Opening from On This Site - Native Long Island

Unkechaug Ancestral Land

Unkechaug people continue to live in their ancestral South Shore homeland at Poospatuck, where the creek leads toward the Forge River and Moriches Bay. Generations of fishing, family life and care for the waters connect this reservation community to a much wider homeland. Despite colonial dispossession and continuing pressure on their land, the Unkechaug Indian Nation sustains its government, community and work to renew its language. Unkechaug Ancestral Land connects Poospatuck and the south shore Brookhaven landscape with a living Native homeland. Land, water, language, governance, and community continuity run from early records to the present. Poospatuck is both an ancestral place and a present-day reservation community of the state-recognized Unkechaug Indian Nation. The National Park Service describes generations of Unkechaug life here and the waterways linking Poospatuck Creek, the...