Land-claim parties to meet in Florida
Mar. 2, 2000

By R. PATRICK CORBETT
Observer-Dispatch

The fate of the Oneida Indian land-claim mediation effort might be decided in a federal courtroom in Florida next week.

U.S. District Court Judge Neal McCurn has ordered the attorneys in the land-claim case to explain in person why they haven’t been able to reach an out-of-court settlement in a year of talks mediated by settlement master Ronald Riccio.

McCurn’s order, filed Tuesday and made public Wednesday, directs the parties “to show cause ... why the settlement process ... should not be suspended or terminated.”

If the mediation effort ends, it likely would be up to a federal jury to decide how to resolve the Oneida Indian Nation’s claim to 250,000 acres in Madison and Oneida counties.

McCurn will hear the parties’ statements March 10 in the federal courthouse in Fort Myers, Fla., where he is serving as a visiting judge.

In early 1999, he appointed Riccio, a constitutional law professor at Seton Hall University School of Law, to mediate the dispute. After a year of apparently fruitless talks, Riccio sent a negotiation status report to the judge Friday.

Riccio has refused to say what is in the report or even to characterize it as positive or negative, but McCurn said he issued his order Tuesday “in accordance with the recommendations of Settlement Master Riccio.”

Riccio said Wednesday he plans to be in Florida for the lawyers’ presentations next week.

David Pendergast, executive assistant to Oneida County Executive Ralph Eannace Jr., said Wednesday McCurn’s language is technical and should not be interpreted as a threat to end the negotiations.

“I think he’s responding in a timely manner to Riccio’s report to him and he’s checking the status for himself as he’s done on other occasions,” Pendergast said.

Attorneys for the Oneida Indians, Oneida and Madison counties and the U.S. Justice Department must file supporting documents in U.S. District Court in Syracuse Monday.

“This case is taking us all over the country,” Riccio said Wednesday.

He has mediated talks and met with concerned residents throughout Central New York, met with lawyers in New York City and he hosted an intensive bargaining session in late January at Seton Hall in New Jersey.

He said he has not given up on the mediation process, even though no more talks are scheduled.

“I’m still involved,” Riccio said Wednesday.

Oneida Nation spokesman Mark Emery said Nation representatives would have no comment because of the confidentiality order McCurn imposed on land-claim negotiators.

Leon Koziol, attorney for the Upstate Citizens for Equality, an organization formed by landowners feeling threatened by the land claim, said Wednesday he expects McCurn to focus at the hearing “on why the lawyers have such inflexible positions.”

Koziol said, “The lawyers have violated the letter and spirit of the mediating process and have not negotiated in good faith. They have just stuck with their long-standing positions.”