The Changing Traditional Uses of Jamaica Bay, New York

Kornblum, William; Van Hooreweghe, Kristen

This ethnographic overview and assessment of the Jamaica Bay Unit, Gateway National Recreation Area, 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 watershed formed by the Jamaica Bay estuary. Ethnographic data derived from participation at numerous meetings and public events, observations at 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 traditional uses of Jamaica Bay resources. The last chapter of the study discusses the implications of study findings for Gateway’s planning and public outreach. Since Gateway’s creation in 1972, the region has experienced rapid population change due to immigration, especially over the past twenty years, which have brought new cultural groups into the local communities and neighborhoods, while geographic mobility and aging have diminished the resident populations of Irish, Italian, Jewish and African-American backgrounds. Between 1980 and 2008, the White-Non Hispanic population of the Jamaica Bay Watershed declined by 313,000 persons, or 37%, and their proportion of the total was reduced 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% of the total, while the proportion of Black, non-Hispanics increased from 36.8% to 44.9%. And the Asian/Pacific population is expanding rapidly in numbers, though their use of Jamaica Bay resources remains limited. While the watershed’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 increases with distance from the Bay and is highest in Central Brooklyn. Although immigration since the 1970s has bought significant demographic changes to the area, exceptions to these patterns are observed in the neighborhoods adjacent to Jamaica Bay, which maintain vital local neighborhood affiliations with close attachments to the Bay. These older and more stable neighborhoods have a strong local culture that has been strengthened by the experience of twin disasters. Distinguished by the strength of their historical and ongoing attachments to Jamaica Bay resources, the diverse group of baymen, boating families, naturalists, and local environmental activists constitute the “people of the bay” in that they have longstanding knowledge of and attachments to the specific resources of Jamaica Bay. Cultural groups that make use of Bay resources for religious purposes have emerged from the distinctive “religious ecology” of the watershed area, although not all denominations make specific demands on Gateway’s Jamaica Bay resources. Changes in the uses of Jamaica Bay by local Jewish populations are the result of population changes and changing perceptions of Bay resources. Some neighborhoods like Canarsie have lost long-term congregations, while others, like those of the Rockaways have gained in orthodox congregations. Increases in cultural uses of the Bay by Hindu congregations and practitioners of various forms of Santeria and other religions with African origins are the result of recent immigration, especially the growth of Guyanese and South Asian Hindu populations, as well as Haitians and West Indians, many of whom practice both Christian and Santeria or related faiths. While these religions motivate their adherents to come to the Bay’s shores and marshes for particular religious rituals, it was found that none of these groups have specific spiritual or ritual attachments to particular places, sites, or other resources unique to Jamaica Bay.