Local Hero: Bret Stearns

When Bret Stearns, the Director of Natural Resources for the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe, arrived on Martha’s Vineyard in 1994, the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) had just constructed their town building and community center. The tribal Natural Resources Department consisted of one person, who had little ability to enforce indigenous land and sustenance rights.

Now the Wampanoag Environmental Laboratory is pioneering new research and public education initiatives. The lab tests water and air quality and utilizes one of the most advanced fish monitoring systems in the Northeast to record local herring numbers. Town residents and visitors are more aware of the environmental and cultural significance of the clay cliffs, and of the herring that have been harvested by the Wampanoags for thousands of years. Stearns and his team have built the Natural Resources Program into an innovative resource that the rest of the Island can learn from. He has taken on additional roles as a law enforcement officer and a wildlife manager as a means of helping to educate locals and visitors alike about the importance of protecting indigenous resource rights and preserving the ancient knowledge and connection to the land that is held sacred by the Wampanoag people.

Bluedot Living spoke with Stearns about the important work he and his team have done to protect the vitality and sovereignty of tribal resources in Aquinnah.

Lucas Thors: When did you first come to the Vineyard? How did you get involved with the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah)?

Bret Stearns: I first came to the Island and to the Tribe in May of 1994. I graduated from Unity College in Maine in environmental science. My emphasis in college was conservation law enforcement. I did work with Mass Fish and Wildlife, dealing with stocking fish, beaver issues, some wildlife management stuff. I’d gone to college to become a game warden — I knew I wanted to be in that field. Completely by chance, I met the former director of natural resources for the Tribe, Matthew “Cully” Vanderhoop, at an environmental conference in Maine. 

He was talking in the hallway to a group of people about the problems the Tribe was having with visitor management: people messing around with the clay [at the cliffs] and just not respecting the resource rights of the Tribe. I have a tendency to speak even when I’m not asked to, so I piped in and suggested they build a presence like the National Parks system, with rangers out there telling people what the rules are. Cully told me, “Well if it’s so easy, why don’t you figure it out?”

Cully called me a couple weeks later on the payphone in the hall of my dorm. He said he went to the tribal council and got some money together to hire me if I was willing to come to the Vineyard. When I first met Cully, I told him that I was a fly fisherman. He asked me if I had ever caught a striped bass on a fly — I said no. He told me his brother was Buddy Vanderhoop, the most famous striped bass fisherman in the country, and said if I went to the Island I was guaranteed a 36-inch striped bass on a fly. Out of all the things, that’s really the reason I first came down here.

Lucas: What was it like when you first showed up in Aquinnah? What did the Tribe’s [natural resource protection] operation look like?

Bret: When I came here, the tribal building was still down a dirt road, and there was no housing. They had a Natural Resources Department of one person, and there was no lab. The first couple years there was very little funding, but the goal was to ensure that tribal rights were being respected among local and federal agencies, protecting tribal property and ensuring a clean ecosystem and future environmental health for the Tribe and for Aquinnah. It all started as a wildlife program and an education program.

At that time, the tribal building was the main hub of activity for tribal citizens: the people that made this community, who worked their whole lives to make this building possible. People proudly drove down this road in the morning and would be waiting for me to make a cup of coffee for them — [it was where the tribal population spent so much of their time]. People had communal dinners at night, and during the day there were meetings all the time because everyone was trying to scope out the future.

Lucas: What other roles did you serve in town and on the Island?

Bret: Some people only know me in one role. I do want to give a shout out to the Chilmark Police Department and Aquinnah police and Tri-Town Ambulance. Those entities are incredibly important to the fabric of this Island, and they have given me the breadth of experience I’ve needed to do the job I do.

Lucas: Did you have some initial objectives to work on when you first started working in the natural resources office?

Bret: At the time there was a big problem with people taking the clay. Certainly from a conservation point of view, but also from a cultural perspective, the Tribe didn’t want that happening.

We wanted to make it clear what the rules are, but we needed to get people certified so we could legally enforce those rules and engage in a visitor management process. Myself and the other guy I came down here with, Jeff Day, we became special officers for the town of Aquinnah — the town owns the cliffs but not the beach, so there are jurisdictional boundaries that we were able to merge by getting certified to a level of municipal officer, but working for the Tribe.

Some other reservations are very large properties where you have full authority, but Aquinnah is what you call a checkerboard reservation, so you have properties in different locations and you have to traverse tribal property to state property to town property to local property to get to those other places.

In the summer of ’94 we had a presence; by ’95 I got my law enforcement certification and we started to really work on some of these issues. By ’95 we had also joined Tri-Town Ambulance service. We wrapped that into our program where we were working for the Tribe but responding alongside tri-town. 

Lucas: How did the process of creating the lab go? What caused the Tribe to want their own lab?

Bret: The Tribe wanted to engage in aquaculture, and when you build that you are bringing in water to feed these animals. I knew the kind of equipment we needed, I knew the kind of people we needed. 

I never planned on being in the lab business, but we knew we had to get water quality data. We were shipping water off the Island [to get it tested], and sometimes it would take a year before you got your data back. We knew we had to be in charge of this information. The hatchery was built and there was aquaculture happening. Now I have this incredible staff down there, we do air quality, water quality, fisheries research. Everything that we built has come from necessity.

I originally hired Andrew (Jacobs) to grow scallops — we were doing a bay scallop restoration project. My lab manager Kendra Newick ended up taking a job in British Columbia, and so we didn’t have a lab manager. Kendra had a masters degree so she was able to hold the lab at a high level of certification. I had a talk with Andrew and I said “I think you could run the lab.” I changed the level of certification to meet what he had, and now he has managed the lab for many years.

There is a very high level of cross-certification here because everyone is constantly filling in for each other. There is nobody on this team who won’t clean the scallop cages if they need cleaning. Our purpose here is to protect and enhance the resources of the Tribe, and everyone is really passionate about that. It’s tackling a stack of paperwork, but it’s also going down to the creek and catching herring at midnight.

Lucas: In your view, what are some of the most important aspects of working for the Tribe?

Bret: I have people who are really passionate about what they do, and you get these other people who are incredibly proud about their tribal citizenship. I have had some incredible tribal members work here who aren’t only proud of what they do, they’re proud of who they are. They are proud to excel in the place that represents them. Most of what I’ve done here, and what I’m most proud of, is being the liaison between those two elements, and to bring the culture and the science together as someone who is sort of in the middle. 

My role has been to be as neutral as I can. It’s fair to say that Chilmark and Aquinnah don’t always get along, and the same thing can be said of the Tribe and the town. There are lots of boundary issues and water rights issues. I have been a uniformed officer for the town of Chilmark since ’96, but I work for the Tribe also, and I have been a volunteer for Tri-Town Ambulance since ’95.

You cannot replicate a quality of life, you have to keep it alive and own it. Once it’s lost it’s lost. That’s one thing about these wind farm issues. Obviously it’s upsetting to see those flashing lights on the horizon, but to the Tribe it’s more than a big deal, because you are the People of First Light. When something breaches that first light that shines on your land, that is a deep issue. If this place did not have a strong ecosystem and swimmable, fishable waters, nobody would be here.

Lucas: What are some projects that you think made a lasting impact within the tribal community and on the Island in general?

Bret: One big thing that stands out to me is the Lobsterville Beach restoration after Hurricane Sandy. That was seven years of our lives, and it’s better than it was before. That storm was so devastating that even the town recognized it was probably best if the Tribe took the lead. Having that confidence in the ability to work so seamlessly with the conservation commission and the town and the Army Corps of Engineers and the federal agencies, that was done with almost no regulatory burden locally. Everyone knew that this needed to get fixed.

Another thing that resonates with me is work that was done to foster recognition in the state and with the federal government regarding sustenance rights. Cultural uses of resources are a natural right of the Tribe. The federal government didn’t understand why these people didn’t need a permit to harvest these resources — none of that was sussed out yet.

Lucas: Why do you think it’s important to preserve the sustenance and resource rights of tribal communities, and specifically the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head?

Bret: Even today, every time that I take the boat and go out past the Gay Head Cliffs, I stop and I take a picture, I look at the lighthouse, and I think to myself, “this is the most special place in the world.” I have been lucky enough to raise my kids out here, my boys, who love the outdoors. This Island has provided way more for me than I have for it. I knew when I left college that I never wanted to live in a place where you are [stranded] on the side of the road and someone doesn’t stop. And I want to be the guy that stops.

I have learned how easily it is to lose that knowledge and that connection with the natural world. It relates to the fisheries work we are doing where it seems like yesterday there was a half million herring and today there’s less than 11,000. If you don’t pay attention and make sure you are being proactive, it can happen right under your nose. 

If you stand at the bottom of the cliffs, you are looking up at 100 million years, thousands of years of people living off this land, and living with the land. I think that is something worth honoring and preserving.