Jamaica Bay Ethnographic Overview and Assessment William Kornblum Kristen Van Hooreweghe Prepared under cooperative agreement with Graduate Center, City University of New York Northeast Region Ethnography Program, National Park Service, Boston, MA December 2010 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This is an ethnographic inventory and assessment of the populations and com- munities residing in the watershed formed by the Jamaica Bay estuary. It is intended to assist managers and planners of Gateway National Recreation Area to better understand changes in uses of Jamaica Bay resources since the National Recreation Area was created by Congress in 1972. The findings and analysis are also for use wherever appropriate to inform the on-going Gateway General Management Plan (GMP/EIS). The study applies basic social scientific methods to analyze major dimensions of change over the past forty years of Jamaica Bay’s history. These methods include demographic analysis of 1970- 2008 Census data for the urban region defined as the area encompassed by the Jamaica Bay estuary (see Chapter 3). Ethnohistorical methods are applied (especially in Chapter 2) to analysis of changes in the settlement patterns of populations in and around the bay. Ethnographic data derived from participation at numerous meetings, public events, and park locations, and in-depth interviews of key informants from selected Jamaica Bay user groups are supplemented with data and extensive materials available on relevant web sites. For selected populations, the report provides first-hand accounts of changing uses of Jamaica Bay resources. The last chapter of the study discusses the implications of study findings for Gateway’s planning and public outreach. An ethnohistorical overview of the Jamaica Bay watershed reviews the sig- nificant periods and environmental consequences of Jamaica Bay settlement from the time of first European contact, through the present. The analysis reveals a number of significant legacies and historical themes that could become interpretive resources for Gateway. These include the Moses era legacies of environmental preservation on the one hand, and local expropriation on the other. Closely related are the legacies of a distinctive religious ecology and strong traditions of citizen activism, including activists devoted primarily to the bay’s natural resource. Since Gateway’s creation, the popula- tions and local culture has been most influenced by the drug epidemic of the 1980s, the disasters of 9/11 and of November 12, 2003, and by rapid population change due to im- migration especially over the past twenty years. A number of demographic changes and trends stand out in importance. The effects of large-scale immigration into the New York and New Jersey metropolitan area have brought new cultural groups into the communities and neighborhoods, while geographic mobility and aging have diminished the populations of residents from Irish, Italian, Jewish and African-American backgrounds in the communities and neighbor- iii hoods around Jamaica Bay. Between 1970 and 1980 the Jamaica Bay watershed area lost over 7% of its total population. The region did not return to or surpass its 1970 population totals until rapid population growth (largely accounted for by increases in immigrant settlement) in the area occurred between 1990 and 2000. In that period the watershed’s population ex- panded by almost 170,000 persons, an average of 1% each year for a total change of 10% in the decade. After 2000, and especially after 9/11, population growth in the watershed slowed to about 0.35 per year, or approximately 3.5% for the decade. Between 1980 and 2008, the White-Non Hispanic population of the Jamaica Bay Watershed lost 313,000 persons, a decline of 37%. In the past thirty years the White non- Hispanic population of the watershed declined from almost 50% in 1980, to an estimated 26.5% in 2008. In the same period, the population of Hispanics increased from 11.4% to 16.5%, while Black, non-Hispanics increased their population proportion from 36.8% to 44.9%. And although they remain relatively small, at 8.7% in 2008, the Asian/Pacific population is expanding rapidy in numbers and use of Jamaica Bay resources. While the area’s population is significantly more educated than it was in the early 1970s, poverty has almost doubled from 8.5% in 1970 to 17.5% in 2008. Poverty increas- es with distance from the Bay and is highest in Central Brooklyn, which has been true over the past forty years, although increases in inequality are most marked over the past twenty years. Immigration into the Jamaica Bay watershed region since the 1970s has bought new cultural groups into the communities whose ranks continue to grow as the popula- tions of older white-ethnic neighborhoods continues to decline. There are exceptions to this revealed in the demographic analysis as well. Residents of the neighborhoods adjacent to Gateway areas of Jamaica Bay maintain vital local neighborhood affiliations with close attachments to the Bay. The report provides an overview of the history and present influences of the older Bay neighborhoods, which have a strong local culture that has been strengthened by the experience of twin disasters. But throughout the adja- cent neighborhoods there are also signs of cultural change that the report describes. Measured by the strength of historical and spiritual attachments to Jamaica Bay resources, the report identifies a number of populations for more thorough cultural as- sessment. These are the diverse group of baymen, boating families, naturalists, and local environmental activists, who constitute the “people of the bay” in that they have long- iv standing attachments to the specific resources of Jamaica Bay. Commercial baymen, invariably termed a “dying breed,” are found to be clinging to a historic way of life in the face of what they perceive as an inconsistent and confusing regulatory regime. Local en- vironmental activists have played a major role on Jamaica Bay task forces and advisory boards and continue to do so. Their efforts are increasingly focused on mitigating ad- verse consequences of sewage effluent and storm water runoff. Local boating clubs and innumerable family boating groups help maintain a local recreational boating industry that sustains an historically continuous way of life on the Bay. Attachments to the Bay by cultural groups that make use of Bay resources for religious purposes emerge from the distinctive religious ecology of the watershed area, although not all denominations make specific demands on Gateway’s Jamaica Bay re- sources. Changes in the uses of Jamaica Bay by local Jewish populations are the result of population change and changing perceptions of Bay resources. Some neighborhoods like Canarsie have lost congregations, while others, like those of the Rockaways have gained in orthodox congregations. Increases in the religious presence along the Bay of Hindu congregations and practitioners of various forms of Santeria and other religions with African origins are also among the consequences of recent immigration, and espe- cially the growth of Guyanese and South Asian Hindu populations, as well as Haitians and West Indians, many of whom are both Christian and practitioners of Santeria or related faiths. Gateway managers and leaders of the local Hindu congregations are de- veloping lines of communication and understandings that are documented in Chapter 5, along with areas where relations remain problematic for Park personnel and Hindu religious groups. The study provides detailed descriptions of how these religions mo- tivate their adherents to come to the bay’s shores and marshes for particular religious rituals. It also finds, however, that none have specific spiritual or ritual attachments to particular places, sites, or other resources unique to Jamaica Bay. The study’s concluding chapter discusses some of the implications of the report’s findings for Gateway planning and management. The story of Barren Island and other aspects of the Bay’s ethnohistory, as presented in the study, can provide new interpre- tive resources for Gateway to consider developing. So can the intimate knowledge of the Bay by its remaining baymen and by families who have lived on the Bay for generations. The strength and variety of religious congregations in the watershed area offers the pos- sibility of public engagement around issues of environmental responsibility, especially v through discussion of how the different religious resolve issues of religion and environ- mental awareness. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One: Introduction and Background.................................................................1 The Study Region: The Jamaica Bay Catchment Area.................................................2 The Ethnographic Overview and Assessment Study...................................................3 Study Objectives.........................................................................................................5 Specific Objectives......................................................................................................7 Research Methods......................................................................................................9 Ethno-Historical Methods.......................................................................................9 Demograhic Analysis.............................................................................................11 Ethnographic Method............................................................................................15