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Contested Ground:
The Role of Cultural Memory in the Redevelopment of Deer Island
Christine DeLucia
[email protected]
History 1687: Building Boston in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Prof. Lizabeth Cohen
May 16, 2005
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Deer Island, one of Boston’s Inner Harbor Islands, currently stands at the center of a
debate over land use. Three principal factors are engaged in this contest, all with compelling and
competing claims to the 210-acre site. The most prominent is waste treatment: the
Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) has constructed the Deer Island Sewage
Treatment Plant, the centerpiece of a program designed to protect Boston Harbor against
pollution from metropolitan Boston’s sewer systems; this plant occupies more than two-thirds of
the island’s total acreage. A second factor is recreation: more than 60 acres of open public
space, including trails and a perimeter walkway with ocean views, have been marketed to
Bostonians and tourists as a unique and accessible escape from the confines of the city. Third—
and the focus of this paper—are local Indian tribes, whose seventeenth-century ancestors were
forced into wartime internment camps on the island. Descendents of these Indians (and of Irish
immigrants detained on the island in the nineteenth century) have sought physical
commemoration of their historical presence on the island. These three factors were tentatively
reconciled in 2002, when a National Park Service General Management Plan consolidated a
preliminary blueprint for the Harbor Islands’ future.
This paper engages two central questions about the General Management Plan. First,
given the pressing demand for essential infrastructure like the MWRA plant, for recreational
space in a city where open land is scarce, and even for private development, how has the more
nebulous factor of cultural memory managed to secure a claim to the site and a say in the course
of its development? Part of the unusualness of the present debate is that the memory of a
colonial conflict is an active player: historical events more than three hundred years past
continue to exert significant and tangible influence on the course of modern development.
Second, what are the implications of according such value to cultural memory—for native
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groups, for Boston and its residents, and for the historiography surrounding this site? The
redevelopment plans and other documentation of the island debate suggest a two-fold response:
first, a singular confluence of factors unique to the late twentieth century has given Native
Americans unprecedented leverage in shaping the usage of Deer Island; and second, these
indigenous populations are taking an active, contentious role in redefining the meaning of this
site through changes in the built environment and its representations.
The physical impetus behind this intense debate and radical reinvention of meaning is the
second-largest island in the harbor (the largest is 214-acre Long Island), said to be named, in the
words of a 1634 settler, for the “Deare which often [swam] thither from the Maine, when they
[were] chased by the Woolves.”1 Appropriately enough for a discussion about the shifting
meanings of language over time, the present-day Deer Island is actually a peninsula that has been
connected to nearby Winthrop by a narrow strip of land since Shirley Gut was filled in by
gradual soil erosion (a process begun prior to the twentieth century).2 In the late seventeenth
century, however, the site was still a true island—a physical quality that precipitated its
involvement in the events of King Philip’s War (1675-1676) and its complicated status in the
present. In the course of the war, which pitted European settlers against neighboring indigenous
populations, hundreds of Christian Indians from southern New England “praying towns” were
rounded up and “hurried away to [Deer Island] at half an hours warning,” as missionary John
Eliot reported at the time.3 This internment followed an October 13, 1675 order from
1
William Wood, as quoted in Edward Rowe Snow, The Islands of Boston Harbor, 1630-1971 (New York: Dodd,
Mead and Co., 1971), 198. Snow’s survey of Deer Island is one of the most comprehensive treatments of its
historical development. The island had been used in multiple ways during the pre-contact period by natives (as
described later in this paper vis-à-vis the General Management Plan’s historical narrative).
2
The Gut was navigable by small boats as late as 1895, but by 1920 the water depth at high tide was only six feet.
Snow, 209.
3
Quoted in Jill Lepore’s study of the war, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American
Identity (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1998), 43; Lepore, “When Deer Island Was Turned Into Devil’s Island,”
Bostonia Magazine, summer 1998, 14-19.
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Massachusetts authorities, who commanded first the evacuation of Natick and later of other
praying towns.4 The Indians were not permitted to leave the island, though it lacked adequate
means of sustenance; the General Court decreed that “none of the sayd indians shall presume to
goe off the sayd islands voluntarily, upon payne of death.”5 Though authorities later partially
capitulated and ordered that provisions be “sent down to Deare Island, so as to prevent [the
Indians’] perishing by any extremity that they may be out unto for want of absolute necessities,”
hundreds of natives died from exposure and starvation.6 Their remains were buried on the island
before survivors were released from the site in May of 1676. The war decimated many local
tribes, and in the ensuing years the indigenous presence in Boston and outlying regions waned
but never disappeared altogether.
In the centuries following the establishment and destruction of the native internment
camps, the built environment of Deer Island underwent multiple transformations. As
commentators have noted, one constant in its myriad configurations was the housing of elements
undesired in mainland Boston: it contained, in various eras, a quarantine facility for new,
predominantly Irish immigrants, created after an 1847 outbreak of smallpox; a House of
Reformation (est. 1858); and the Suffolk County House of Corrections (est. 1896).7 Wastewater
treatment facilities have been located on the island since 1889, when a sewage pumping station
was installed next to the House of Reformation; treatment facilities eventually expanded into the
modern-day MWRA plant (discussed below). In the process of building and re-building, the
topography of the island changed dramatically: originally consisted of two drumlins (elongated
hills or ridges created by glacial drift), the island had its center drumlin leveled to create space
4
Lepore, The Name of War, 138.
Ibid., 139.
6
Ibid.
7
Snow, 197-212; M.F. Sweetser, King’s Handbook of Boston Harbor (Cambridge, MA: Moses King, 1882), 193200; “Deer Island and the City Institutions,” The Daily Evening Traveller (Boston: 184?).
5
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for the first treatment plant. The hill was later moved north to act as a buffer between the
MWRA facility and the mainland.8 The cumulative construction of all these facilities entailed
extensive excavation and leveling of hills, which displaced native burials from the seventeenth
century and effectively effaced any trace of the wartime genocide.
The Greater Boston native presence, which persisted through the centuries albeit outside
the general attention of most city-dwellers, seemed poised to re-assert itself and the interests of
cultural memory in the latter half of the twentieth century as plans for the MWRA plant
materialized. In 1968 the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC), which preceded the
MWRA, expanded the old sewage facility to service 43 cities and towns; and when the Boston
Harbor Project began in 1985, Boston transferred ownership of the island to the MWRA.9 In
1995 a Falmouth-based native lobbying group called the Muhheconneuk Intertribal Committee
on Deer Island (MICDI) pressured Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) to oppose funding for a multi-million
dollar Boston Harbor cleanup project, on the grounds that the project would disturb culturally
significant sites on Deer Island.10 Despite protests from native groups, construction of the
MWRA Deer Island Sewage Treatment Plant proceeded, culminating in a massive facility that
currently processes metropolitan Boston’s sewage. The interests of infrastructure, the plant’s
completion suggested, had trumped those of cultural memory.
The completion of the MWRA plant did not constitute a final blow to native interests,
however: in the last years of the twentieth century, there occurred a substantial shift in the weight
accorded to cultural memory and native concerns related to Deer Island. This shift happened in
8
National Park Service, “Appendix 3: The Islands of Boston Harbor,” Draft General Management Plan and Draft
Environmental Impact Statement, 2000, 123 <http://www.nps.gov/boha/parkdocs/dgmp/dgmptoc.html> (cited 15
March 2005). Hereafter abbreviated as DGMP and DEIS.
9
Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, “A History of the Sewer System,”
<http://www.mwra.com/03sewer/html/sewhist.htm> (cited 15 April 2005).
10
“Tribe Fights Harbor Funding,” The Patriot Ledger (Quincy, MA), 15 Nov. 1995, 40; Keith Regan, “Harbor
Project Opposed / Indian Group Says Deer Island Sacred,” The Boston Globe, 22 Feb. 1993, 16.
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the context of a decision to formulate a 15- to 20-year redevelopment plan for all of the Boston
Harbor Islands. A Congressional act made the 34 islands part of National Park Service territory
in 1996, and the redevelopment plan sought to examine options for the best future uses of this
space.11 Determining these uses was a vast undertaking with a projected multi-million dollar
price tag, an endeavor that demanded weighing of the relative merits of resource protection and
visitor access, among myriad other factors. The first stage of planning involved public hearings
about possibilities for the redevelopment: from January to March of 1998, the Harbor Islands
Partnership—a thirteen-member group charged with governing the islands—sponsored a series
of seven public workshops held throughout the region, at which more than 400 attendees voiced
concerns and comments.12 This first stage concluded with the production of a Draft General
Management Plan and Draft Environmental Impact Statement (hereafter DGMP and DEIS) in
April 2000. After an official period of public commenting from June 30 to August 1 of 2000, the
second stage of planning produced a revised version of the draft text, the General Management
Plan (2002) and the Final Environmental Impact Statement (2003). As both the draft and
revised texts make clear, some radical change involving the status of Greater Boston Native
Americans and their interests had taken place by the time this planning process was underway.
No longer was the legacy of their wartime internment absented from Deer Island and the public
consciousness; instead, Native American cultural memory formed a cornerstone of the
redevelopment vision.
The vision centered on three alternatives for development: as described in the Executive
Summary of the DGMP and DEIS, “Alternative A emphasize[d] preserving resources while
Alternative B emphasize[d] providing activities for the visitor. Alternative C focuse[d] on the
11
National Park Service, “Briefing Statement: Boston Harbor Islands General Management Plan Summary,” 19 Feb.
2002 <http://www.nps.gov/boha/parkdocs/brief219.html> (cited 6 May 2005).
12
National Park Service, “Appendix 4: Summary of Public Involvement,” DGMP and DEIS, 130.
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large, previously developed islands for a high level of visitor activity with the protection of
resources, and [left] the more remote islands in a “natural” management area with few visitor
amenities.”13 Or, in the terms of “balancing resource protection with visitor enjoyment,” A
emphasized resources; B stressed recreation; and C—a synthesis of the “best” aspects of A and
B—privileged resources, while permitting recreation compatible with resource protection.
Alternative C emerged as the preferred plan for the redevelopment, constituting a partial
rejection of B’s inclination to frame the islands as generic natural backdrops for recreational
activity, minimizing the historical particularities of the sites. Included in the management plan
were affirmations of commitment to a variety of native history-oriented changes. Proposals
included “educational programs, interpretive waysides throughout the island system [to] raise
public awareness about presence, culture, and history of American Indians”; “emphasis on King
Philip’s War period and American Indians’ understanding of nature and ecology”; “programs on
several islands designed and led by American Indians”; and an “American Indian interpretive
center developed on one island.”14 The native history that had been effaced from Deer Island
during the previous centuries of change in the built environment, that is, became a prominent
feature in the imagined future landscape. Additionally, provisions were made shortly after the
drafting of the plan for creation of physical memorials to the Native Americans and Irish
interned on the island. Representatives from the Nipmuc, Natick, Wampanoag, and Penobscot
tribes agreed that a site on the western side of the island, facing the Boston skyline and the
mouth of the Charles River, would be most appropriate (and handicap accessible). A grant was
acquired from the Edward Ingersoll Browne fund, which underwrites open-space improvement
in the City of Boston; and in December 2002, a committee of tribal representatives selected
13
National Park Service, “Executive Summary,” DGMP and DEIS, iii.
National Park Service, “Environmental Consequences: Summary of Management Alternatives,” DGMP and
DEIS, 96.
14
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Lloyd Gray of the Onondaga (Iroquois) Nation to design the memorial, plans for which were to
be reviewed at a public forum in 2003.15
The native-oriented redevelopment propositions described above beg a central question:
what historical factors precipitated this dramatic change in the status accorded to Native
Americans and their cultural memory? At least seven socioeconomic, political, and cultural
changes unique to the late twentieth century have contributed to natives’ newfound leverage in
the redevelopment debate. The first and most directly traceable cause is the fact that
redevelopment is proceeding under the aegis of the National Park Service. This means that the
process is required to follow stringent federal procedures for solicitation and consideration of
comments from parties with interests at stake; this feedback and drafting mechanism has given
tribal representatives an official, public forum in which to voice their concerns and critiques.
Multiple native interests have thus been formally involved in the planning: in the Boston Harbor
Islands Partnership, an Advisory Council includes Edith Andrews from the Wampanoag Tribe of
Gay Head (Aquinnah). Also involved with this overseeing body is John Sam Sapiel of the
Penobscot Nation; Lawrence Snake of the Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma (Anadarko);
and Steve Comer of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians.16 Native groups among
which the DGMP and DEIS were circulated for comment included the Delaware Tribe of
Western Oklahoma (Anadarko); Delaware Tribe of Indians (Bartlesville); Mashantucket-Pequot
Tribal Nation (Connecticut); Mohegan Indian Tribe of Connecticut; Stockbridge-Munsee
Community Band of Mohican Indians (Wisconsin); Narragansett Indian Tribe (Rhode Island);
15
Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs (MCIA), 2001 Annual Report, 31 May 2002, 8
<http://www.mass.gov/dhcd/components/Ind_Affairs/com_rpt2.pdf> (cited 19 April 2005); MCIA, 2002 Annual
Report, 10 Nov. 2003, 8-9 <http://www.mass.gov/dhcd/components/Ind_Affairs/com_rpt3.pdf> (cited 19 April
2005).
16
National Park Service, “Appendix 1: Boston Harbor Islands Partnership and Advisory Council,” DGMP and
DEIS, 117.
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Wabanaki Tribes of Maine (Passamaquoddy Tribe, Penobscot Indian Nation, Houlton Band of
Maliseet Indians, Aroostook Band of Micmacs); Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah);
and other culturally affiliated tribes, including the Nipmuc (Hasanamisco), Nipmuc Nation,
Nipmuck Chaubunagungamaugg, Natick Nipmucs, and Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.17
Consultation with this broad network of indigenous populations spanning New England and
regions beyond thus increased the likelihood that native concerns would not be muffled. A
second factor closely related to the new federal protocol that has magnified the native voice in
redevelopment proceedings is the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
(NAGPRA), a 1990 law that grants greater protection to native human remains and artifacts
found on federally managed lands. This legislation has increased dialogue between tribes and
management agencies, and generated a new level of caution in areas of construction, particularly
where native remains are might lie (such as on Deer Island).18
A third, broader factor that has contributed to this heightened degree of formal native
input is change in local tribes’ relations with various levels of American government. The
Aquinnah Wampanoag petitioned for federal recognition of tribal status in 1987; they achieved
this, and currently engage in a government-to-government relation with the United States. Other
tribes are state-recognized, and thus engage in the same type of relations with the Massachusetts
government. While eight other tribes with historic ties to Deer Island, such as the Nipmuck,
have not succeeded in gaining recognized federal status, they have nonetheless acquired an
added measure of political leverage by organizing into their own lobbying group, the
Muhheconneuk Intertribal Committee on Deer Island (MICDI, mentioned previously). The
17
National Park Service, “List of EIS Recipients,” Final Environmental Impact Statement, 2003, 13
<http://www.nps.gov/boha/parkdocs/brief219.html> (cited 20 March 2005).
18
Colin Calloway, First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s,
1999), 492-493; National Park Service, “National NAGPRA FAQ”
<http://www.cr.nps.gov/nagpra/FAQ/INDEX.HTM> (cited 4 May 2005).
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National Park Service agreed in March 1998 to consult with tribal representatives from MICDI.19
Native interests have thus benefited from tribes’ increasingly influential political standings. A
fourth factor related to this transformation in native political power and visibility is a general
increase in the Boston-area native population. In the post-World War II period, members of
approximately 35 tribes began moving to the city from reservations in New England and the
western United States, part of a broader urban relocation trend encouraged by the Bureau of
Indian Affairs.20 Between 1970 and 1980, Boston’s native population doubled, reaching almost
5,000 and becoming more noticeable to politicians and the rest of the city; and in 1970 the
Boston Indian Council, located near the border of Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, was founded to
provided a kind of urban reservation offering health care, education, and job training to natives
in the city. At its peak, the Council’s staff reached 120 and its budget nearly $2.5 million (90
percent from federal sources).21 In short, the Boston-area native population rebounded in the late
twentieth century from its post-King Philip’s War levels.
A fifth factor that has facilitated native input to various phases of redevelopment is
support, sought now and again, among other interest groups including the Irish community,
which is also seeking a memorial on Deer Island, and environmentalists. Allying at strategic
moments with these influential interest groups has given the native cause added weight and
visibility. In November 1992, for example, environmentalists and tribal members canoed
together along the Charles River to support the passage of two river protection bills before the
state Legislature, and to alert the public about river pollution. This event momentarily brought
together Gary McCann, a consultant for MICDI; Russell Cohen, a river advocate for the state
19
Della Klemovich, “Harbor Islands Plan Will Have Tribal Input,” The Patriot Ledger, 10 March 1990, 5.
Calloway, 426-429.
21
In 1989, however, the Council declared bankruptcy. Judith Gaines, “Boston Indian Council Battles Bankruptcy,”
The Boston Globe, 7 Aug. 1989, 17.
20
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Department of Fish and Wildlife; and Seth Tuler, a spokesman for Save James Bay, a project
cautioning against the effects of a Hydro-Quebec project on Cree and Inuit.22 A sixth change
favorable to native interests is the rise of multiculturalism in late twentieth-century America: its
increasing prominence in intellectual study has benefited once-marginalized ethnic groups like
Native Americans. Additionally, the ongoing maturation of Native American Studies in the
academy has turned a new spotlight on tribal concerns; and in 1998, historian Jill Lepore’s study
The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity drew new attention to
King Philip’s War and its legacy for natives and Euro-Americans. A final factor is economic:
city, state, and federal officials have been eager to increase the Harbor Islands’ revenuegenerating potential through strategic promotion of tourism. They have recognized that
highlighting Native American history through interpretive guides, memorials, or
museums/cultural centers could be a lucrative marketing tool that would enhance the Islands’
economic viability.23
Given all these auspicious factors privileging the native voice in unprecedented ways, the
redevelopment plan might be expected to have proven satisfactory to native consultants. That
was not the case, however: even though native representatives were extensively involved in the
planning process, significant tension and dissatisfaction surrounded the plans that emerged.
MICDI policy consultant Gary McCann complained to the press, “The plan contains no
development of programs and policies. [Park Service officials] always say ‘Later, later’ in terms
22
Elizabeth Stankiewicz, “Group Spotlights Rivers in Paddle Down the Charles,” The Boston Globe, 29 Nov. 1992,
34.
23
Tourism revenue is not an inconsiderable concern, given the need to offset the projected costs of the
redevelopment. There is an estimated annual operating cost of $8 million under any of the three proposed
alternatives. Infrastructure development (to occur over the next 15 to 20 years) requires, for Alternative C, more
than $79 million, plus a “gateway” development cost of $4 to $20 million. Partnership members (except the
Advisory Council) would contribute to the funding; federal dollars would match non-federal ones in a one-to-three
ratio. Private funding is expected from philanthropic sources, park-related revenue, use fees, and income from
commercial operations.23 For estimated cost tables, see National Park Service, “Appendix 5: Implementation
Costs,” DGMP and DEIS, 133-138.
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of creating any real policy. They keep putting the tribes on the back burner.”24 The official
public comments made by native groups in response to the DGMP and DEIS were especially
critical of the initial direction of redevelopment planning. Calling the draft text “entirely
unacceptable,” MICDI arrived at a consensus to “reject entirely the draft park plan as written,
and to call upon the National Park Service to negotiate with the tribes to create a new document
that would be acceptable to them.”25 The comments submitted by MICDI and other native
consultants enumerated multiple serious reservations about the draft, concerning both relations
between tribes and management agencies and the text itself; these criticisms were followed by
detailed line-by-line suggestions for textual alterations. Other points of disagreement involved
the nature of limitations that should be placed on site use. One seemingly trivial example of this
type of dissension was a proposed ban in 2003 of dog-walking on Deer Island. Boston Globe
columnist Adrian Walker called this proposal, initiated by City Councilor Felix Arroyo, a
“meaningless gesture”: “[c]ompared to what goes on each day at the waste plant, a little dog
poop seems pretty inconsequential.”26 Others, including tribal leaders, argued that the dogs were
desecrating a burial ground: MIDCI leader Sam Sapiel called the presence of the animals an
“insult…It’s terrible. We wouldn’t do it to their graveyards in Boston.”27 He and others
suggested halting the planning of the Deer Island memorial until the dog matter was resolved,
using the political fallout from such a freeze to gain political leverage in the site’s
redevelopment. In short, though the “final” General Management Plan neatly reconciled
multiple interests on paper, significant conflict in the real world remained (and indeed remains).
24
Mia Taylor, “Federal Officials Urged to Conduct Regional Meetings,” The Patriot Ledger, 7 Dec. 2000, 8.
National Park Service, “Public Comment,” Final Environmental Impact Statement, 47. The public comments
from native groups exhaustively catalogue the points of disagreement with the proposal; see them for a fuller
treatment of the nature and magnitude of tension surrounding the redevelopment.
26
Adrian Walker, “No Walk in the Park,” The Boston Globe, 17 July 2003, B1.
27
Donovan Slack, “Seeking Respect for the Dead at Last / Indians Seek to Bar Dogs in Island Park,” The Boston
Globe, 27 April 2003, B1.
25
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The contestation surrounding redevelopment and commemoration at Deer Island is not an
anomalous or isolated situation, but rather a dilemma unfolding within the context of several
other debates about the built environment and landscapes of historical violence and tragedy. It
engages far-reaching questions about what treatment ought to be accorded to sites of vast
injustice. MICDI consultant McCann suggested such questions in 1992, when he protested the
MWRA construction by comparing the cultural significance of the island to that of Nazi
concentration camps: “In Europe, this isn’t done. They respect death camps and leave them
alone. To have this done to Native Americans is discrimination.”28 Comparable points of
comparison closer to home, and more intimately tied to the uniquely American problems of
commemorating forced confinement during wartime, are the World War II Japanese-American
relocation centers dispersed throughout Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah,
and Wyoming. Ten of these centers housed approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans after
they were evacuated from the West Coast by executive order in February 1942, until the camps
closed in 1946.29 As at Deer Island, the immediate postwar period saw the partial erasure of
evidence of this episode, as the centers were generally dismantled and abandoned. The Japanese
American Citizen League initiated lobbying for redress in 1970, and the California Department
of Parks and Recreation installed a commemorative plaque at the Manzanar site in 1973; Utah
followed suit at the Topaz center in 1976. Prior to these official physical commemorations, the
sites had functioned as rallying points for a dispersed Japanese-American community, whose
members made pilgrimages to the sites.30 The inscription on the plaque at Topaz contrasts the
violation of civil liberties with principles of American democracy (“a nation dedicated to the
28
Peter Howe, “MWRA Disturbing Graves, Say Indians,” The Boston Globe, 17 June 1992, 30.
Kenneth Foote, Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1997), 304.
30
Ibid., 306.
29
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principle of individual freedom and justice through law”), and notes how “under the stress of
war” the internees became “victims of wartime hysteria, racial animosity, and a serious
aberration of American jurisprudence.”31 Such a rhetorical strategy for commemoration might
be somewhat incongruous and anachronistic at Deer Island, since native internment on the island
predated the full codification of these kinds of democratic principles and civil protections.
A second point of comparison is Wounded Knee, South Dakota, the site of the final
armed conflict between Native Americans and the United States military in 1890 (and arguably
the endpoint of a policy of anti-native aggression begun in King Philip’s War). This
battleground was transformed from a site of native destruction to a physical rallying point in
1973, when it served as the staging grounds for the Sioux uprising of that year. As historian
Kevin Foote observes in his study of sites of genocide, Wounded Knee is emblematic of locales
“associated with some past wrong or act of violence [that become] the focus for further agitation
in pursuit of a goal.”32 Deer Island parallels Wounded Knee in some respects, then, since it has
also served in recent years as a rallying point for modern-day natives. In October 2001, for
instance, about 50 natives gathered at the site to perform ceremonies, and to discuss, as reported
by the local press, the possibility of social and political regeneration: “Indians who came from as
far away as Canada…spoke forcefully about the need to reclaim their heritage. There was talk of
quelling intertribal rivalry, of working together as one confederation of Indians.”33 In another
parallel to Wounded Knee, Deer Island presents a problem of commemoration since the site
representing success for one side in an armed conflict (Euro-Americans) is also the site of defeat
for the other (natives). In the broadest sense, the Japanese-American camps, Wounded Knee,
31
Ibid., 307.
Ibid., 32.
33
Kevin Rothstein, “Indians Meet to Commemorate the Forced Internment of Their Ancestors,” The Patriot Ledger,
29 Oct. 2001, 11.
32
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and Deer Island all grapple with contested, slow movement toward official commemoration,
difficulty stemming from complexities of history and meaning that resist easy resolution.
The struggle to arrive at some resolution of meaning may be the crux of the
redevelopment debate at Deer Island. As much as redevelopment will involve physical
restructuring of the built environment, some of the most critical changes may be abstract—they
may involve the semiotics of space, or the nature of what is signified by the built environment.
Several factors indicate that the parties involved in the debate are cognizant of this non-concrete
plane of contestation. Part of the tribes’ concerns about the site stem from beliefs that ancestors’
remains harbor spirits that should be accorded respectful treatment—yet both natives and nonnatives have suggested, to varying degrees, that there may be no native remains still on the
island. MWRA spokeman Gary Butler told the press they were all removed before the MWRA
occupied the island: “[T]hat island has been dug down to the core and rebuilt. There is no such
burial ground.” MWRA director Douglas MacDonald concurred, saying the old graves were
probably destroyed during construction of a jail and military fortifications on the island; he
called the finding of remains a “pretty slim, remote possibility.”34 The MWRA agreed in 1993 to
resume a search for graves and artifacts, though state archaeologist Brona Simon noted that five
previous surveys failed to unearth evidence of the internment camps.35 Simon speculated, on the
basis of historical New England native burial practices, that the dead were buried at the island’s
southern end, atop two small hills that appeared on early topographical maps, but were leveled
during construction at the end of the nineteenth century.36 MICDI consultant McCann voiced a
degree of uncertainty about the persistence of native remains on the island: “They may have
34
Peter Howe, “MWRA Disturbing Graves, Say Indians,” The Boston Globe, 17 June 1992, 30.
Scott Allen, “MWRA Lets Tribal Group Dig Up the Past / Search for Indian Graves to Proceed on Deer Island,”
The Boston Globe, 1 Oct. 1993, 29.
36
Micheal Kenney, “An Island of Sad Memory for Indians,” The Boston Globe, 19 Feb. 1993, 15.
35
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erased the evidence.”37 The interesting implication about the possible absence of actual burials
is that the site nonetheless remains contested because of its symbolic value. McCann gestured at
this value in 1998, telling The Boston Herald, “Part of it is the symbolism”; his colleague Sam
Sapiel agreed, saying, “It’s a sacred symbol.”38 The debate over redevelopment, in other words,
is closely bound up in a system of signs and signifiers.
In the most general sense, the physical island signifies a zone where historical identities
and relationships can be renegotiated, where old patterns of meaning can give way to new ones.
As the Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs wrote in 2000, “[A series of ] Native
Consultation meetings are viewed as historically notable, bringing our respective nations
together after so many generations to commune with one another about a common ancestry and
history.”39 This potential for reconciliation and re-definition of historic dynamics was articulated
by MICDI in 1998: “Just as Boston was the colonial center from where the master plan for the
extermination was developed, it is only fitting that Boston become the place where our people
are acknowledged, respected and where we can develop economic resources to thrive again.”40
(A few years later, in comments made on the DGMP and DEIS, MICDI expressed dismay at the
draft texts for being “bereft of mentioning the need for social healing of the Indian community,
and of the need for reconciliation between the Indian and non-Indian communities.”41) The site
has facilitated new avenues of communication: public comments made on the DGMP and DEIS,
for example, have initiated a dialogue between previously disconnected and sometimes
37
Donovan Slack, “Seeking Respect for the Dead at Last / Indians Seek to Bar Dogs in Island Park,” The Boston
Globe, 27 April 2003, B1.
38
Tim Cornell, “Tribes Want Deer Island Park Renamed to Reflect Tragic Past,” The Boston Herald, 9 March 1998,
21.
39
Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs, 2000 Annual Report, 8
<http://www.mass.gov/dhcd/components/Ind_Affairs/com_rpt1.pdf> (cited 19 April 2005).
40
Tim Cornell, “Tribes Want Deer Island Park Renamed to Reflect Tragic Past,” The Boston Herald, 9 March 1998,
21.
41
National Park Service, “Public Comment,” Final Environmental Impact Statement, 50.
DeLucia 16
antagonistic tribal councils, government agencies, and private organizations. This dialogue has
been treated extensively in the Boston press, providing evidence that the native presence once
effaced from the area is still viable; the redevelopment has thus also occasioned a re-visiting of
historiography that has tended to neglect this presence.42 In addition, the island has provided a
potential launching point for a new native coalition: in October 1991, members of tribes from
Canada and New England held a commemoration at the site, which was also an occasion for
celebration of a new alliance of 25 tribes that once shared the Algonquian language. (The
singing of the American Indian Movement’s anthem underscored this emergent pan-Indian
identity.43) Deer Island itself has thus signified a possibility for regeneration and reinvention.
The redevelopment discussion is not solely about the physical environment; it is also
about the representation of environment and history, about the dynamic between the built
environment and language. Throughout the drafting of the management plans, extensive
attention has been paid to the particularities of language—to the ways in which the island and its
history have been portrayed and narrated in the past, and to the alternative possibilities for
representation in the next few decades. The plan, that is, exemplifies a post-structuralist mode of
reading the built environment: it emphasizes that a site’s meaning is not static, and indeed that a
place can signify a multiplicity of meanings. MICDI has been especially attuned—and
resistant—to many of the nuances of language, as the group’s comments on the DGMP and
DEIS stress. In response to mention of an historical “Indian problem,” for example, phrasing
which the group found reminiscent of Nazi rhetoric about the “Jewish problem,” their comments
42
The physical reassertion of the native presence in Boston is presently occurring at another site in addition to the
island. As part of the “Ancient Fishweir Project” located on Boston Common near the Boylston T stop, native
groups are constructing the wooden fishing apparatuses used by early Indians more than 5,000 years ago, and
literally building their way back into the fabric of the city. Brian MacQuarrie, “Trapping History / Native American
Fishweir on Common Catches Interest,” The Boston Globe, 20 May 2003, B1, B4; “The Ancient Fishweir Project”
<http://www.fishweir.org> (cited 9 April 2005).
43
David Arnold, “Native Americans Ponder Past, Future / Deer Island Deaths Marked in Ceremony,” The Boston
Globe, 31 Oct. 1991.
DeLucia 17
read: “This language and its overtones are extremely offensive! The language that is found in
this report is outrageous! The fact that park service officials and all other officials responsible
for this document are oblivious to these connotations is deeply disturbing.”44 The comment-andrevision protocol for the redevelopment plans allowed this problematic meaning to be renegotiated, however, through an active, painstaking process of line editing.
Shifts in textual meaning can be precisely tracked through the stages of the planning
process via a two-part drafting method that documented every single change made to the original
text; the “Errata” appended to the final version catalogued these alterations. Many of the textual
changes were made in direct response to comments submitted by tribal representatives and the
general public.45 Some seemingly subtle changes can reveal significant shifts in meaning. The
original account of the island’s early history, for instance, read: “On Deer Island, the tragic
internment of ‘Christian Indians’ during King Philip’s War marks a chapter in the region’s
history and is a place of great importance to contemporary Indians.” This was edited to read:
“Deer Island, where Native Americans were forcibly moved by the Massachusetts Bay Colony
during the winter of 1675-76 and held in what has been called a concentration camp, is an
important site in the region’s history and place of great importance to contemporary American
Indians.”46 These edits make several key changes to the representation of history: while the
original formulation elides any attribution of blame for the internment, the new one replaces this
vagueness with a phrase acknowledging the particular actors at fault (English authorities in the
Massachusetts Bay Colony). The revision also extends the significance of the site, no longer
44
National Park Service, “Public Comment,” Final Environmental Impact Statement, 50.
Non-native individuals and groups submitted extensive public comments on the drafts, and these suggestions
warrant an entire study of their own. Among those heard from were federal and state agencies and officials;
municipalities including the town of Hingham and the city of Quincy (but not neighboring Winthrop);
environmental and outdoor recreation groups such as the Appalachian Mountain Club and Audubon Society; and
several dozen private citizens.
46
National Park Service, “Errata Sheet Attachments to Draft Environmental Impact Statement,” Final
Environmental Impact Statement, 7.
45
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deeming it resonant only among a particular ethnic group (“of great importance to contemporary
Indians”) but instead presenting it as meaningful for non-natives as well (“an important site in
the region’s history”); it reinserts the native story into the broader narrative of American history.
Finally, the revision acknowledges that the site has been called a concentration camp,
incorporating this controversial view instead of avoiding it.
Equally important revisions were made a few paragraphs later, when the following
sentence was appended to a segment previously devoted only to the islands’ ancient shell
middens, or dumping grounds: “Archeological evidence suggests that Native Americans also
used the islands for fishing, hunting, gathering plants, agriculture, processing food, tool
manufacturing, and social and ceremonial activities.”47 This revision highlights the complexity
and multiplicity of ways in which indigenous groups used the islands, gesturing at the
sophistication of their pre-contact lifeways and the importance of the sites to their cultural
practices and identities. Several paragraphs later, the following sentence appearing in the draft
was deleted: “Those that were finally released in May 1676 dispersed because their existing
communities had become devastated.” Inserted in its place was this passage:
Records indicate that the colonial government sold some Indians into slavery, or
indentured them to English families. But other praying Indians who were released
moved into and strengthened Christian Indian settlements. Praying Indians also
dispersed to other Native communities including the Nipmucks, Nipmucs,
Wampanoags, and Abenakis (Penobscots) and to communities farther south, west,
and north in Canada. They were joined by traditional Indians who sought refuge
in these communities.48
These revisions dispel the Vanishing Indian myth (implied in the original phrasing) that native
communities disintegrated and disappeared following contact; they acknowledge the complicity
of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in enslaving and otherwise abusing the natives; and they
47
48
Ibid., 7.
Ibid., 7-8.
DeLucia 19
underscore the persistence of the native presence, connecting the internees to tribal groups which
endure into the present.
As the revisions above suggest, the interpretation of meaning arrived at in the most recent
set of plans is provisional—perhaps serviceable in this historical moment, but open to change.
The redevelopment documents signify a pragmatic commitment to creating a truth that accords
with the best contemporary apprehension of past events, via a sometimes controversial process of
open negotiation. MICDI invoked this pragmatic spirit when it critiqued the National Park
Service for “failure and refusal to negotiate with the tribes over the language of [the DGMP and
DEIS].”49 Not all, or even most, of the suggestions made by native groups and the public were
incorporated into the revised General Management Plan; but the emendations made by the Park
Service suggest at least an effort to engage further in dialogue about meaning. The Deer Island
redevelopment project is still in its liminal stages, and negotiation is ongoing.50 Yet even at this
early moment, there has been recognition that the island’s built environment can function as a
dynamic signifier of new meaning—and that active, collective participation in this meaning’s
construction will be critical to developing a viable future for all of the Boston Harbor Islands.
49
National Park Service, “Public Comment,” Final Environmental Impact Statement, 51.
No new documents concerning the redevelopment plan have been made publicly available since 2003. All
management documents relevant to the Boston Harbor Islands are posted on the National Park Service’s island
website, <http://www.nps.gov/boha/pphtml/documents.html> (cited 15 May 2005).
50
DeLucia 20
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---. 2001 Annual Report. 31 May 2002. Available from
<http://www.mass.gov/dhcd/components/Ind_Affairs/com_rpt2.pdf> [19 April 2005].
---. 2002 Annual Report. 10 Nov. 2003. Available from
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Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. “A History of the Sewer System.” Available from
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Statement. Boston Harbor Islands: A National Park Area. 2000. Available from
<http://www.nps.gov/boha/parkdocs/dgmp/dgmptoc.html> [15 March 2005].
---. General Management Plan. Boston Harbor Islands: A National Park Area. 2002.
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---. Final Environmental Impact Statement. Boston Harbor Islands: A National Park Area.
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National Park Service. “Briefing Statement: Boston Harbor Islands General Management Plan
Summary.” 19 Feb. 2002. Available from
<http://www.nps.gov/boha/parkdocs/brief219.html> [6 May 2005].
---. “National NAGPRA FAQ.” Available from
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DeLucia 21
Secondary Sources
Calloway, Colin. First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History. Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999.
Foote, Kenneth. Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1997.
Lepore, Jill. The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.
---. “When Deer Island Was Turned Into Devil’s Island.” Bostonia Magazine, summer 1998,
14-19.
Snow, Edward Rowe. The Islands of Boston Harbor, 1630-1971. New York: Dodd, Mead and
Co., 1971.