Local Oneidas are faced with new challenges
Dec. 8, 2004

KRISTA J. KARCH
Observer-Dispatch

A land-claim settlement between the Wisconsin-based Oneidas and New York state poses numerous challenges for the New York Oneidas.

New Catskills casinos would present competition for the Nation’s Turning Stone Resort and Casino in Verona.

The state’s decision to give 1,000 acres of Central New York land to the Wisconsin Oneidas gives the out-of-state tribe a new foothold in ancestral lands here.

And it completely changes the equation by which the Nation’s own land-claim case might be settled.

“This does not solve the Oneida Nation land claim,” Nation spokesman Mark Emery said of the Wisconsin Oneidas’ agreement.

The settlement comes soon after the Nation reacted with a critical television ad campaign when an Oklahoma tribe released plans to build resorts there.

“This is history repeating itself,” Emery said.

It’s the last battle in a decades-long series of disputes between two brother tribes once banded together in defense against a growing number of Europeans determined to settle the land.

The Nation says the Wisconsin Oneidas are the prodigals who have forever relinquished their rights to ancestral lands, but the Wisconsin Oneidas speak of deep longing to return “home.”

More than two centuries ago, the Oneidas were promised ancestral land for their help during the Revolutionary War, but the past 200 years have seen the land slip through the Oneidas’ hands. Many Oneidas left Upstate New York in the 1800s for sites in Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada, creating three distinct bands of Oneida Indians.

“In 1795, we had over 240,000 acres of land,” Wisconsin Oneidas chair Cristina Danforth said. “In that same land, 100,000 acres were taken from us in an illegal process. That has been our claim. That has always been our original intent.”

The first land-claim lawsuits brought by the Oneidas began in 1970, and the cases have weaved through the courts for decades without true resolution. Since opening the Turning Stone Resort and Casino in 1993, the New York branch of Oneidas has slowly re-purchased thousands of acres of the lost land.

The resulting tensions from those purchases can be seen in the lawsuit filed by the city of Sherrill that will be heard in the U.S. Supreme Court early next year over whether the Oneidas should pay property taxes.

But those tensions sometimes pale compared to the unhappiness between the New York and Wisconsin Oneidas. The Wisconsin Oneidas’ purchase of two Central New York acres in 1996 prompted the New York Oneidas to call it a “hostile action.”

That purchase came weeks after the Nation offered the Wisconsin Oneidas a $300 million cash offer to settle land claims. The agreement would have allowed the Nation to build another casino and give $300 million in casino profits to the Wisconsin Oneidas over 10 years. The Wisconsin Oneidas promptly refused the offer.

Year-long mediation talks in 1999 and 2000 ultimately broke down, in part because of the inability of the different branches of the Oneidas to come to agreement on key issues.

The Nation currently has a 33-acre reservation in Oneida, not far from Turning Stone.

Tuesday’s settlement, however, offers the Wisconsin Oneidas 1,000 acres, free and clear, within the disputed territory, giving them a new foothold in ancestral lands.

“For us, this is not about whether or not we left the state,” Danforth said. “This is a reaffirmation that we are the majority stakeholders of our land.”

But Emery insists that the Wisconsin Oneidas will pay taxes on whatever land they own in New York state.

“They’re an out-of-state Indian nation, so if they have land up here, they’ll have to pay taxes, just like any other out-of-state Indian nation would have to do,” he said.

Contact Krista J. Karch at kkarch@utica.gannett.com