Indigenous…To Flushing
By: Shannon Mayo
On a cool Saturday afternoon in April, a woman sat on her recliner and looked out her window towards the sky, as she reflected on back on her life and the future of her heritage in Flushing, New York.
Flushing is a neighborhood in Queens, one of the five boroughs that make up New York City. The neighborhood has experienced many cultural changes through the years. Some of these changes go as far back as the 17th century, when the Dutch settled on the land which was inhabited by a Native American tribe called the Matinecocks.
We were one of the first tribes to set foot on this land, in this town. That may be one of the reasons that I will never leave Flushing. Flushing is a place I feel a deep connection with because I grew up here. My parents grew up here, my grandparents grew up here and my ancestors grew up here. Flushing is where I belong.
“Flushing is my home and it always will be,” said Pat Waters, who is a descendant of the Matinecock tribe.
Waters, 65, and a retired school teacher, lived in Flushing all of her life. Despite being half-Native American, Pat said that she pretty much had a normal life growing up with her parents and siblings.
Before the contemporary surge of immigration in Flushing, the neighborhood was mainly a working-class and middle-income area whose residents were of Jewish, Irish, Italian and German ancestry. By the 1970s, Flushing saw an influx of Chinese immigrants.
“I never seen a town change so much in my life. When I head towards Main Street, to go to the library, I feel like I am in a different country,” Waters said.
“It looks like Chinatown in Manhattan. And don’t go and shop in the stores, because there were times when people followed me around as if I was going to steal something,” Waters said.
Richard Waters, Pat’s brother, who now resides in Seattle, Washington, agreed with his sister about how it was like growing up in Flushing and how it has changed.
“Racism was strong back in the 1950s and 1960s and it is still evident today. Not only are we African American, but we are also Native American, which makes us apart of another minority group,” Richard Waters said.
“Flushing was predominantly white, so obviously there were not too many Indians were living in there. Most of them lived in towns going out to Long Island, including members of my family,” he said.
The Matinecock Tribe
The Matinecock Indian tribe, a division of the Algonquin nation, were the first local inhabitants of Flushing and the surrounding area, before the Dutch and English settled there in the 1640s and 1650s. In 1684, the tribe signed a deed that gave control of all the land, consisting of Whitestone. The tribe left Whitestone and headed west towards, Great Neck and Long Island.
“My father told me stories about my ancestors but, at that time, I didn’t understand the full depth of my heritage until I got older and wanted to find out more about it myself. My search on my heritage helped my niece begin her journey on earning about her family,” Pat said.
Pat’s niece, Donna Baron, was also born and raised in Flushing, wrote a book called “The Long Island Indians and their New England Ancestors”. The book focuses on the history of the Thirteen Tribes of Long Island and the author includes her own connection to the Matinecock tribe.
“Growing up I was told that I am Native American on my father’s side and that we are related to the Thirteen Tribes of Long Island. But like most children, I did not take much interest because my elders said, ‘We do not speak of it, for it is not proper,” Barron said.
She began her journey in 1994 which began her exploration of the Red Path, a spiritual healing tradition. This brought her to a distant past filled with culture and a history of stories passed down, from generation to generation.
“In 1996, I decided to find out about my heritage. Through revelations of my life and with assistance from my friends, I started to look for answers o the questions and curiosity that I had,” Barron said.
“Some questions were ‘Who are my grandparents?’ Where did hey come from? What tribes are they from? What were their lives like?’ I became tired of wondering and wanted answers. I found an old copy of an incomplete family tree that a distant relative had given my father and I started from there,” Barron said.
This quest taught Donna about the tradition(s) that are held dear to her people. In November 1999, she went through a naming ceremony and is known to those in the Native American community as “Gentle Spirit”.
“I wrote to this book not to proclaim anything other than what I am. I have been found to prove my heritage, which brought me to this book, where I want to share my research and family history with others,” Barron said.
The Lost Spirits
Courtesy of Patch.com
After Barron’s book was published, members of her family were featured in a 2008 documentary called “The Lost Spirits”, which followed their lives in Little Neck, New York and showed the moving of Matinecock burial ground in the 1930s to build a road, which in recent years, have plagued the tribe and stirred controversy in the town.
According to Barron, the 10-acre plot, encompassing a triangle with points at the intersection of Northern Boulevard and Little Neck Parkway, Jesse Court and 43rd Avenue, used to be the burial ground of hundreds of Matinecock Indians.
“If you look at the register of Matinecocks that actually made the move to the mass grave at Mount Zion Church, there are only 13 names on, which seems odd when you consider that my people lived in this area for thousands of years and used that land to bury our dead, for at least a couple of hundred,” Barron said.
The filmmaker of the documentary, Eric MaryEa, is half-Italian and half-Matinecock and knows that there are still more of his ancestors around.
“It’s important we protect our future generations, by teaching them about this history,” MaryEa said.
Pat saw the documentary at the 2009 Queens Film Festival and she had a similar reaction to MaryEa.
Home Is Where the Heart Is
“It is very important that we teach everybody about the history of the Matinecock tribe because it is a part of everyone’s history. We were one of the first tribes to set foot on this land, in this town. That may be one of the reasons that I will never leave Flushing,” Pat said.
“No matter how many people of all different ethnicities come and go, Flushing is a place I feel a deep connection with because I grew up here. My parents grew up here, my grandparents grew up here and my ancestors grew up here. Flushing is where I belong,” Pat said.
Flushing Neighborhood 