Posted on 06/16/2005 10:25:07 AM PDT by RuthannaK
NEW YORK — The Southampton, N.Y.-based Shinnecock Indians (search) on Tuesday fired the first arrow in their battle to reclaim ancestral lands — filing a federal lawsuit seeking the return of 3,600 acres of prime real estate "stolen" by the state a century and a half ago.
The 1,300-member tribe also is asking for monetary damages — conservatively estimated at $1.7 billion — and 150 years of back rent and interest in what it called "the largest Indian land claim ever filed."
The suit is seen by many locals as an attempt to force favorable action on the Shinnecocks' bid for federal recognition and its plan to open a casino in the booming resort area.
Members of the tribe beat animal-skin drums, shook rattles, chanted an "honor song" and whooped yesterday as their leader, Randy King (search), entered federal court to file the suit.
"This day has been decades in the making. We only seek what is ours," said King, chairman of the tribe's board of trustees.
The tribe wants title to all non-residential property within a 3,600-acre area of Southampton Town — land it claims it was cheated out of in 1859.
The land targeted in the suit includes the world-renowned Shinnecock Hills Golf Club (search), Southampton College's sprawling campus and the elite bayfront National Golf Links of America (search).
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Could we please give Manhatten back to the Indians?
I think it would be an improvement.
I'd love to see Barbara Walters and Dan Rather evicted from there East Side Condo's to make room for a poor Indian.
Let them sue the British for losing the Revolutionary War
Hey I like this idea
Makes perfect sense to me.. after all, they New Yawkers (and other Northeast Coast libs) have already set that precendence out here in Montana by moving out here, buying their 20 acres, wearing mink skin cowboy hats, shiny boots and then suing the government to return Wolves to THEIR ancestral lands, no matter WHO it hurts.
Good job Indians, go get 'em.
The Santee Sioux tried almost everything, from lawsuits to outright defiance of the law, to set up a casino here in Nebraska. They lost. And they had legal standing as a tribe.
Sit down, smoke the peace pipe and make a deal now. It's less expensive and stressful for everyone that way.
immediate surrender really is the first option for you guys, isn't it? :-)
I've decided the last house I sold was an unfair land transaction. I want to go back and get $50,000 more for it.
Hakawi names?
They DO have a reservation and one hell of an annual PowWow in the summer. I went when I was a kid.
"immediate surrender really is the first option for you guys, isn't it? :-)"
If you're going to lose anyway, and you're wrong in the first place, making a deal is common sense.
Fighting to the death...and getting predictably killed...is pointless.
How long ago did the Santee fail?
The Santee's history is Indian history in microcosm. In the early 1850's, they made a stupid land deal trading large chunks of real estate for money. When, as usual, the Indian agents started exploiting the Indians, and the Indians discovered that the hunting rights they retained were no use when all the game had been killed off by agrarian settlement, they rebelled in an extremely vicious way during the Civil War, killing approximately 750 settlers, mostly women and children. The rebellion was quashed after a couple of months, and despite the whining of contemporary members of the tribe, reprisals were extremely mild, considering the reports of what the Santee did - decapitating children and using their heads as footballs, etc.; 33 Santee were executed, the rest having had their death sentences commuted by Abraham Lincoln. They were, however, removed from Minnesota, Congress having abrogated all treaties following the massacre (which they were entitled to do) and the Santee were dispersed on three or four reservations in the Dakotas and northern Nebraska.
Ok, but in this case, Congress formally abrogated the treaty.
That is why the Indians lost.
If the act concerning the Shinnecock was valid and binding, and the Shinnecock didn't break their end of the deal, the government is going to be stuck.
Of course, it will matter whether it was a state act or federal.
The best way to challenge this, from the perspective of the Hamptons, is to challenge the authenticity of the claims of the individuals to be Shinnecock Indians. The Shinnecock may indeed have rights, but if the plaintiff's ain't Shinnecock, they've got no standing to act on behalf of the Shinnecock.
This has been tried before in IL. I don't know the outcome. Supposedly no new casino licenses have been issued though and Kankakee county has not been depopulated of white people. But the people who live on the land are not arrogant rich white people. They're just ordinary people.
I think you're right. They fought the US gov't and they lost like everybody else does. Do you think its any more correct to dispossess 100s of people over a deal that happened 140 years ago and who didn't have anything to do with it? Did the Indians actually ever own the land? I don't think so. We don't live by squatter's laws. These "indians" need to get over it and join the 21st century.
"Do you think its any more correct to dispossess 100s of people over a deal that happened 140 years ago and who didn't have anything to do with it? Did the Indians actually ever own the land? I don't think so. We don't live by squatter's laws. These "indians" need to get over it and join the 21st century."
We all live by the US Constitution, and it's 216 years old, quite a bit older than 140 years.
The US Constitution says that Treaties are the Supreme Laws of the Land. US laws do not expire. If they are passed by Congress, or ratified by the Senate, they remain in full force and effect until they are abolished by Congress.
The US government, 140 years ago, before that, and more recently, signed Treaties and ratified them. They did not do this with ALL Indian tribes, but they did do so with some of them. Regardless of what anybody thinks about it, the US Government bound itself, by those treaties, to the recognition that the Indians they treated with DID have sovereign title in those lands. And they negotiated treaties, sovereign to sovereign, whereby that title was transferred for certain rights, some monetary, some territorial, and some perpetual privileges. Those were the terms by which the US government bound itself, by treaty, and treaties, according to the Constitution of the United States are, like the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land. If the Government today can go ignoring Indian treaties because they are inconvenient or expensive, it can ignore any other part of the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land, which it finds inconvenient.
Indians had legal title because the government acknowledged that in treaties. Indians have rights because the Government bound itself by law to treaties which it can no more get out of by unilaterally breaking the law than it can get out of the 1st or 2nd Amendment by unilaterally ignoring it. Squatter's rights have nothing to do with it, because the US Government formally acknowledged the Indians' pre-existing rights in the land. These legal acts cannot be undone, and they are as binding on America as the Constitution.
For a time, the Government ignored the treaties and did not fulfill its end of the bargain, but for the past 50 years the Federal Courts have very firmly and consistently enforced the Treaty obligations of the United States vis a vis the Indians. YOU may not think that the Indians ever owned the land, but your government bound itself by law a long, long time ago to the opposite proposition, and for a half century the courts of the United States have made it very clear that Indian Treaties are valid, and that intervening violations by the government and by states government do not have any legal effect at extinguishing them. Rights that the Indians had by treaties 140 years ago which were ignored for 100 years have full effect to day, as the Supreme Law of the Land the Constitution says Treaties are, and the intervening violations did nothing to extinguish them.
That's the law.
Now, as a practical matter, Indians almost never want to depopulate towns and take all that land back. That is what they have claims to under treaties. So, the claim is made under the treaty, and then the judicial system and negotiators get to work taking claims that have to be brought as land claims - because those are the treaty rights - and translating them into modern money and regulatory claims, such as casino rights. Federal law encourages the establishing of Indian casino gambling, because this has really lifted the fortunes of many tribes.
Indians have "gotten over it" in the sense that they are no longer helpless in the face of violations of their legal rights. The US Government made contracts, and those contracts are still binding today whether modern Americans really want to fulfill them or not. The Courts have made that clear.
Communities that cooperate with the Indians generally do quite well, because of casino revenue sharing. Communities that take an arrogant and belligerent stance, that the passage of time annuls the constitutional power of treaties, usually lose in Federal Court. If there is a treaty, the law is generally on the side of the Indians.
Of course, where there is NOT a treaty it is much more touch and go.
Hey, one of my best vendors is located in Phoenix. Also Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West (sp?).... Visited it this year for the first time... GREAT!!!!
I think because this way they only go after eeeeeeevil capitalist property owners.
It just shows how bogus their argument is.
Besides the american indians believed you CAN'T own land. This owning land lawsuit thing only happened with this advent of casinos.
"Besides the american indians believed you CAN'T own land. This owning land lawsuit thing only happened with this advent of casinos."
The tribe owns the land.
This is great!!!! First laugh I"ve had today...a very stressful day I had!
I think if the claim is valid they should be given back the land. Who needs more cape cods and mansions for greedy, rich arrogant LI sobs? When I worked for them in the shopping mall, I appreciated living in the 'ghetto' as the same rich people put it.
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