Nor'Easter Spring/Summer 1996
Preserving Landscapes
and Cultures
Land of first light - After two months at sea on a British vessel, immigrants came ashore here at this peaceful seaside spot. The newcomers swiftly discovered and stole a winter's stash of corn and then renamed the area Corn Hill.
The Pilgrims had lousy manners.
The year was 1620, and the ship was the Mayflower. For thousands of years before Miles Standish and associates landed at what is now Truro, Mass., Native Americans had inhabited the lower portion of Cape Cod. However, within only a few years, the English settlements spread, and Native Americans increasingly found their lands and liberties usurped.
Traditions of native peoples throughout North America have been kept alive largely by their descendants. However, federally funded organizations such as Sea Grant and the National Park Service - better known for preserving natural resources - are also playing a role in preserving cultures.
On the Outer Cape (roughly the area from Dennis out to Provincetown), 43,000 acres were spared a commercial fate by the 1970 creation of the Cape Cod National Sea Shore (CCNS). Part of the National Park Service, the 40-mile swath stretches from Brewster to Provincetown, encompassing sand dunes and seashore, kettle ponds, beech forests, and marshlands.
While the CCNS safeguards natural resources for current and future generations, it also is chartered to preserve cultures with historical ties to park lands and to meet the needs of present-day neighbors. Whenever a national park or other federally funded organization proposes substantial changes, it must also assess the socioeconomic and environmental impact of those changes in order to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act. Toward that end, the CCNS funded MIT Sea Grant researches to explore how individuals of diverse cultural backgrounds use and perceive the CCNS, and what changes would benefit them. The research, conducted by Madeleine Hall-Arber, MIT Sea Grant marine liaison, and Christine James, research assistant, will be used by the CCNS as it develops its new General Management Plan. Under development for four years, this overarching policy document is expected to describe long-term management goals and introduce new developments in the park's physical layout.
In conducting a study, an anthropologist ideally will live in a community for a year, immersing herself in the culture and meeting a cross section of the people. However, in the MIT Sea Grant project - called a rapid ethnographic assessment - the researchers instead conducted in-depth interviews with people from three cultural groups - Native Americans, Portuguese and Portuguese Americans, and Cape Verdeans - as well as other park neighbors. The 30 people interviewed were asked about their relationship with the CCNS - about their use of the park, their perceptions, and recommendations for future planning.
While individuals from different groups voiced different concerns, one overriding sentiment was approval for the park's preservation of natural resources. Among Wampanoags, Hall-Arber notes that the traditional respect for the land is "very much in tune with the mission of the Park Service." However, she adds that both the Wampanoags and Cape Verdeans felt that there was a dearth of information and interpretive materials about their cultures.
Wampanoags expressed "a sense that the Park Service was ignoring their history," says Hall-Arber. Those interviewed suggested that the Park Service could correct this omission by including information about the Wampanoags' history, culture, and current status in both the Park Service's interpretive materials and its programs. Specific suggestions advocated additional exhibits at the CCNS's two visitor's centers, including a replica of a traditional Wampanoag village. One tribal elder noted that the Park Service could also provide information for a Wampanoag camp that teaches young tribal members basic survival skills.
Given that much of the culture has been eradicated, passing traditions on to the young has particular significance. Much of the language's disappearance can be linked to a long-standing law, enacted in the 1600s, that made speaking the Wampanoag language an offense punishable by death. "I think the law's still actually on the Massachusetts books," says Jim Peters, executive director of the Mashpee Tribal Council. The organization provides job training, fuel assistance, health programs, prison outreach, and housing assistance to Wampanoags on the Cape, and enjoys what Peters calls "a pretty decent relationship" with the National Park Service.
Peters laments the fact that his ancestors' land now belongs to others. In other regions, reservations have been set aside for Native Americans, but the state of the land often leaves much to be desired. New York's Mohawk territory along the St. Lawrence River is home to four Superfund sites that have wreaked environmental havoc. "It's been close to catastrophic," says David Greene, a New York Sea Grant national extension specialist who has been working with several New York tribes. He cites contaminated soil and fish, toxins in medicinal plants in wetlands, and PCBs in mothers' breast milk as legacies of earlier pollution.
Greene's efforts in the past three years have included building lines of communication among reservations and helping with resource protection, habitat restoration, and revitalization of the Mohawks' fishery. The New York Sea Grant-Ðfunded work also supports interns and coordinates native professional mentoring.
"We are helping different communities work with each other and help themselves," says Greene. Restoration projects have targeted traditionally important resources, such as black ash, sweet grass, and medicinal plants; aquaculture projects are aimed at restoring more traditional food sources. Citing the various tribes' achievements thus far, Greene says, "They've pulled together and used resources to build a strong environmental program for the reservations."
On Cape Cod, one way the National Seashore works with Native Americans is by alerting tribal representatives when an archaeological dig takes place in the park. "We always involve the tribe," says Frank Ackerman, chief of the interpretative and cultural resource management division for the CCNS and a 27-year veteran of the National Park Service. Because a dig may disturb ground considered sacred, it is important to Wampanoags to be able to monitor the activity and perform traditional ceremonies at the site.
"The Park Service has always been pretty friendly and helpful," says Anita Little, a Wampanoag clan mother and member of the Mashpee Tribal Council's board of directors. Little, who is collaborating with Wampanoags from Martha's Vineyard on a language revival project, hopes to see additional exhibits for tourists. "This is a good time for it. People are more open to finding out about these things," she says.
While Cape Verdeans have inhabited Cape Cod for a far briefer period than the Wampanoags, many of their concerns are similar. "They want to be recognized as being historically a part of the park," says Hall-Arber.
Cape Verdeans began arriving on Cape Cod from their island homes off the coast of Africa in the late 1800s and initially found work on whaling boats. As that industry died out, many turned to harvesting cranberries in Cape bogs - one industry where discrimination did not bar their participation. The labor was arduous and the workers notoriously underpaid. John Raneo, whose father and grandparents immigrated from Cape Verde, worked as a young man in the bogs. "It was very hard work, hand-scooping the cranberries," says the retired ex-chief of the Harwich police. "It's all done with machines now," he adds. "You can't find anyone who'll work in a bog."
In fact, it's getting harder to find Cape Verdeans on Cape Cod these days because of a dearth of jobs in any industry. "Most of the Cape Verdeans have left to get work," says Raneo. Like the Wampanoags, Portuguese, and Portuguese-Americans, Cape Verdeans have traditionally earned a living from the sea. Hard times in New England fisheries have forced an exodus from a home port and a way of life for all these communities.
While the CCNS cannot bring back the fish stocks, it can better depict the contributions of different groups. In Provincetown, Portuguese and Portuguese Americans have composed the heart of the fishing industry for the last 100 years. Tony Jackett's grandfather immigrated from Portugal at the turn of the century, and Jackett has been fishing for 25 years - almost the exact lifetime of the CCNS. "From out at sea," says Jackett, "the National Seashore is beautiful to look at." Standing on the deck of his dragger in the Provincetown Harbor, Jackett muses that, without the CCNS, "the seashore here would look like every other town."
Because of decreased catches, Jackett now works five months of the year at a local oil company. When he does fish, he does so alone, instead of with the crew of one or two he once employed. Such shifts herald the end to a long tradition. One way to ensure that the history does not disappear would be through interpretive materials at the Provincetown visitor's center or at Provincetown's two CCNS beaches.
Similarly, the CCNS could establish a working bog to help tell the story of Cape Verdeans. At the National Seashore's Pamet Cranberry Bog, visitors can walk through a small preserved patch of cranberries. A brochure available at the site tells the history of the bogs and includes a Wampanoag myth explaining the cranberry's creation, as well as information about Cape Verdeans' work in the bogs.
Visitors can also learn about local history at the CCNS's main visitor's center in Eastham, and at the smaller center in Provincetown. Offerings at the year-round Eastham center include a terrain model of the sea floor and short films about the geological evolution of the Cape and Marconi's first transatlantic wireless transmission from south Wellfleet. The history of people on the Cape is shown through exhibits on whaling and commercial fishing; sea rescue; agricultural activities and shipbuilding; and everyday 19th century life.
However, stories of Cape Verdeans, Wampanoags and the Portuguese are mainly absent from these exhibits. Such information, says Ackerman, is mainly available in rangers' oral histories presented in walks and talks. Such events are concentrated during periods of higher tourism - which also happen to be when most local residents' work lives are at their busiest. As a result, residents are less likely to have free time to enjoy the park's services during these periods. This is a particular concern among the Portuguese and Portuguese-Americans whom Hall-Arber and James interviewed in Provincetown and Truro. Individuals from these communities suggested that the Park Service should offer more programs during the winter months and should increase educational outreach to schools.
Researcher James describes the Portuguese and Portuguese-Americans' concerns as "more contemporary issues," such as wanting improved general access to park lands for enjoying nature and better accommodations for fishing and hunting. While "a few people would really like to be bombing up the dunes in off-road vehicles," says James, most appreciate that the park's rules have saved a fragile environment from development and overuse.
That appreciation figured in a recent highly emotional conflict sparked by the Park Service's $1.5 million planned modification of a Provincetown road that would have destroyed 600 trees. Particularly unappreciated was the fact that the Park Service began its project - setting out flags and survey equipment - well before most Provincetown residents had been alerted to the plans. "It would have ruined what was unique about the area," remarked one resident. On a broader scale, the event illustrates what the Portuguese perceive as an imbalance in power with the National Park Service. While the social standing, wealth, and education of "Yankee" New Englanders have afforded those Mayflower descendants a voice in CCNS plans, other voices have not been as well represented.
"With any national park, there's often one or more groups of people who have links with an area historically, but don't participate in planning for various reasons," says Becky Joseph, senior ethnographer for the Northeast Field Service of the National Park Service. Joseph comments that ethnographic assessments are one way to approach that problem. "We would much rather be good neighbors than bad neighbors," she adds.
In a 1995 project similar to the CCNS assessment, anthropologists looked at the impact of changes at Grant's Tomb at General Grant National Park in New York City's West Harlem. Not surprisingly, researchers there found that the historical site was an important green space for the nearby community, as well as for African-Americans and Hispanics from throughout the city.
Another ethnographic assessment looked at the effects of a proposed footbridge linking Ellis Island with Liberty State Park in New Jersey. "We found that the local population feels impeded due to an inability to pay for the ferry service to Ellis Island," says Richard Wells, who managed the project and is the chief of professional services for the Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island (part of the National Park Service). While a bridge would provide more access for lower income people, Wells explains that "at the present moment there is no funding for a permanent bridge," and that no bridge would be built without an appropriation from Congress.
The bridge, imagined but as yet unbuilt, is an apt metaphor for spanning differences in culture, time, and space. Late on a cold, still night in March, a lone wanderer at Truro's Parabolic Dunes can search the night sky for the glowing blur of Comet Hyakutake, a wonder concocted of remnants from the solar system's creation. The preserved wilderness of the National Seashore is the perfect spot to witness this spectacle of ice, frozen gases, and dust preserved for 4.6 billion years. And from such a vantage point, it's impossible not to wonder about the people who stood here hundreds and thousands of years earlier, to treasure their legacy amidst the night's spinning sands.
Andrea Cohen is an Editor for MIT Sea Grant.