Landowners group, attorney review latest land-claim suits
Mar. 1, 2002

By R PATRICK CORBETT
Observer-Dispatch

VERNON — The latest legal action in the Oneidas’ land claim has property owners fearing a spread of the claim and seeking ways they might be able to defend themselves against threats of eviction.

The Oneida Tribe of Wisconsin filed federal lawsuits against 20 landowners in Oneida and Madison counties for their land on Feb. 21, five days after New York state and the Oneida Nation of New York announced their plan to settle the dispute over more than 250,000 acres the Oneidas claim were illegally taken more than two centuries ago.

Wisconsin tribal leaders said the New York plan is unacceptable because it would give them money, but no land.

About 50 people gathered at Dibble’s Inn Thursday to hear Syracuse lawyer John Benjamin Carroll’s take on developments in the Wisconsin suits.

The meeting was hosted by the Madison-Oneida Landowners Inc. but attracted a number of non-members.

Gov. George Pataki has hired a New York City law firm to defend those sued, but Roy and Winifred Bish of Oneida, who are named in the latest round of lawsuits, said Thursday that they have decided not to put their fate in the hands of Pataki’s lawyers.

“Ben (Carroll) is our attorney,” Winifred Bish said. “There’s not much faith in (Pataki),” she said.

As Carroll read line-by-line through the lawsuit filed against Dibble’s Inn — virtually identical to the other 19 suits — 50 pairs of eyes scanned the pages as though the dry legalese were the latest New York Times best-seller.

MOLI Vice President George Puzey of Cazenovia said the Wisconsin Oneidas’ attack has made people afraid that the land claim will spread beyond the 250,000 disputed acres now before federal Judge Lawrence Kahn.

The Wisconsin Oneidas’ strategy seems to be to “pick us off one by one,” John Benjamin Carroll said. “The day of reckoning is at hand.”

The new Wisconsin Oneida lawsuits also have been assigned to Kahn, lawyer Woodruff Lee Carroll told the group.

Puzey said if the Wisconsin Oneidas succeed in evicting any landowners in the current round of suits, “I wouldn’t even want to live across the street (from the land-claim area),” because the boundaries of the disputed area might spread.

One man in the audience asked if the state would pay his expenses if he were sued and hired his own lawyer rather than let the state’s lawyers defend him.

John Benjamin Carroll said, “It’s my position they will have to pay,” but there is no guarantee that would be the case.

He said about six of the 20 defendants in the Wisconsin suits have agreed to have the state’s lawyers represent them.

Woodruff Lee Carroll said he expects most of the corporate owners being sued “will go with in-house counsel.”

John Benjamin Carroll also said he hasn’t seen anything in writing that would legally bind the state to cover landowner losses in the event the Wisconsin Oneidas prevail in court.

He said that with a question as complex as the land claim, the final solution remains congressional action to clear up questions about the rightful ownership of the land.

The landowners group is distributing petitions in and beyond the land-claim boundaries, asking President Bush and Congress to “Free the innocent landowners by federal legislation restricting the Indians to damages from the state.”

“It would be wrong to let these people who have done nothing wrong be the scapegoats (in the land claim),” John Benjamin Carroll said.