Region waits while watching Cayuga trial
Aug. 3, 2000

By R. PATRICK CORBETT
Observer-Dispatch

SYRACUSE — After a year and a half on the front lines of the Oneida land claim, lawyers for Oneida and Madison counties are on the sidelines in U.S. District Court Judge Neal P. McCurn’s Syracuse courtroom this summer.

The Oneida land-claim negotiations collapsed in June and McCurn told the parties to get ready to settle their differences in court. The Oneidas want reparations for 250,000 acres in the two counties that it claims the state acquired wrongfully in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Before the judge can take on the Oneidas’ case, however, he has to wrap up a trial involving a similar dispute between the Cayuga Indians and the state over 64,000 acres of reservation land at the north end of Cayuga Lake.

David Pendergast, executive assistant to Oneida County Executive Ralph Eannace Jr., said Wednesday, “Our lawyers are monitoring the (Cayuga) trial daily. What is established as evidence in that case would have a bearing on the land claim case with the Oneidas.”

Arlinda Locklear, lawyer for the Oneida Nation Tribe of Wisconsin, said she has not attended a court session in the Cayuga trial, but added, “We stay in close touch with the (U.S.) Department of Justice and the lawyers for the (Cayugas).”

She said, “There are factual distinctions (between the cases) but the legal points are the same.”

The Justice Department is siding with the Indians in both cases.
A jury awarded the Cayugas $37 million for their land earlier this year and McCurn is now hearing arguments to determine how much, if any, interest and penalties should be added to that amount.

Oneida Nation of New York Men’s Council member Brian Patterson said Monday the Oneidas have not been regular visitors at the Cayuga trial.

“We haven’t been invited,” he said. The Oneidas have a tradition of not interfering in the operations of other Iroquois member tribes, he said.

“We’ve met with the Cayugas in counsel,” Patterson said, “but (the land claim trial) is not an issue they asked for help on. The Cayuga and Oneida land claims are separate issues.”

Pendergast said, “Because we are preparing for the litigation, research has been going on since the beginning of the task force (for the two counties).

Nixon, Peabody (the Rochester law firm representing the counties) has had paralegals in Washington, working with the historian on the case.”

Meanwhile, historians and anthropologists continued to contradict each other in McCurn’s courtroom this week on their interpretations of how New York treated its Indian tribes 200 years ago.

Locklear said McCurn still has not said when the Oneida case will go to trial.

Lawyers in that case said earlier that they don’t expect McCurn to set a court date for them until the Cayuga trial is done.

Contributing: The Associated Press