This is the second of two articles about the Mashpee Wampanoag’s efforts to assert their fishing rights on Cape Cod. Read the first story here.
Vernon “Buddy” Pocknett steered his truck through the curving streets of Popponesset Island, Cape Cod, jostling a satchel that hung from the rearview mirror above a trucker hat reading “WTF (Where’s The Fish).” The satchel was made from a seal paw, adorned with long claws that jiggled as Pocknett took the turns, passing Teslas, sailboat-shaped mailboxes, and sunburned cyclists.
Pocknett drove to Fishermen’s Landing at the members-only Popponesset Beach, stopping at a “beach security checkpoint” run by two teenagers who hid from the July sun under an oversized umbrella. One asked Pocknett if he was there to fish, and Pocknett said he was doing research. The teen sounded skeptical and asked what kind. Pocknett patted the sticker on his windshield emblazoned with the official Mashpee Wampanoag tribal seal.
“Oh!” she said, sounding flustered. “You’re all set.”
“You see what I mean?” Pocknett said, with the girl barely out of earshot. “How do they get to say who’s to come down here and who’s not?”
Pocknett was at the beach to identify Indigenous water access points, paths used for generations to reach fishing grounds from shores that are now mostly privatized by non-Wampanoags. Public access points along Massachusetts waters have thinned since the mid-20th century, but their disappearance has been especially pronounced here, in and around the town of Mashpee and the Popponessett Bay, in what was once Wampanoag territory.
Meanwhile, overdevelopment has destroyed abundant wetland areas that shaped Wampanoag life for thousands of years, and water pollution threatens many aquatic species essential to the tribe’s survival. A lifelong aquaculturist and fisherman, Pocknett has recently begun work to restore access to traditional fishing grounds and the ecosystem that supports them.
Fishermen’s Landing at Popponesset Beach, near New Seabury, Cape Cod. (Photo credit: Emma Glassman-Hughes)
With help from the tribe’s Natural Resources Department, the town of Mashpee is compiling a harbor management plan, an extensive document that will set guidelines for the construction of marinas and docks. The plan will also address encroaching erosion and sea-level rise throughout this Massachusetts municipality. As part of the project, the town has invited Pocknett and a group of tribal elders to identify Indigenous pathways to the water, with the goal of eventually opening some of them back up for public use. It is a modest effort, a starting point to repair fraught relations, reconcile with the past, and strategize for the future. If the plan succeeds, it will help rebuild wetlands and traditional food sources for the tribe, once largely excluded from environmental decision-making.
At Fishermen’s Landing, Pocknett leaned against a freshly painted railing and looked out at Nantucket Sound. Sunbathers floated and dozed below, on a beach where Pocknett grew up fishing, back when it was still a hotspot for striped bass, or stripers. But as in other parts of the bay, the fish have been driven out of these spawning grounds. Since the arrival of European settlers 400 years ago, not a single season has passed without humans harvesting as much as possible from waters that are now increasingly fouled with pollution.
“It’s like they don’t see the impact [on] their great-great-grandchildren,” Pocknett said. “What’s going to happen, four generations from us right here? When’s it end?”
A Plan for the Harbor
The harbor management plan is, among other things, an attempt to ensure generations of sustainable fishing and clean water in Mashpee. The town’s Harbor Management Committee, with support from the Urban Harbors Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston, is compiling its second draft of hundreds of pages detailing everything from dock compliance to potential new aquaculture sites, which can help improve water quality over time. Once the final plan is approved by the town, it could open the door to state or federal funding to contend with existential threats like sea-level rise and a shifting coastline. But finalizing the plan has been a slow process.
Overdevelopment has destroyed abundant wetland areas that shaped Wampanoag life for thousands of years, and water pollution threatens many aquatic species essential to the tribe’s survival.
“It’s a pretty encompassing project, hence why it’s going to take a bit of time,” said Christopher Avis, the town’s shellfish constable. (Each Cape Cod town has a shellfish constable, who enforces shellfish bylaws and oversees aquaculture projects.) “We want to say, okay, here we are today. What do we do tomorrow? And in 10 years, as things change, how do we not only change with them but also kind of be ahead of the curve?”
Avis and other members of Mashpee’s Natural Resources Department are actively working to mend their relationship with the Wampanoag, acknowledging that the stewardship of local waterways is a joint effort. In the past, the two sides have clashed over the tribe’s fishing practices, but increased advocacy from Wampanoags has helped shift the town’s official stance on the “Aboriginal right to fish” from what are now private access points. The harbor management plan represents a chance for the tribe to continue this advocacy in a more formal capacity.
Under the direction of Ashley Fisher—the head of Mashpee Natural Resources until last month, when she was reassigned to the wastewater department—the harbor management plan has served as a sort of olive-branch offering to the tribe, a solicitation for Wampanoag knowledge that can help address the many resource management crises afflicting the town.
