New York Times
By Kirk Simple
SYRACUSE, March 25 – From a hillock on the shore of Onondaga Lake, Brad Powless, the newest chief of the Onondaga Nation, traced the outlines of his community’s struggles, both ancient and modern.
Hundreds of years ago, he said, pointing across the water, a peace delegation representing several Indian tribes crossed from the east side of the lake to persuade the fierce leader of the Onondagas to join a federation of Indian nations. From that meeting evolved the Iroquois Confederacy, or the Haudenosaunee, as its members prefer.
This ancestral connection to the lake, which is considered one of the most polluted bodies of water in the country, underpins the Onondagas’ latest battle, said Mr. Powless, 37.
On March 11, the community filed a federal lawsuit claiming ownership of a 3,100-square-mile swath of New York State, stretching from Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence Seaway to the
Pennsylvania border. The Onondagas contend that the State of New York illegally acquired the land in a series of treaties in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and have asked the Federal District Court in Syracuse to declare that they still hold title to the land. The lawsuit is the largest Indian land claim ever filed in New York.
Their legal action has put a light on a small community that has largely avoided the kind of public attention that the other members of the Haudenosaunee have drawn.
The Onondaga Nation has about 1,500 members, and its federally recognized territory is an 11-square-mile parcel in a valley south of Syracuse and about eight miles from the southern end of Onondaga Lake.
The community maintains its own customs, language and laws and is governed by a Council of Chiefs, which meets in a traditional longhouse, a large, open room that serves as the spiritual and political center of the community. The territory has four churches,
a healing center, a cigarette store, an arena for ice hockey and indoor lacrosse, and one school. Some of the nation’s adults work full time in their territory while others work outside, in private firms or government offices.
The nation’s leaders have said that they do not intend to forcibly take away anyone’s land in the disputed territory, which is now home to hundreds of thousands of people. They also said that unlike other Indian tribes that are pursuing land claims against the state, they are not interested in compensation involving money and casinos.
What they want is influence in major policy discussions affecting the ecosystem in their ancestral lands. They also hope to use a favorable judgment to buy land to increase agricultural and housing opportunities, protect ancestors’ gravesites and safeguard the environment.
“We came to this point without avarice or any kind of greedy expectation,” Audrey Shenandoah, 78, one of the community’s clan mothers, said in an interview in the Onondaga Nation Territory.
[The Onondagas’ dream of an expanded tax-exempt territory may have been dealt a significant setback by a United States Supreme Court decision on Tuesday involving the Oneida Indian Nation and its property tax dispute with Sherrill, a small upstate New York city. The court ruled that the Oneidas could not buy ancestral land that had been out of their possession for generations and convert it to a tax-free holding. Joseph J. Heath, the lawyer for the Onondaga Nation, said the Onondagas were reeling from the decision. “There may not be a legal solution to this,” he said. But he said the Onondagas would forge ahead with their own claim to determine whether there had been historic violations of federal law and “to gain that say in the environmental issues.”]
The emotional and environmental focus of their legal action,
Onondaga officials say, is Onondaga Lake and its watershed, which is now hemmed in by urban development. For decades, the lake, which is in northwest Syracuse and is about a mile wide and 4 1/2 miles long, was used as a dumping ground for industrial refuse. In 1994 it was added to the federal Superfund list of toxic waste sites. Several other Superfund sites are around the lake.
“This is why we’re so upset,” Mr. Powless said. “This is our home, this is where our history is, and it was treated as a trash dump.”
The hillock on which Mr. Powless spoke was formed by tons of industrial waste that came from a local factory, according to Mr. Heath. “You can’t use the lake, you can’t fish, you can’t swim in the water, you can’t collect medicines,” said Sid Hill, 53, another of the Onondagas’ 14 chiefs and the community’s spiritual leader. The Onondaga elders tell stories about how trout used to fill their territory’s creeks and run north through the lake and the Oswego River to Lake Ontario. Now the Onondagas generally avoid eating fish from their area, fearing contamination.
Mr. Hill said the state’s announcement in November of a $448 million proposal to clean the lake was part of the reason the nation decided to file its suit this month.
The Onondagas believe the plan is insufficient and say they were not adequately consulted about it, as required under the Superfund law. State officials have defended the plan, calling it comprehensive and saying the Onondagas were given sufficient opportunity to comment.
While the Onondagas’ lawsuit did not surprise state and county officials, its environmental thrust apparently did. Officials from Onondaga County said the nation had not been prominent among the region’s environmental advocates.
“They’ve always spoken a lot of words centered around the earth and the water,” said Nicholas J. Pirro, the Onondaga County executive, “but to say that they’re activists, I don’t know if I’ve seen that.”
The public response to the lawsuit has been surprisingly subdued. Onondaga Nation officials were bracing for negative reactions from homeowners throughout the claim area, but so far, they say, none have emerged. Mr. Pirro said his office had not received a single call from a constituent seeking information about the lawsuit.
The lawsuit involves five land purchases; Mr. Heath calls them “takings.” Four of the transactions, which pertain to a 108-square-mile parcel that includes Syracuse, are similar to deals that have been successfully challenged in other Indian land claims, legal scholars say. The fifth transaction, executed under a 1788 treaty, covers the remainder of the claim area and is being challenged using an untested argument, Mr. Heath said. The Onondagas contend that the 1788 treaty was not authorized by official representatives of the Onondaga Nation and was ratified by the New York Legislature only after the passage of the United States Constitution and federal laws that placed Indian treaties under federal jurisdiction.
Onondaga representatives have started to make the rounds of public forums and newspaper editorial boards to respond to questions and solicit support for their cause. They speak of reconciliation and healing between them and the other residents of central New York, and steer the conversation toward discussions about the environment. Mr. Heath often points to the first paragraph of the lawsuit, saying he has never written anything like it in his legal career. It reads, in part: “The people are one with the land and consider themselves stewards of it. It is the duty of the Nation’s leaders to work for a healing of this land, to protect it and to pass it on to future generations.”