Between Heaven and Earth Transcript

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- One of the biggest things that I like about being out on the water and being a waterman is watching the sunrise every morning and seeing God's glory shining all around. 
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- The Bay never essayed truer, nor flowered more gloriously than its creation of Tangier and Smith and islanders. Far more than any mariners' museum or mystic seaport or Williamsburg, places like the islands are art made all the more artful for contriving nothing, for simply being. 

- Chesapeake Bay Foundation thinks that the Bay, compared to the original Bay that John Smith saw about 400 years ago, is at about a quarter of that health level. 
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- Tangier Island is situated about an hour from the Virginia mainland in the waters near the southern tip of the Chesapeake Bay. It's accessible only by boat. Tangier's 800 inhabitants are descendants of immigrants from Cornwall, the west country of great Britain. In spite of their Christian heritage, the exploits of some islanders over the past 300 years have earned them a reputation for lawlessness. They have always lived off the bounty of the bay: crabs, oysters, eels, and they call themselves watermen.  
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- I started when I was 17 with my father. That's uh 21 years. Now, it's just nice being out and in the air, and... you do have the freedom to decide what you can do aboard your boat, uh, how to fish your pots.

- Nanner Pruit: I've got two boys, one which is 19 and one which is 13, and there's nothing that I would love any more than to see them have a future on the water.

- There's really no other way to generate income unless you're a storekeeper unless you operate a gift shop, or you have to be lucky enough to be one of the tour boat operators. It's truly the crabs, the oysters, the fish that are the engine, the economic engine for those islands.

- Tangier is famous for its soft-shelled crabs, which are harvested in a number of ways. In some cases, watermen cast wire mesh crab pots, which are later pulled back on board. In the winter, they dredge the ocean floor with a large net. At other times, they drag the floor with a smaller net known as a crab scrape. 

- And it catches everything it catches, and we just pick out the good crabs. We may catch anywhere from 50 crabs to 350.

- I'm usually harvesting the fiddler crabs, and which I shed out to my crab house. I shed them for the soft shell crabs.

- This is a pale blue crab. We call him a wren crab because of the red... the red rim around the fin. 
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That means in a few days, he will be a soft shell crab. 

- Tom Horton: You know, a Smith islander told me once, he had rambled on for some time trying to kind of put his finger on what made the waterman and the islanders unique, and finally, he said, I guess the thing we do best out here is share the Bay's fate. What he meant was they, more than any other people in America, are living off the shore, harvesting nature's bounty, are really linked into it. They share the Bay's fate. 

- John Crockett, his eight sons, and their families were Tangier Island's first known settlers. A third of the islanders still bear their same last name, and most consider themselves kinfolk. Crockett's legacy is evident in the tightly clustered backyards, where tombstones bear only a handful of last names.  The island has few cars as residents usually weave their way through narrow streets on bicycles and golf carts. 
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It has just two grocery stores, which are supplied by a 65-foot boat from Crisfield, Maryland, that brings food, mail, passengers, and the occasional video rental. There's just one police officer but no jail, as crime is almost non-existent. As a result, parents let their children roam the island knowing that a watchful eye is always near.  Islanders are so isolated that many mainland residents don't even know they exist.  While their lifestyle may seem simple to outsiders, islanders fiercely protect it. Yet they have long been criticized for damaging the very ecosystem upon which they rely for their survival. Scientists claim that pollution, over-harvesting, and runoff have destroyed sea grass beds, causing harvests to plummet.

- In terms of habitat, we've lost about half of the Bay's filters. Fisheries: we have some real weaknesses, like oysters at one percent of what they were.

- The Chesapeake Bay watershed is over 5,000 square miles. There's a lot of farm runoff. There's a lot of unnecessary lawn fertilizer. There's a lot of pollution from cars. There's a lot of pollution from factories. And there's a lot of pollution from watermen themselves.

- I know sometimes people are shocked when they see watermen dumping. But you see that you see engine oil dumped over or pumped out of the build. You see cans thrown over.

- As the Bay's health has declined, oyster populations have declined, leaving many watermen with really only the blue crab to survive on. Thing of it is the watermen are at the bottom of the cycle. So, we're the one who suffers the most, but we're the one that gets regulated the most. 

- Around 1967, people concerned about the deterioration of the Bay formed the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Its single purpose was to save the Bay through environmental education. In 1995, CBF called for a ban on all crabbing beyond a depth of 40 feet. Many islanders felt that the environmentalists were attacking their livelihood, and that dynamic quickly ignited a cultural and political firestorm.

- Tangier's watermen do not have much respect for environmentalists. They see environmentalists and scientists as the enemy.

- I think some of the environmental groups themselves would like to see the watermen off the Bay altogether. They see the waterman as a threat. That they're just out there to take and take and take.

- And the scientists, of course, have an income whether the rain falls or not, so they can afford to be concerned about the long-term condition of the Bay. The watermen can't.

- I think the conflict makes sense and is predictable, in fact, because CBF has the ability and the obligation to look long-term, to look out, you know, 2, 5, 10, 20 years, whereas the watermen can't do that.

- One of the difficulties that the Chesapeake Bay Foundation has had in communicating with watermen is that we use language of science and science talks about generalities, probabilities, lots of numbers, and it's very different from the hands-on, "I was here last week, and I know this part of the Bay like the back of my hand," experience that watermen have.

- My husband despised CBF. I mean, he had circle with a slash through it and CBF painted on his crabhouse. He hated it.

- Over 90% of the people on the island are related either to the fishery or are in the fishery. That if the fishery goes, Tangier goes. As the debate raged, mounting regulations, including limits on new commercial fishing licenses, put economic pressure on the watermen, whose very survival may hinge on whether the next generation has confidence in the future. My youngest son doesn't have any hope at all in being a waterman and carrying on the heritage here on here. I mean, we're to the end of the road. We can't fall back anymore and make a living. We just can't survive. 

- In response to CBF proposals. Maryland's legislature closed the crabbing season in mid-November instead of the usual date of December 31st. With the harvest at a 36-year low, the watermen saw the law as an assault on their $186 million dollar annual impact on the region.

- We were willing to give up December, but we didn't want to give up all or half of November. It's just like you slammed the door. There's no more income. That's the worst time of year. You need that to tide you over for the winter, in case the oystering is not good.

- You put that up there with a little bit of twisted truth and untruth and half-truth, and pretty soon, it got to be a pretty ugly scene. [match strike]

- We had a fire in one of our buildings on Smith Island and it was ruled arson by the fire marshal. The fire became a visible expression of the heat of the conflict. 
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So, we don't know who did it.

- For centuries, watermen have been as rough and salty as the sea from which they make their living. In fact, throughout much of the 1800s, watermen commonly launched pirate-style attacks and raided each other's oyster beds.

- You know, there have been a lot of people shot over the last century or two over crabs and oysters. You've had fights between Tangier and Smith, fights among watermen, fights between the states Maryland and Virginia. In more recent decades, it's been more legal battles, so you know there has been a lot of conflict.

- In the early 1800s, Methodist preacher Joshua Thomas crisscrossed the Chesapeake Bay, hoping to convert islanders and tame them of their notorious lawlessness. In spite of his missionary successes, it's doubtful Thomas could imagine it would take nearly 200 years for the spiritual seed he planted to fully bear its fruit.

- The biblical perspective, from my part, was brother against brother. Sister against sister, friend against friend, church against community. I thought we need to heal that.

- It's something that the Lord put on my heart years and years ago, and I prayed about it that the Lord would send someone here to teach us, you know, exactly where he wants us. 
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- In 1997, an unknown outsider, a doctoral candidate from the University of Wisconsin- Madison stepped off the boat and right into the Bay's raging firestorm. Susan Drake, who had worked on environmental treaties for the US State Department at the United Nations Mission in Washington, DC, came to Tangier after hearing about the shed burning and the spiritual revival that had swept the island in 1995. Drake believed that it might prove an ideal testing ground for her thesis that conflict in faith-based communities requires faith-based resolutions. 

- My original hypothesis for my research work was that if you work within the value system of a community it will enable them to see their responsibility to care for the creation, to care for the environment; that it would also empower them to feel that they have control over their future and not their future controlling them or government controlling them.

- People around here are very slow to change and a lot of people don't take calmly to strangers, to outside people coming in.

- There's no one wants to change. I know, I'm the worst for one to change, but there had to be a change. I went to several members of the church and I saw that the church was the major force for change, and that women were also a major uh force for change in the community.

- This is a part of our way of life, just like crabbing is, God is I mean, you can't separate the two.

- And so, if you come in, make no reference to the church, no reference to the scriptures, it is like telling only half of the story that has to be told in order to generate the needed change, the needed action.

- When the faith-based effort was first proposed, I was both interested, but also had a certain level of skepticism about its ability to be able to truly change the behavior of the people on Tangier. I've been working with Tangier for 15 years. I've been trying to instill an environmental ethic there and I know how difficult that is and to think that some effort can come in and in a very short wave of the wand make a difference our frankly was very skeptical. 

- Though she was an outsider, Drake's faith-based approach impressed islanders, who invited her to speak at a joint public service of Swain Memorial United Methodist Church and New Testament Church. Citing the second chapter of Genesis, she told islanders that obedience to the earthkeeping, fruitfulness, and Sabbath principles, would ensure the preservation of the environment and maintain the integrity of the Bay's fisheries.

- When I was giving this message, I used this picture which is found in every waterman's boat practically on the island. On the one hand, the water is praying thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and the next minute, throwing bottles and cans and whatever overboard. I think that many of the watermen actually understood and saw for the first time the linkage of their faith to their livelihood and their everyday life out on the water. She had the Bible to back up all of her five nations and everything that she was trying to accomplish and prove.

- When Drake finished speaking, a group of watermen gathered at the altar and made an unexpected and radical promise, which would later be called "The Covenant."

- The covenant was a group of men. Sixty-some men stood up in church one morning, and vowed before God. 
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I'm sorry. 
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 That they would obey his laws. So many people made so much fun of The Covenant, and some people said, "Well, you don't need it if you're a Christian." You're supposed to obey God's laws anyway. But what is my weakness might not be your weakness. Some people needed that covenant. It was a statement that said, "Hey, you'd got a bunch of Christians here who-- some of them weren't obeying the law-- who are going to commit to obeying the law no matter what. No matter if it affects the pocketbook. No matter if it affects anything else. We're going to stand up and we're going to make a statement. I thought it was the prettiest thing when they stood up Sunday morning and we handed out about a two-foot piece of red ribbon signifying Christ's blood to me. And they wrap that around their antennas, put it on a door, something of their boat. It didn't say, "Hey, I'm a better man than you. I'm a Christian." It said, "Any Christian might end up behind that boat. You're not working for man; you're working for God. 

- The covenant covered not only working on the water but you shouldn't break any laws now. You should pay what taxes you're supposed to pay. Voting laws, I mean, speed limits, taking care of used oil.

- She's opened a lot of the watermen's eyes to the fact that hey we need to stop throwing our trash in the water. We need to keep our oil cans on the boat.

- Nanner saved his for a whole week. It was the talk of the island about how many bags of trash Nanner had on his dock that he would normally have dumped in Chesapeake Bay.

- I never seen any harm of throwing trash overboard until it was revealed to me that I was damaging my witness for Christ. And the first few weeks of doing it, it was a pretty big hassle.

- The change I've seen in my husband is enormous. I mean, it's nothing short of a miracle.

- I've had people who come here occasionally tell me that the island is so much cleaner now it looks like a different place.

- I do the best of my ability to abide by the laws such as no saving any little crabs or no saving any illegal soft crabs. Well, one of the laws that has been made is you can't put a fish in a pillar pot.

- {Inaudible] refused to put um bait in his peeler pot. Refused it, no matter what.

- When you can't do that, you don't catch as many pillars and you lose the jimmy crabs, which is the bait in the pot, and basically, just make less money.

- I think the Lord just sent crabs his way. Some of them lost a lot of money by not doing it, but they still did it. And I'm so proud of them. I just-- and I know God is. 
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- With the covenant as their catalyst, islanders created Tangier Watermans' Stewardship for the Chesapeake. Known as TaSC, the group is focused on implementing the 2020 vision plan, and encouraging stewardship throughout the Bay.

- We've got an environmental movement going. We've got an economic movement going. We've got an education movement going. It's been the first time in my 25 years of covering the Bay that I've seen some of these communities like Tangier really brought into realizing, "Yeah, you know, "we not only have this responsibility. It's absolutely a mandate to care for the creation."

- The stewardship initiative has empowered both men and women by giving them a voice in regulatory matters. They founded an advocacy group known as FAITH, which stands for Families Actively involved in Improving Tangiers Heritage. It's focused on enhancing and sustaining local fisheries, providing better family health care coverage, developing a more diversified job market, and addressing commercial licensing and legislative issues.

- I remember one person, when we went to talk to the federal government in Annapolis, she said, "Thank you for coming." You've put a face on issues that we didn't have a face to. She said, "We'll never make a decision about Tangier anymore without thinking about people of Tangier and what they've been doing with this faith group and with the initiative 2020.

- We've asked other partners to come in, to look at relocating businesses there. We've looked some in aquaculture but also looked at things like telecommuting. So ways that they can make a living, bring some money to the island, yet still maintain their culture.

- We would like to get the women together to do more crafts because we have a lot of tourists coming into the island. About three boats come in every day in the summertime between May and October. Susan got us in touch with a couple she knew from Norway who did decorative art, and then, we have a local who does a lot of woodwork, a lot of woodworking. What Susan brought, what this whole idea was able to accomplish was to resolve a conflict in a non-violent way. 

- My role is simply and has only really been as a catalyst, as a spark. But all the ideas that have come up, whether it be the covenant, whether it be the 2020 Vision, all have been derived from Tangier man. 

- Though the faith-based stewardship initiative began to ease the battle between watermen and environmentalists, it also ignited an entirely new one. Because of the covenant's emphasis on obedience to civil and fishery laws, opponents argue that willing reduction in the harvest by watermen will destroy the local economy. They contend that harvest levels are simply cyclical and will rebound on their own without the initiative. Opponents also demanded that Drake leave immediately. They not only threatened her life, they have severely ostracized those involved in the covenant, FAITH, and TaSC, some of whom have felt pressured into abandoning their pledge.

- There is some fierce resistance to the stewardship initiative. I think some people in Tangier are very upset about it.

- I being called a lot of different stuff, and that I've been brainwashed, that I don't understand what's going on. I've had a lot of backs turn on me. I've lost my closest friend. Uh, we talk, and we, you know, we speak to each other, but it's not like it was. Probably never been like it was.

- If we hadn't had Susan, we probably would never have done that. But it takes an objective person not to do the group, pulling everybody together, and saying, "Okay, now, here's what you want. "Here's what you want. "What are you going to do about it? Who's willing to give up stuff?" 

- I think the whole experience has kind of refined us. We needed to sort of weed out some of this stuff in our lives that weren't so important and focus more on the things that are important.

- I've learned that it takes more than talking love. I mean, you have to show it regardless how people treat you.

- A house divided cannot stand. The Chesapeake Bay divided cannot stand. The farming community divided cannot stand. We have to work together, and we have to pull together. 

- There is a very interesting thing that I realized, which is that after 15 years of working with Tangier people, Was doing ethics there and working in many different dimensions, that we were never going to be successful because we never used Jesus, which is their medium for understanding the world. And so, once we were able to make that bridge and to see that this Christian-based community-valued things in a Christian way and that if we could get them to embrace the environment within the Christian value system that, in fact, we were going to move forward.

- When you think about small communities, rural communities, this is an area of enormous importance to study and to realize the saliency of what that faith does in terms of behavior. 

- You're never going to regulate your way or legislate your way to where you really need to be if you intend to have a sustainable society.

- I believe that this faith-based stewardship initiative is quite a universal process.

- The lessons, I think, can be applied to the timberman in the northwest, can be applied to, you know, the rangers in the Midwest. it can be applied really to anywhere, whether it's Christian or no matter what the fundamental belief is. 
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- In many ways, all people are alike. Chesapeake Bay islanders. Whether you live on or beyond the Bay, you'll likely struggle with the inexorable ebb and flow of both environment and human relationships. Yet, unlike the watermen and their families, most people see themselves as so far removed from the earth's natural resources that they remain ignorant of the destructive power of excessive consumption and waste, behaviors which nearly killed the waterman way of life. Back in the misty, scenic Chesapeake, islanders continue to tie their fates to the sometimes precarious life cycle of the Bay's valued blue crab. As they battle the forces that threaten their legacy, islanders now carry a renewed and deepened resolve to keep their new covenant to serve as a vital link between the spiritual and physical, between heaven and earth.

- The relationship between CBF and Tangier has changed dramatically and profoundly, and I hope and think for the long term.

- A lot of the feeling of total helplessness is gone and a lot more confidence that there is a future and that their children and grandchildren very well may have a place and be able to stay here.

- There was a pillar run that started in end of July, and it's just finished the first of October, and it's unheard of to go that long and this late into the season. You know, I made less money this spring, but God made up for it, more than made up for it by what he provided towards the end of the season. 

- And it says he channels the minds of kings like it does the paths of rivers,  so that's what we're relying on.  
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