Lawyer in Oneidas' dispute says landowners face risk
Aug. 11, 2001

By R. PATRICK CORBETT
Observer-Dispatch

SYRACUSE — Private property in the Oneida land claim territory in Oneida and Madison counties still is at risk, John Benjamin Carroll, lawyer for Madison-Oneida Landowners Inc., said Friday.

Last week the U.S. Justice Department filed an amended complaint with the U.S. District Court in Albany asking for permission to drop landowners and the two counties from the suit over 250,000 acres the Oneidas say were illegally taken from them in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Gov. George Pataki hailed the announcement as a positive development in the case.

The department said at the time that it would seek damages on behalf of the Oneidas from New York state only. The Oneida Indian Nation of New York responded that it would not drop the counties from its lawsuit.

Senior U.S. District Judge Neal P. McCurn also ruled earlier that the court would not hold landowners liable in the case.

Carroll said Friday that one form of relief that the Justice Department is asking against the state, however, is tantamount to making some private property worthless.

The federal agency’s amended complaint asks the court to consider ejecting the state from land it owns in the claim area as part of an eventual settlement.

Carroll said that means the court could decide to give the Oneida Indians parts of state highways and a stretch of the Thruway in the two counties. If that happened, he said, the Oneidas could block access to bordering properties, effectively evicting some individual landowners, regardless of the intent of federal lawyers.

Oneida Indian Nation spokesman Jerry Reed said Friday, “Our comment from day one has been that the state is responsible (for the illegal taking of Oneida land).” He said Carroll’s interpretation of the Justice Department action “doesn’t change anything.”

Carroll said the ejectment provision against the state also would remove an incentive for the parties to go back to the bargaining table to settle the land dispute.

“You’d have no negotiating strength,” he said. “How much is the Thruway worth?”

Negotiations collapsed last summer and none of the parties have asked the court to start them up again.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Kahn has given lawyers in the case until the end of November to file all of their paperwork, and county officials have said a court trial could begin next year.