The Bureau of Indian Affairs is giving another look at an application to put more than 100 acres into trust by the Cayuga Nation of New York that it rejected in 2020.
The tribe applied in April 2005 to put the land in Cayuga County into federal trust, i.e. make it reservation land.
In rejecting the application, the BIA cited the fact that the tribe demolished several tribal buildings, including a convenience store and gas station in Seneca Falls. Significantly, the BIA also pointed to a press conference in February 2020 that devolved into violence as another factor in the rejection.
On November 8, Cayuga Nation Council leader Clint Halftown and other submitted an affidavit including statements from Seneca Falls Police Chief Stu Peenstra, Seneca County Sheriff Tim Luce, and District Attorney Mark Sinkiewicz. The statement cleared the tribe of any wrongdoing in the incident that involved the arrest of a non-tribal member.
The tribe also submitted a 29-page document on its history and efforts to keep its former reservation that at one time included 64,015 acres over two counties.
BIA director Bryan Newland on December 7 filed a declaration that he has begun a review of the new information, which he anticipates could take six months.
Halftown hailed the decision: “The Department of the Interior’s withdrawal of the faulty 2020 decision is an overdue but welcome development.” He added, “Although the legal status of our reservation and our inherent rights to sovereignty and self-determination within our reservation’s borders have never been in doubt, we have fought for trust land status for a small portion of the land that is rightfully ours for more than 15 years. The Cayuga Nation applauds Assistant Secretary Newland’s decision to reconsider the previous denial of our fee-to-trust application, creating a pathway for the Nation to have some of this land at last taken into trust.”
He added that the original decision “largely relied on unconfirmed media reports that the Nation’s members and police force were somehow responsible for a violent outbreak during a controlled demolition and subsequent ‘peaceful protest’ in February 2020, all of which later were determined to be false by multiple authorities.”
