Yesterday I posted about Roger Water’s latest song. As was reported in Spin:
Waters’s contribution entailed reciting late Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish’s poem, “The Penultimate speech of the ‘Red Indian’ to the white man.”
“On the surface it narrates the last speech of The Native American to The White Man,” Waters said in a statement shared on Facebook, “but it speaks also to Darwish’s beloved Palestine, and its indigenous people, in fact to all victims of settler colonialism everywhere, always.”
And from the lyrics:
“But soon you will erect your world on our remains. You will pave over the sacred places. To open the road to the satellite moon. This is the age of industry. The age of coal. Fossils to fuel your thirst for fine wine. There are the dead and the settlements.”
Yeah, about that..
Roger Waters lives in the Hamptons: 229 Quimby Lane Bridgehampton, NY to be exact.
He lives approximately 16.8KM from the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club (200 Tuckahoe Rd, Southampton, NY).
And why is this relevant? From the Wikipedia page of the Shinnecock Indian Nation (hat tip: Jason):
In 2005 the nation filed a land claim against New York seeking the return of 3,500 acres (14 km²) in Southampton located near the tribe’s reservation, and billions of dollars in reparations for damages suffered by colonial land grabs. The disputed property is worth $1 billion and includes the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, which Shinnecock say is the location of traditional tribal burial grounds.
The tribe’s lawsuit challenged the state legislature’s approval of an 1859 sale of the 3500 acres of tribal land to non-native persons. This broke the terms of a 1,000-year-lease signed in 1703 by Southampton colonial officials and the tribe. The suit charges that in 1859, a group of powerful New York investors conspired to break the lease by sending the state Legislature a fraudulent petition supporting the sale, which was purported to be from a number of Shinnecock tribal members. Although other tribal members immediately protested that the petition was a forgery, the Legislature approved the sale of 3,500 acres (14 km²) of tribal land.
More here.
While Waters does not seem to live within the area of the current Shinnecock reservation or the contested area of the lawsuit, this indicates he might live within the general area:
And even if he doesn’t live within the exact area (it is hard for me to tell), he at least lives right next to it, and has benefited from these “occupied territories”
Bill Clinton partied with rock stars including Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Jon Bon Jovi, John Mellencamp and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters in the Hamptons Friday night while wife Hillary Clinton sat home baby-sitting their granddaughter.
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When Waters arrived, he was the first rocker to bond with Clinton, inviting the ex-president to play golf with him at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club and the National Golf Links.
And the golf club is not just any occupied land but their holy burial grounds!
So while Waters talks the talk in demonizing Israel for occupying so-called palestinian land, and creating songs about it and “paving over the sacred places of Indians,” he does not walk the walk.
