To the Editor:
(Canastota, NY – July 2013
) New York State’s compact with the Oneida Nation is not just a bad deal – it may be worse than we think. As there were no public hearings on this “historic” agreement, many of the details are not known.
What we do know is this deal will legalize the Oneida Indian Nation Turning Stone Casino and will:
* Give the Oneida Nation a monopoly on casinos in Central New York in an 11-county area.
* Give the state 25 percent of the Oneida Nation slot revenue, and in return the Oneida Nation would support a constitutional amendment to allow non-Indian gambling in New York.
* Give up to 25,000 acres of tax-exempt trust land to be used for unlimited retail development to the Oneida Nation forever.
* Eliminate our lawsuit in process in the federal courts that challenges the right of the Oneida Nation to have land taken into trust.
* Be challenged in the courts by the state, several counties, citizens and possibly two other tribes that claim to be the real Oneidas. Recently, a lawyer representing Vernon and Verona requested an investigation saying the agreement amounts to vote-buying.
* Evict Phillips, a full-blooded Oneida Indian because his land is the only continuously held tract, which, in part, is needed to make the trust legal.
* Deputize tribal police.
* Forgo back taxes.
What is not known is how this agreement may impact gas drilling. Before this agreement is ratified, questions need to be answered. As acquired trust land will not be bound by local laws, tribal land could be used for [hydraulic fracturing], mining, landfills or whatever the Oneida Nation chooses.
Is this the strategy the state is using to take fracking out of our control?
Trust land will be under the control of the Bureau of Land Management. In New York, most of the shale reserves are almost entirely privately held; landowners who lease might stand to profit financially; however, trust land will expand federal leasing. If developed and profitable, the federal treasury would get royalties. Will this trust land be used in the calculation for compulsory integration?
Will turning over land to the federal government to be put in trust for an Indian tribe eliminate the state’s guarantee of private property rights over that land? As the Bureau of Indian Affairs doesn’t recognize patched sovereign lands, as this checkerboarding of Madison and Oneida counties will do, will all land in between those lands be incorporated into trust land?
If so, this is a human rights issue.
If the state approves this disenfranchisement of citizens, residents basically will no longer have control over their own properties. Tribal police will be the initial enforcers. If there are any violations of civil and legal rights between tribal police and non-Indians, will we be told to “take it up with the tribal government?”
In order to stop this agreement until all the details are known, please contact your state representatives and the state Attorney General and ask they block this legislation and send it back for re-negotiation.
Cheryl Cary, Canastota