Shinnecock Indian Nation

Keeping Course - One Man's Job and A Starring Role in Golf's History

June 17, 2004

New York State announced this week that it has settled a decades-old legal battle with an upstate Native American tribe over ownership of a large swath of the Finger Lakes region.

The settlement highlights an issue that has become the topic of quiet local discussion since the rise of discord between the Shinnecock Indian Nation and Southampton Town and the state.

The Cayuga Nation of New York, a tribe that does not have a designated reservation in its homeland, had challenged the legality of the 18th century agreements by which its former lands were transferred to the state. The tribe had laid claim to some 65,000 acres of land in Seneca and Cayuga counties, saying that the land had been taken illegally more than a century ago.

Seeking to relieve an air of tension that had enveloped the communities in area the tribe was threatening to seize, the state agreed to a long list of concessions: including a payment of nearly $250 million over 14 years and the development of a casino resort in the Catskills from which the tribe will be able to draw revenue. The Cayuga will also be allowed to purchase up to 10,000 acres of land in the region from willing sellers that will become sovereign tribal territory.

Land claims like the one pursued by the Cayugas have become increasingly popular with tribes throughout the country that seek to right centuries-old treaties that divested them of their ancient homelands.

While the Shinnecocks have never formally threatened or discussed bringing such a claim, the possibility of a claim over large portions of the East End has been a shadow hanging over the heads of local residents and officials for years.

Since the town and state mounted a legal challenge to the tribe's plan to develop a casino on tribe-owned land in Hampton Bays, the land claim issue has gained renewed vigor.

Tribal leaders have recently begun raising the land claim issue in talks about the fight with the town and state. They have said that the challenge to their casino aspirations may force them to resort to land claims as their only recourse to achieving self-sufficiency if the government tries to force them into the estimated 10- to 15-year federal recognition, which is required before they can develop a casino.

"The Town of Southampton and the State of New York seem to want to open that issue up," said Tribal Trustee chairman Lance A. Gumbs this week. "To this point the [Shinnecock] leadership have been sensitive to the destruction that it could cause to this community."

Mr. Gumbs said that the tribe has a just claim to enormous portions of the East End stemming from a wrongful 1859 treaty.

But State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., an outspoken critic of the Shinnecocks' casino bid, said that there are fundamental differences between the Cayuga claim and the Shinnecocks' situation.

"This was a land claim that had had some successes in court," Mr. Thiele said. "The threshold issue is that the Cayugas have federal recognition."

Settling a battle over such a high-stakes claim that it appeared to be losing was not an unexpected, or unwise, move on the part of the state, Mr. Thiele said.

He added that if the Shinneocks were patient and successfully negotiated the federal recognition process, they would probably be at least assured of the right to build a casino on the 800-acre reservation.