary, Karola Ritter documented other aspects of the Hamptons, producing over 200 shows for the local TV station. This additional footage documents a historic pre and post 9/11 time period in a "small town" American community with a seasonal economy, a 21st century melting pot of American culture, where something original left in the crucible will not melt. Karola's extended video archives will be invaluable to the contextual enrichment of the film. Individual Shinnecock tribe members participated in peace marches and events organized by the Hamptons Chapter for "Peace and Justice Against the Iraq War" (which Karola documented for "East End Women in Black"). In addition the presence of Shinnecock members in the videos Karola produced for local environmental movements shows shared peace and preservation interests among the Shinnecock and their Hampton neighbors.

Two years ago, Karola Ritter went into a temporary partnership to co-produce "The Last Piece" with Shinnecock tribe member and broadcast/print journalist, Alli Hunter Joseph.
Alli has been very successful in reaching out to Shinnecock members to gain their support and in promoting the project in Native American and public/mainstream media venues alike. So far, a pilot trailer she co-wrote has been shown at The Hamptons International Film Festival, The Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, The American Museum of Natural History and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC (September 2005).

The next step for the filmmaker is to secure enough funding to finance an assistant producer and fundraiser in New York as well as a post-production team in Europe, where director/producer Karola Ritter is currently working. These additional human resources are essential at this stage to log the vast material, edit a feature length rough cut and final edit the project with an experienced documentary co-editor. The aim is to get the "The Last Piece" into festival-worthy/broadcast-air shape end of 2006, early 2007.

To download full proposal or view in html go here

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