No deal, no victory
Mar. 4, 2000

Observer-Dispatch Editorial

With all the respect due to a federal judge, U.S. Judge Neal McCurn has it wrong.

He should not be summoning the parties in the Oneida Indian land claim to Florida, where he is now sitting as a visiting judge, like so many errant schoolchildren brought to the principal’s office to explain why they can’t get along on the playground.

Instead, McCurn should simply take all the wraps off of the negotiation process, order every proposal made to be made public. Instead of sealing lips, McCurn should require the negotiators to give the people of the land claims region to talk.

Taxpayers deserve to know why talks are deadlocked despite pleas from the people of the land claims region to find a way they can move out of what has become a living nightmare.

Did the process founder, as leaks have claimed, on the refusal of the Oneidas to collect and remit sales taxes on all sales to non-Indians? Did the state put its foot down on Oneida proposals to serve alcohol at the Turning Stone Casino and add slot machines to the array of games ?

Did the officials of Oneida and Madison counties throw up roadblocks over the size of any potential Oneida reservation?

The people who have paid for this process with tax dollars and shattered lives need some answers, now that hope is fading that common sense will triumph over far-too-common my-way-or-the-highway tactics.

Settlement master Ronald Riccio sounds like nothing so much as a discouraged man when he offered this verdict to the Associated Press in explaining the Florida hearing: “The parties have to show Judge McCurn why he should allow the talks to go on. That’s if they even want them to continue. But we’ve been going at it for a year. After a year, you would think there would be something concrete to point to, and there’s not.”

That’s not Riccio’s fault, but that of those who were supposed to be trying to resolve this issue. The land claims talks are at the brink of failure. The people whose lives are going to be battered as the price for this failure need to find out how this happened, and why. That way, the people can understand who really wants to cooperate to build a new future for this region, and who just wants to talk the talk without walking the walk.