Judge rules Oneida Nation land tax exempt
June 6, 2001

FULL TEXT IN DECISION

By R. PATRICK CORBETT
Observer-Dispatch

UTICA — U.S. District Court Judge David Hurd said Monday that thousands of acres in Oneida and Madison counties are Indian country and cannot be taxed by local governments.

Oneida Nation Representative Ray Halbritter quickly issued a statement suggesting that the ruling might drive the parties in the separate Oneida land claim back to the bargaining table.

Hurd’s 64-page decision was made on tax cases between the Oneidas and the city of Sherrill and between the Oneidas and Madison County, but Oneida County Executive Ralph J. Eannace Jr. said it “could have a very detrimental affect on ... the land claim itself.”

The Oneidas want both counties and New York state to pay for 250,000 acres that the tribe claims the state illegally took between 150 and 200 years ago.

Sherrill City Manager David Barker said that the city will appeal Hurd’s ruling.

“We don’t think he took all the facts into consideration,” Barker said.
The Oneida Indian Nation has purchased more than 13,000 acres in the two counties in the past decade with profits from its casino and other business enterprises.

The Oneidas have a gas station and a textile plant on 10 parcels in Sherrill, and they have gas stations and other businesses on 13 parcels that Madison County wants to tax.

“The Oneida Nation is grateful that the federal court recognized the Oneida reservation in the Sherrill lawsuit,” Halbritter said.
“We hope that this will pave the way for solving all land-claim issues by negotiated agreement,” he said.

Eannace said he will “keep the door for negotiations open.”
The federal land-claim case could move to trial next year, unless negotiations resume.

Hurd said Monday that the tax issues could have been settled long ago if Congress had followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1985 plea for legislation to resolve Indian title and land claims in New York State.

“It has turned a deaf ear to the Court and remained silent for over 16 years,” the judge wrote.

Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-New Hartford, who represents the land-claim area, did not return calls to his office Tuesday.

Sherrill’s lawyers argued in the tax case that the Oneida Nation’s recent purchases do not qualify for tax exemption because the land is not on a federal reservation.

Hurd said, “(F)ormal reservation status is not a prerequisite to qualification as Indian Country.” He said it is sufficient for the tribe to show that it had prior possession to the land.

He backed his stance with a six-page review of the history of U.S. Indian policy and his interpretation of treaties and case law.
Sherrill lawyers said that the question of prior possession is in dispute in the land claim, but Hurd said the city failed to offer “competent evidence that raises a dispute.”

Oneida County and the state filed briefs to support the Sherrill tax suit. The county lawyers said that if the Nation continued taking land off the tax rolls, the resulting loss of revenue would cause “deficiencies in public services to the citizenry.”

The state argued that the 1838 Treaty of Buffalo Creek extinguished the Oneidas’ ownership of the land, but Hurd specifically rejected that contention.

Barker said he is confident the city will win the case on appeal. He refused to speculate about the local implications for taxes and for local government authority over the land if the city were to lose.
But Scott Peterman, head of Upstate Citizens for Equality, a landowners’ organization opposed to tax policies toward the Oneidas, said, “It would devastate the counties.”

He said the ruling would encourage other tribes in New York involved in the land claim to buy more land and take it off local tax rolls.

“It would create an area of Indian exclusivity and trample the rights of (non-Indian) American citizens,” Peterman said.