Onondaga

October 02, 2023

Today’s local newspaper reposted an article from the AP addressing the case by the Onondaga Nation to reclaim a portion of the lands taken from them.  The Onondaga have protested these illegal land grabs for centuries.  The initial appeal was to President George Washington, then to Congress, and then to a US court.  All the appeals failed.  Onondaga territory once stretched nearly 4,000 square miles (10,000 square km).  Today, the federally recognized territory is 7,500 acres (3,000 hectares) with about 2,000 people living mainly in single-family homes on wooded lots.  A tax-free smoke shop sits just off the interstate and a wooden longhouse used for meetings sits deeper in the territory.  Now the Nation has taken their appeal to an international panel.  The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recently allowed the Onondaga to pursue claims their land was taken unjustly by the state of New York.  This provides a unique venue for a land rights case against the US by a Native American nation.

When I looked online, I found the Onondaga people (“People of the Hills”) are one of the five original nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy in the Northeastern Woodlands of the US.  Their historical homelands are in and around present-day Onondaga County, New York.  Oral tradition says the Great Peacemaker approached the Onondaga and other tribes to establish the Haudenosaunee.  The Seneca nation was debating joining the Haudenosaunee as a solar eclipse took place, most likely the eclipse in 1142 CE which was visible in the land of the Seneca.  It was seen as a sign from the Great Peacemaker, and they joined.  The Onondaga are centrally located among the Five Nations and are considered the “Keepers of the Fire” (Iroquoian language: Kayečisnakwe’nì·yu) which is housed in the figurative longhouse of the Five Nations.  The Cayuga and Seneca territory is to the west and the Oneida and Mohawk to the east.  The League of the Iroquois historically met at the Iroquois government’s capital at Onondaga, just as the traditional chiefs still do today.

The Onondaga Nation’s case centers on a roughly 40-mile-wide (65-kilometer-wide) strip of land running down the center of upstate New York from Canada to Pennsylvania.  Their claim is that ancestral land was appropriated over decades by the state of New York, starting in 1788, through deceit that violated treaties and federal law.  The Onondaga again filed a federal lawsuit in 2005 claiming the illegally acquired land was still theirs.  A judge dismissed the claim five years later, ruling it came too late and “would be disruptive to people settled on the land”.  After the court loss, the Onondaga and the Haudenosaunee petitioned the commission in 2014, alleging violations of provisions of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and two claims were ruled admissible in May.  Now the commission can consider the merits of whether the nation’s rights to equality under the law and judicial protection were violated.  This is the first land rights case admitted by the commission from a Native American nation against the US, though it has heard other Indigenous cases against the United States.  The US government is not expected to abide by any opinion by the commission, which is part of the Organization of American States.

Thoughts:  The US has a long history of signing and breaking treaties with Native Americans.  There were 368 treaties signed from 1778 to 1871, acknowledging the tribes as independent, self-governing nations.  The Indian Appropriations Act of 1871 changed that and gutted previous treaties and eliminated Native tribes’ self-governance.  A July 2020 ruling by the US Supreme Court paves the way to address many of the points made by the Onondaga and other tribes: things like land reform and judicial treatment.  They are still waiting for the US to keep its word.  Act for all.  Change is coming and it starts with you.