Shinnecocks reach settlement that could bring federal recognition by 2010

By Michael Wright

May 27, 09 12:39 PM

The Shinnecock Indian Nation and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs reached a settlement in federal court this week that could earn the tribe federal recognition—an official designation necessary for opening a gaming facility—by the middle of 2010.

According to the settlement, brokered in the federal court in Central Islip and agreed to on Tuesday before Judge Joseph Bianco, the BIA must issue its proposed finding on the Nation’s three-decades-old application for federal recognition by December 15, 2009. If there are no objections to the finding, the BIA would then have to issue a final determination on the tribe’s status by mid-June of 2010.

If granted federal recognition, the tribe would be immediately eligible to open a limited gambling facility on tribal lands, and it would open the door to negotiations with New York State that could allow them to operate a much bigger facility. Federal recognition would also make the tribe eligible for a variety of federal aid and assistance grants.

It would also vindicate the Shinnecocks, one of the best documented Native American tribes in the country, in their long battle to be placed on the list of federally recognized tribes.

“As a result of this settlement, our more than 30-year quest for federal recognition is finally within our grasp,” Tribal Trustees Chairman Randy King said in a statement released by the tribe on Wednesday morning. “We look forward to reclaiming our rightful place on this list, which will enable us to qualify for federal programs long denied our people. To be denied the ability to partner with the federal government on housing, health care, educational, and economic justice initiatives is no longer tolerable.”

The tribe has claimed, in one of several lawsuits it has been involved with in the last six years, that it was inexplicably and wrongly removed from informal federal lists of recognized tribes in the 1940s, despite centuries of friendly, and well documented, relations between the tribe and the New York State and local governments.

The settlement reached on Tuesday addresses just one of six claims in a lawsuit brought by the Shinnecocks in 2006 against the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a division of the federal Department of the Interior. The suit claimed, in part, that BIA officials have unfairly held up the tribe’s federal recognition application, dealt with the Shinneoccks differently than they have other tribes, even stonewalled the tribe and concealed recommendations on the tribe’s status from their own lawyers as far back as the 1970s.

In 2007, Judge Bianco ruled against the tribe in a lawsuit brought by the Town of Southampton, barring the tribe from ever using a 79-acre parcel in Hampton Bays for a gambling facility because it cannot be considered tribal lands. A previous judge in the case, Judge Thomas C. Platt, had issued a ruling in 2003 granting the tribe federal recognition immediately—a ruling the BIA has flatly refused to recognize.

Bureau of Indian Affairs Director Nedra Darling could not be reached for comment on Wednesday morning.

The Shinnecocks began their federal recognition application in 1976, the year the Federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was adopted, allowing tribes to pursue gaming as a source of economic self-sufficiency. The application was amended in 1998 and again in 2006.

In 2001, the tribe began clearing land in Hampton Bays for what they said would be a small gaming facility as a precursor to a larger, full-fledged casino and convention center, despite lacking federal recognition. The work was stopped by a lawsuit filed on by the Town of Southampton. Judge Bianco ruled in 2007 that the tribe could not consider the Hampton Bays parcel tribal lands and could not operate a gaming facility there.

The tribe has said it does not wish to develop its 800-acre reservation on Shinnecock Neck and that it is seeking a more suitable site, either elsewhere in Suffolk County, at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, or somewhere in metropolitan New York.

http://www.27east.com/story_detail.cfm?id=213670&town=Southampton