Many land-claim issues still unresolved remains on Oneida issues
Oct. 2, 2000

By R. PATRICK CORBETT
Observer-Dispatch

Landowners are off the hook for damages in the Oneida land claim, but their lives still will be changed for generations, no matter how the case is decided by a jury.

Senior U.S. District Court Judge Neal P. McCurn ruled last week that landowners will not be defendants in the Oneida claim to some 250,000 acres in Madison and Oneida counties. The Oneidas say they were cheated out of the land by the state 200 years ago.

His decision clears the path to a trial that would set monetary damages for the land.

But a trial would leave many unanswered questions, lawyers on both sides of the case said this week.

Utica lawyer Leon Koziol said other essential matters such as property tax issues, sales tax issues and the sovereign land acquisitions are beyond the scope of judge and jury, and will continue to have an impact on the community.

He is the lawyer for the American Land Rights Coalition and has been a part of citizens groups opposed to the Oneida claim for the past two years.

Arlinda Locklear, lawyer for the Oneida Indian Nation of Wisconsin, said her client has always desired a negotiated settlement.

“We still believe that’s the only way for everybody to be satisfied,” she said.

Ronald Riccio, the constitutional law professor who unsuccessfully tried to mediate an out-of-court settlement to the Oneida claim, recognized the threat of community resentment lingering after a trial.

In his report to McCurn in March he said one of the seven “overarching principles” that shaped his effort, was, “To put a permanent end to the social, political, economic, cultural and tribal divisions that have plagued the parties to this controversy for nearly (200) years.”

Locklear said, “The Oneidas have always taken a long-term view of this case, not only about how to prevail in it, but about long term community relations among themselves and the non-Indian community.”

“The non-Indians,” she said, “are the dominant society and Indians are very aware of long-term relations and (what it means for) survival for them. In this case and all other aspects.”

Tax issue remains

Connie Tallcot heard McCurn’s ruling from a unique perspective at her home in Union Springs, a community surrounded by 65,000 acres claimed by the Cayuga Indian Nation.

The Cayugas and Oneidas are among the six tribes of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy. The Senecas also have a suit against the state and the Mohawks and Onondagas are preparing claims.

Tallcot heads the Cayuga-Seneca branch of Upstate Citizens for Equality, a landowner organization opposed to Indian land claims. She is one of 7,000 property owners who were named defendants in the Cayuga claim area around Cayuga Lake.

In the wake of McCurn’s ruling last week, Tallcot had a warning for the Oneida-Madison landowners: “It sounds good on the surface, but it still leaves the big issue of sovereignty, which the Haudenosaunee translates into ‘tax free,’” she said.

“Sovereignty is the key,” Oneida-Madison UCE President Scott Peterman agreed last week. He said he fears an enriched Oneida Nation will try to impose its will on non-Indians neighbors.

Showdown: State, Oneidas

McCurn’s ruling set the stage for a court battle largely between the state and the Oneidas, similar to a dispute being fought out now between the state and the Cayuga Indian Nation in McCurn’s Syracuse courtroom.

“We’ve said all along if negotiated settlement failed and litigation was cranked up, litigation would ultimately address only limited issues,” Oneida County Attorney Stephen Haggas said.

Other lawyers in the case had no comment or did not return phone calls. Robert Smith, a lawyer for the Thames Band of Oneidas in Canada, said he was in no position to comment.

Christopher Vecsey, co-editor of the 1988 book, Iroquois Land Claims, said, “A negotiated settlement is so possible, it’s tragic it’s not taking place.

“If people would be not so greedy and determined not to let it happen, a settlement would not be so hard,” said Vecsey, Colgate University humanities department director.

Vecsey’s area of expertise is Native American religion, but he has educated himself about the legal issues in the land claims.

The U.S. Supreme Court has said the claim is justified, and eventually may be asked to rule on how much money the Oneidas should get, he said. The hard part will be reconciling a community to a new economic and social order, Vecsey said.

He said the land claim brought to the surface feelings that had lain just below the surface for generations.

“It made a fringe group like UCE into a representative of the people,” he said. “They spend a lot of their time now furious at the Oneidas and all Indian nations. They have created a list of things that cannot be (such as) Indian nationhood and growth of Indian land. They have gotten their backs up so much they don’t care about the land claim.”

UCE’s prime target has been the Oneida Indian Nation of New York’s Turning Stone Casino Resort, which has brought the Nation unprecedented economic clout.

“The casino starts to loom so big, the land claim issue gets lost in its shadow,” Vecsey said.

Resentment was aggravated, he said, when the Oneidas tried to include the landowners in the lawsuit, mainly because they had always promised they wouldn’t.

Vecsey said that makes the bigger question: “Is it possible to get people out in the sunlight looking at other things again?”

He hopes so.

“I wouldn’t mind doing a revised edition (of his 1988 book) saying all of these claims were settled,” Vecsey said.