Land-suit foes turn up pressure
Mar. 28, 1999

By MEG SCHNEIDER
Observer-Dispatch

ONEIDA — Upstate Citizens for Equality plans to conduct a candlelight vigil the week before a federal judge hears oral arguments on an attempt to add individual property owners as defendants in the Oneida Indian land claim.

The group also plans to organize another motorcade rally — this time from Cazenovia to Albany — to call for an end to sovereignty for Indian tribes in the United States.

Details for both events still have to be worked out. But the 350 or so people who attended Monday’s meeting at Oneida High School approved of both ideas.

Christine Strebel, chairwoman of Upstate Citizens’ action committee, said the candlelight vigil will be March 20, nine days before U.S. District Court Judge Neal McCurn hears arguments on the Oneidas’ motion to add landowners to its lawsuit over 250,000 acres in Oneida and Madison counties.

“The judge has the futures of 20,000 people in his hands,” Strebel said. “This (vigil) would be about that.”

The location of the vigil will be made final later and announced at the group’s March 15 meeting.

Meanwhile, Upstate Citizens and its sister chapter in the Cayuga land claim will begin planning another massive motorcade that will cover both land-claim areas and travel along the Thruway to Albany. A similar motorcade along Route 365 in January drew hundreds of vehicles and the attention of national media.

Leon Koziol, the group’s lawyer, said the objective of the Cazenovia-to-Albany motorcade “would be to get a message to Congress” to end sovereignty for Indian tribes. Koziol said the sovereignty notion — which the Oneidas and other Indian groups say guarantees them self-determination without interference from state or local governments — is discriminatory because it separates people based on race and ethnic background.

“We’ve got one nation, not 2,000 nations ... this is about as mainstream an effort as you can make,” Koziol said. “And you’ll get other people in other states looking ... and then, guess what, you’ve got something going to Washington, D.C.”

Major Robert Anslow, commander of the state police’s Troop T, which oversees the Thruway, said he doesn’t foresee any problems with such a motorcade “as long as it’s peaceful and conducted in a safe manner.”

“It isn’t without precedent,” Anslow said. “We have military convoys on the Thruway, and we have convoys of buses coming up from New York City when the legislature is in session. There’s no prohibition against motorcades on the Thruway.”

Also Monday, Upstate Citizens approved posting signs urging area residents to boycott Oneida-owned businesses. One poster is a take-off of the Oneidas’ SavOn chain of gas stations and reads “SavOur Homes” with a picture of the American flag next to a fallen white pine — the symbol of peace for the Iroquois Confederacy and part of the Oneidas’ logo.