Opening from On This Site - Native Long Island

Elliott A. Brooks Carvings

Beginning in 1933, Elliott Alvah Brooks carved figures into shoreline boulders in Orient. The carvings, later called Bear Rock Studio, were cataloged as a memorial to Poquatuck people. Brooks was a non-Native artist and collector, so the place also raises questions about who interprets Indigenous history and how Native belongings were collected during the twentieth century. The carvings preserve a local memory of Poquatuck people while showing the limits of memorials created through a non-Native collector's viewpoint. Their history invites a fuller account centered on Indigenous presence rather than disappearance. Brooks carved approximately twenty-five figures into boulders along the Long Island Sound shore. The Smithsonian catalog identifies the work as Poquatuck and Montauk Indians Memorial Carvings . Local reporting also describes Brooks's collecting of Native belongings. Together,...