Appeals court hears argument in Oneidas' land-claim suit
May 14, 2002

By LARRY NEUMEISTER
The Associated Press

NEW YORK — The Oneida Indian Nation is entitled to the land it has purchased in the state and shouldn’t pay taxes because the land was unfairly taken from the Indians nearly two centuries ago, a lawyer told a federal appeals panel Monday.

The lawyer, Michael Smith, said he wanted the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to agree with a lower court judge and find the tribe is entitled to live on its land without paying taxes to local, state or federal governments.

The court reserved decision.

Smith said such a ruling by the appeals court in Manhattan would be consistent with earlier rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and the 2nd Circuit on the status of 300,000 acres of land promised to the Oneidas in a 1789 treaty.

Some of the land gained considerable value after the Oneidas, who had for years struggled financially, opened the Turning Stone Casino Resort in 1993.

On June 4, 2001, a lower court judge ruled that the city of Sherrill could not tax or evict the Oneidas from land lawyers had argued was given up by the Indians in the 1838 Treaty of Buffalo Creek.

Madison County had also submitted arguments in the case, although it was not a party to the lawsuit brought by the Oneidas against Sherrill on Feb. 4, 2000.

The lawsuit said the Oneidas’ land was unfairly taken from the tribe in 1807, when the state caused it to be transferred to an individual tribe member authorized by the state to sell it to a non-Indian.

The tribe said the 1794 federal Treaty of Canandaigua referred to the Oneidas’ land as “their reservation” and required the United States to pay yearly annuities to the Oneidas in the form of cloth, which is still done.

Congress at about the same time passed legislation requiring that all transactions involving tribal land be approved by federal treaty, something it said was not done when the state arranged the land’s sale.

Ira S. Sacks, a lawyer for Merrill County, told the three-member appeals court panel that the lower court had made a mistake when it concluded that the land still belonged to the Oneidas.

“I believe this reservation does not exist,” he said.

He said it was not right that large chunks of land in upstate New York could be declared Indian territory just to build casinos and avoid taxes.

Sacks found at least one sympathetic ear on the appeals panel when Judge Ellsworth A. Van Graafeiland suggested that the tribe just wanted to “build another casino and not pay any taxes.”

“You don’t have to pay any taxes, but you can get all the benefits,” the judge said.

There were no court references to the value of the land.