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Madison County to argue Oneida Indian Nation’s reservation status |
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Written by Administrator
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Thursday, 25 March 2010 |
Madison County to argue Oneida Indian Nation’s reservation status
Published: Tuesday, March 23, 2010
By CAITLIN TRAYNOR
Dispatch Staff Writer
WAMPSVILLE — Madison County officials will provide Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge David Hurd with a recent court decision in support of its stance against the Oneida Indian Nation in current litigation, the Board of Supervisor’s Native American Affairs Committee reported at its meeting Tuesday.
A March 5 Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling decided that the Osage Indian Nation of Oklahoma was disestablished by Congress.
“This relates to the present appeal on the pending question of whether the Oneida reservation has been disestablished,” Madison County Attorney John Campanie said. “We have argued that the historic record shows the reservation was not created by the Treaty of Canandaigua and even if it was, the Treaty of Buffalo Creek disestablishes the reservation. We believe the Treaty of Canandaigua was never intended to create a reservation.”
Campanie said the county has sent a copy of the ruling along with an allowable 350-word statement on the ruling.
“Hopefully it will have two effects,” Campanie said of the submission. “One is it will make the court aware of a very favorable decision and number two, perhaps it might spur them on to action.”
“Madison County is grasping at straws,” said OIN Spokesman Mark Emery. “Since the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling in the City of Sherrill case, there are six separate federal court decisions holding that the Oneida reservation was not disestablished. The Oklahoma case involved an act of Congress disestablishing that tribe’s reservation; there is no such act of Congress regarding the Oneida reservation.”
Also during the committee meeting, Campanie reported that the federal government extended its agreement to refrain from taking more land into trust within the next year without specified notice to the county. A prior year-long agreement expired in February, Campanie said.
Additional arguments were heard by Judge David Peebles March 17 on motions made by the county to compel the delivery of administrative records for land into trust applications from the Department of Interior.
Some Freedom of Information Act requests have been partially granted, but the supposed 50,000 pages of related documents in the DOI’s possession have not been provided yet, Campanie said.
Campanie expects the county to have the requested documents by the end of April and said the next step in the lawsuit will be cross motions for summary judgment.
http://www.oneidadispatch.com/articles/2010/03/23/news/doc4ba98d0ad44d9833832842.txt |
