Oneidas, landowners still frustrated
Dec. 5, 1999

By R. PATRICK CORBETT
Observer-Dispatch

VERONA — The social fabric of western Oneida County and northern UCE Homepage has changed — perhaps irrevocably — in the year since the Oneida Indian Nation stepped up its land-claim lawsuit.

Since the Oneidas went to court seeking to sue 20,000 individual landowners in the two-county area, relations between the Oneidas and many of their suddenly angry neighbors have frayed to the breaking point.

A recent letter threatening violence against the Nation is just the most recent — and most frightening — manifestation of the tension. Even as the Oneidas’ Turning Stone Casino Resort continues to employ local residents, attract visitors and lure entertainment acts and boxing matches, many residents now look at the Oneidas as harming the region instead of helping it.

For many months, a landowner group has picketed Nation businesses, and residents have come under pressure not to fill their gas tanks or buy cigarettes at the nation’s many SavOn gasoline stations.

As for the Oneidas, they have made statements this year blasting landowner groups for rhetoric that possibly promotes violence.

The Rev. Jack Fucci of the Abundant Life Worship Center in Oneida said the Oneidas might have made a tactical error.

“Naming landowners grieved people who supported them before,” he said. “How it’s settled is going to determine how people feel in the long run. The fact they want to name landowners in the lawsuit will be hard to overcome unless there is a formal apology. It’s hard to undo things once the cork’s out of the bottle.”

Tensions reached new heights Dec. 8, 1998.

That was the day the Oneidas asked a federal judge to add some 20,000 landowners in the two counties to their land-claim lawsuit, which had languished since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1985 the Oneidas had land wrongfully taken from them in the late 1700s and in the 1800s.

Oneida Nation leaders have said right along they threatened to add residents to the lawsuit to spark action on a settlement.

“Prior to the amended complaint, there were 14 years of fruitless negotiations and much inactivity,” Nation spokesman Mark Emery said. “Since the filing, the Nation and other parties are actively pursuing settlement negotiations, and the Nation is optimistic the negotiations will produce a fair and equitable solution.”

A year later, however, thousands of landowners remain fearful they might lose their property or be forced to rent it from the Oneidas when the case is settled, despite assurances to the contrary from federal, state and county political leaders.

A months-long mediation process run by a former Seton Hall University law dean, Ronald Riccio, has not fully allayed such fears. So new efforts are under way to educate the public and bring frustrated landowner groups into the process. For instance, Fucci is among more than 160 area residents named to serve on a community information outreach panel designed by local government leaders.

Opposition groups
Landowner groups opposed to the lawsuit and to the Oneidas’ refusal to pay state and local taxes today claim thousands of members. The largest, Upstate Citizens for Equality, has around 4,000 members in the two-county area, President Scott Peterman said.

Dozens of UCE members regularly picket Oneida Indian Nation businesses, most notably Turning Stone, and many hundreds have turned out for protest motorcades.

“All they did is create a bunch of hate and discontent,” Peterman said. “I’ve said from the get-go they’re not going to get a negotiated settlement,” he said.

Peterman sees the issue of sovereignty as the sticking point in any talks. He said Oneida Nation Representative Ray Halbritter “has a twisted notion of what sovereignty is.

“They want to put thousands of acres of land in upstate under a foreign government and that’s not going to happen,” he said.

The Oneidas point to groups such as Peterman’s as the source of the community friction.

“It’s unfortunate with the progress we have that we have this very tense atmosphere out there created by the rhetoric and misinformation of leaders of landowner groups,” Emery said.

Tension mounts
The tension has many faces: tears of fear and frustration, accusations that Oneida Nation police are spying on opponents, the threat letter, the pickets and worries about what will happen to the 14,000 acres of land the Oneidas have purchased in the contested territory.

Michael Gaiser of Vernon owns Taylor Creek Realty. He said he became a member of United Citizens for Equality even before last December because he’d grown concerned over the hefty land purchases the Oneidas had been making.

Yet others in the land-claim area did not share his concern.

Then, “Dec. 8 came and other people now started seeing a problem,” he said.

Gaiser said he’s seen a dent in his business because of dispute.

“The prices are down so low right now, I don’t know how how much lower they can go,” Gaiser said, saying the average home sale he’s handled has been in the $60,000 range.

But another Realtor said the claim has not had a great impact.

More than 75 percent of the property handled by Century 21 Terra Realty in Oneida lies in the claim area, owner Joel Arsenault said. Yet he expects his business will be up 15 percent this year from 1998, which enjoyed a 40 percent growth from 1997.

“A very few people have said if a property’s in the land claim area, we don’t want it,” Arsenault said.

Even that effect has been less in the past four to six months, he said, as buyers and sellers have educated themselves about the meaning of the Oneidas’ claims.

Political views
Even so, Assemblyman David Townsend, R-Lee Center, said he understands the frustration that exists in the claim area.

An early opponent of the free hand given the Oneidas with their casino, he said of long-time landowners: “I think the hurt comes from them having their lives disrupted and not knowing what to expect next.

“It has created a fissure in the community,” Townsend said. “I don’t know if we can ever close that gap.”

But Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-New Hartford, believes the community can overcome the polarization.

“We’re coming to the end of the year in much better shape than we started,” he said, citing the mediation effort.

“The more information that is made available, the better people can understand a very complex situation,” Boehlert said.

“My own mail has changed from, ‘We’ll fight to the end,’ to, ‘We can work it out,’” the congressman said.

Peterman is not so optimistic. While denouncing the threat letter against the Oneidas and vehemently denying any ties to its author, he said: “I think this is going to get nastier. It could come from radical groups even in other states.”
“The community is going to change forever and I don’t see anything good coming out of this,” he said.

Gaiser, the Realtor, said he sees confusion and frustration among his neighbors.

The enemy?
“I think most of my neighbors don’t know what direction to turn,” he said.

Gaiser said the key for landowners is “to identify who your enemy is.” In this case, it’s not individual Oneidas but the Nation’s leaders and the federal government, which is helping push the land-claim lawsuit, Gaiser said.

“You begin to wonder, ‘Do you trust them?’ And the answer’s no. They have ulterior motives,” Gaiser said of the federal government, which he thinks wants more Central New York land to become Indian reservation land under federal control.

He foresees a frustrating, drawn-out situation that will wind up eventually in the courts, or even in the U.S. Congress.

Some are calling for reconciliation, not more conflict. The Oneida Area Council of Churches published a letter the day before Thanksgiving calling for peace instead of violence and held a community prayer service. The Rev. William Cruikshank, council president, said the religious community also will play a simple but critical part in mending the split.

“Our role is to help people listen to each other better than they do at the moment,” he said.

The Oneidas’ Emery said such efforts are “the beginning of a healing process.”

“Once there’s a settlement, everybody’s going to have to go back to living with each other,” he said.