4 June 2006
Bruce Fisher"It ain't Seneca land"
[The front page of the Buffalo News for 4 June 2006 featured an article by Michael Beebe, "For Senecas, return to Buffalo Creek helps right an old wrong," the gist of which seemed to be that since the Buffalo Creek area was aboriginal Seneca land, it was only reasonable that they should establish there a tax-exempt casino that would drain Buffalo's economy. Beebe's article is wrong in its primary premise: Buffalo Creek was never aboriginal Seneca territory. The land belonged to the Erielhonans and the Neutrals, who were wiped out by the Iroquois in the 17th century; the Iroquois hunted the land, as did other tribes, but never "owned it" in any sense until late 18th century treaties with the new U.S. government. Much of this history is summarized in the 2003 US Court of Appeals decision upholding Judge Richard Arcara's dismissal of the Seneca Nation claim to Grand Island, New York.
New York Governor George Pataki set up the Senecas' current casino operation, part of which would locate a casino in downtown Buffalo. Buffalo citizens never had a chance to vote on that and the issue has never been subjected to the environmental impact studies required by federal, state and local law. All of that is currently the subject of major citizens' lawsuits in both state and federal courts. Erie County Executive Joel Giambra recently joined those lawsuits on behalf of Erie County, on the grounds that the casino project is going on in violation of environmental laws and that it will cause irrepairable damage to the county's economy. Here, Giambra's deputy, Bruce Fisher, comments on Michael Beebe's June 4 article. --editor]
Those of us who serve the community of Erie County today are in court arguing that federal, state and local laws need to be upheld, and that the public interest must be defended by the officials who took oaths of office to do so. It's our view that this community will be injured by the development of a tax-exempt casino-retail-entertainment complex, and that if the laws are followed by the other levels of government, then no such development should occur here.
We joined with the citizen lawsuits because those suits are consistent with what we see as our duty to protect the public interest. Our argument is not political, but obviously, political pressure to ignore federal, state and local law is heavy.
What's so very unfortunate about the Buffalo News piece today is that the alleged history of "aboriginal land" will become part of the campaign to put this economically-destructive casino-retail-entertainment complex into place notwithstanding the law -- and notwithstanding history. Because of this article, anybody who opposes the casino could easily be characterized as a racist who cares nothing for the terrible injury done to the Senecas when the Buffalo Creek Reservation was stolen from them.
The problem is that the Buffalo Creek Reservation was never aboriginal Seneca land.
I know the sorry history of Indian-White relations in this country very well, having done my graduate work on this topic (Fellow, University of Illinois), having learned to speak a native North American language well in order to translate original documents, having served as an expert witness in land-claims and aboriginal-rights litigation in the Midwest -- and having grown up iin a near-reservation community with regular and close interaction with the Senecas of Cattaraugus. My family, as a member of the Episcopal congregation of St Paul's in Angola, actively supported the work of the late Rev. Glenn Coykendall, our Seneca-speaking pastor who so vigorously organized the opposition to President John F. Kennedy's seizure of the Allegheney River lands for the Kinzua Dam project.
What I am concerned about now is that, because the history presented in the Buffalo News is so garbled, many good people will see the Seneca Gaming Corporation development as a just and fair correction of past injustice.
Injustice was indeed done to the Senecas when their post-Revolutionary War lands were swindled from them.
But Buffalo Creek was not aboriginal Seneca land.
A recent Federal court case (concerning the aboriginal ownership of the islands in the Niagara River) lays this out. That case should have been consulted by the Buffalo News. It was not.
This court finding, and the "deep" history of this region, is indeed relevant -- precisely because of the issue of which lands should and should not have been made available to the Seneca Nation of Indians in the statute (authored by John LaFalce and Amo Houghton) that permitted them the opportunity to purchase non-reservation lands.
The Senecas occupied Buffalo Creek after they had sided with the British against the winners of the Revolutionary War. Not before.
The Iroquois entered Western New York over the corpses of the Wenro and Erie in 1639, two forgotten nations that were literally devoured (!) in the Iroquois conflict with the Hurons. (The Huron Confederacy were French allies; the Iroquois were British; the Huron-Iroquois wars were intensified by these alliances. The Huron-speaking Erie and Wenro were in the way, and the Iroquois destroyed them.) Ten years later, the Iroquois destroyed the Hurons near what is now Midland, Ontario, which is northwest of Toronto near the Georgian Bay Islands resort area..
Unlike what is happening here in Buffalo, the Iroquois did not occupy the conquered Huron territory and then claim it as aboriginal land by right of conquest.
The Aboriginal territory of the Senecas was around Seneca lake west to the Genesee River. The lands assigned to the Senecas here in WNY — like the southern Ontario lands assigned by England to Joseph Brant's loyalist Iroquois — came into their hands after the Revolution.
This history is detailed in many fine historical works, including those by Tooker, Wallace and Fenton.
The more relevant recitation of this history, however, is U.S. Federal District Court Judge Arcara's decision of 2003 -- which was upheld on appeal -- which definitively lays out what was and what was not "aboriginal' Seneca land. Judge Arcara exhaustively reviewed the Senecas' land claims in the 2002 case on the Senecas' claim that New York State had wrongly taken their islands in the Niagara River.
He found that the Senecas never had any claim to those islands and that their possession of lands in the former Erie and Wenro country (current-day Erie and Chautauqua, and Niagara Counties, respectively) was not aboriginal or ancestral, but was a result of agreements concluded AFTER the Revolutionary War.
The Federal District Court in this case focused on the Niagara River islands, but also reviewed all the Seneca occupation of lands in WNY -- and noted that all parties (the Senecas, the State and the Federal Government) agreed to a joint stipulation of undisputed facts. To quote these undisputed facts cited by the court:
"In 1638, the Senecas defeated the Wenros and drove them from their territory….Similarly, between 1654 and 1680, the Senecas defeated the Eries and drove them from the Niagara region. After the withdrawal of the Wenros and the defeat of the Neutrals and the Eries in the 1650s, the territory between the Genesee River and the Niagara River remained an unoccupied wilderness. According to historians, the Senecas may have had some small villages as bases for hunting and fishing, but there was no permanent occupancy of the country west of the Genesee River for almost a century. Historians have theorized that the reason for this might have been that the area was too vulnerable to attack from enemies of the Senecas. During that time, the Senecas were under constant attack by tribes from the west and the south…
"The expulsion or destruction of the original inhabitants [of the Niagara region], which was later to be termed a "conquest" when the British were seeking a basis for claiming the lands around the Great Lakes, was not followed by any appreciable resettlement or use of the Niagara land by the Senecas, and it does not appear that they made any effort to keep others away. On the contrary, the Niagara region remained a relatively deserted locality for many years, open to all comers, Indian or white….
"Thus until the time of the Revolutionary War, it appears that the main body of the Senecas lived between the Genesee River and Seneca Lake. (pp 14-16)"
The point of all of this is simple: when John LaFalce and Amo Houghton wrote the law that let the Seneca Nation buy more land for their reservation, they intended for those land purchases to be next to the current reservations.
The Senecas wanted to buy Grand Island. Arcara said no, you can't — it ain't aboriginal land.
Now, because of all the oceans of money that the casinos pump into politics, the Bush Administration, and local elected officials, just ignore the laws.
In defense of the public interest, we are the only level of government arguing that the law should be followed.
Bruce Fisher is Deputy County Executive of Erie County.
Copyright 2006 by Buffalo Report, Inc.