Battle Over Iroquois Land Claims Escalates - NYTimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/16/nyregion/battle-over-iroquois-land-c...

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Battle Over Iroquois Land Claims Escalates Focus E-Mail

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By DAVID W. CHEN
video.
Published: May 16, 2000

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''There's a problem here that's over 25 years old,'' said Steven M. Tullberg, director of
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''They're buying plazas, stores, entire tracts, farmland, and the reservations are like
checkerboards,'' said Leon R. Koziol, a Utica lawyer who has represented several
landowner groups. ''Then eventually, what do you have? A virtual country within a
country, and it's scary.''

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Battle Over Iroquois Land Claims Escalates - NYTimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/16/nyregion/battle-over-iroquois-land-c...

The Iroquois, though, say the issue has never been about greed or power. In fact, they
have pledged not to evict any landowners. What they say is at stake is redressing
ancient wrongs and securing a better future for their descendants.

So it was all the more symbolic when about 50 chiefs from the Iroquois nations
convened a rare meeting in March just south of Syracuse at the sacred longhouse that is
the spiritual and political heart of the Iroquois -- or, as they prefer to be called,
Haudenosaunee.

While the formal agenda, conducted solemnly in Iroquois languages, focused on

selecting new Mohawk leaders, the informal discussion swirled around the nation-
by-nation status of their claims.

''Our people have been waiting a long time for this,'' said Chief Oren Lyons of the
Onondaga Nation. ''This is not something we just made up.''

During the late 1700's and early 1800's, New York State bought or seized most Iroquois
properties without Congressional ratification, thereby violating the Federal Trade and
Intercourse Act of 1790. Yet for years, the Iroquois failed to reverse these deals, stymied
by discrimination and legal obstacles, said Robert W. Venables, a senior lecturer in the
American Indian program at Cornell University.

In 1970, the Oneidas became the first Iroquois nation to file a land claim in federal
court. And in 1985, the Supreme Court sided with the Oneidas, in a 5-to-4 decision
concerning a test case that named Oneida and Madison Counties as defendants and
claimed only 900 acres.

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