Landowners’ group releases ’91
Dec. 9, 1999

By MEG SCHNEIDER
Observer-Dispatch

In the latest round of the continuing public relations battle over the Oneida Indian land claim, a landowners’ group Thursday released an 8-year-old settlement proposal and used it to criticize the Oneidas.

In the 1991 document, the Oneidas asked the state for 20,000 acres of contiguous land, $800 million in cash and an annual payment of $70 million.

Scott Peterman, president of Upstate Citizens for Equality, said the document, dated April 4, 1991, was hand-delivered to his Oneida home anonymously. Oneida Nation spokesman Mark Emery later verified that the document was authentic.

The release of the settlement proposal was the latest volley in a war of words over the land-claim issue, which heated up last month when the Oneidas gave notice they wanted to sue 20,000 individual landowners.

The citizens’ group’s move came the same day the Oneidas took out full-page newspaper advertisements for an open letter from Nation representative Ray Halbritter, who said the Nation is “greatly saddened by the anxiety and anger” caused by recent legal maneuvers in the land claim.

The Oneidas also have sent an explanatory letter to the landowners involved, while the citizens’ group plans a motorcade protest Saturday. In each case, these steps garner the attention of the media and politicians in the Mohawk Valley and beyond.

Thursday, Peterman called the demands in the 1991 proposal “outrageous” and said they call into question the Oneidas’ assertion now that the state hasn’t taken settlement negotiations seriously.

“Twenty thousand acres of contiguous land. Where are they going to get that?” Peterman said. “Somebody’s going to have to move.”

Emery, the Nation’s spokesman, said it is “good news that they brought out the 1991 proposal, however they got it.”
“It shows the Oneida Nation has been making proposals since 1991, and this was a united proposal” among the Oneidas of New York, Wisconsin and Canada, Emery said. “Unfortunately, the state didn’t make a counter-proposal, and that’s how negotiations work.”

Both sides agreed it is important to note the proposal was made two years before the Oneidas opened Turning Stone Casino, which since has grown into the fifth-largest tourist attraction in the state. The casino has allowed the Oneidas to expand their land and business holdings, as well as their social programs.

“This is all pre-casino, before they had any land, before they had anything in the way of economic development, before they had any resources,” Emery said. “Many of the things that are in that proposal — health benefits and education benefits — the Nation has now done on its own.”
Leon Koziol, the attorney for Upstate Citizens, said that is precisely why the group has challenged the Oneidas’ gaming compact, which allowed Turning Stone to open in 1993.

“The casino has allowed them to buy land and create businesses, and that needs to be part of any land claim settlement,” he said.

The next formal step in the land-claim case is a March 29 hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Neal McCurn.