Tribe suing U.S. over land in 1794 treaty
International legal action is only second ever by American Natives
Four or five years ago, Sidney Hill’s young son came to him with a question that Hill didn’t know how to answer.
The boy had learned that day about the millions of acres of land that his people, the Onondaga, had once called home, and the way that their homeland had been taken parcel by parcel by the state of New York, until all that was left was 11 square miles south of Syracuse.
“We lost all this land,” Hill recalled his son saying. “How can that be?”
In many ways, Hill was the best person to answer that question. As Tadodaho, the spiritual leader of the Onondaga Nation, he was responsible for protecting its legacy and guiding it into the future. He was one of a handful of elders who have worked for decades on a legal and diplomatic strategy to fight back against the historic wrongs his son now sought to understand.
Even so, it caught him off balance.
The younger generation needed to know, he said. “But it doesn’t make much sense to them.”
Hill tried to reassure his son that all that injustice was in the past.
But he knew how hard it was to accept past wrongs, particularly when their consequences so informed the present. It was why he had spent so long pushing — first Onondaga elders, then the U.S. justice system and, finally, an international human rights commission — for a correction to that history.
The Onondaga claim that the United States violated a 1794 treaty, signed by George Washington, that guaranteed 2.5 million acres in central New York to them. The case, filed in 2014, is the second brought by an American Indian nation against the United States in an international human rights body; a finding is expected as soon as this year.
Even if the Onondaga are successful, the result will mostly be symbolic. The entity, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, has no power to enforce a finding or settlement, and the United States has said that it does not consider the commission’s recommendations to be binding.
“We could win against them, but that doesn’t mean that they have to abide by whatever,” Hill said in an interview.
The 2.5 million acres have long since been transformed by highways and utility lines, shopping malls, universities, airports and roller rinks. The territory encompasses the cities of Binghamton and Syracuse, as well as more than 30 state forests, dozens of lakes and countless streams and tributaries. It is also home to 24 Superfund sites, the environmental detritus of the powerhouse economy that helped central New York thrive during the beginning and middle half of the 20th century.
Most notorious of these is Lake Onondaga, which once held the dubious title of America’s most polluted lake.
Industrial waste has left its mark on Onondaga territory, leaving the nation unable to fish from its streams and rivers. The history of environmental degradation is part of what motivates the Onondaga, who consider it their sacred responsibility to protect their land.
One of their chief objectives in filing the petition is a seat at the table on environmental decisions across the original territory. The other is an acknowledgment that New York, even if only in principle, owes them 2.5 million acres.
Across the nation, government officials have grappled with the notion of reparations to address historical injustices. In 2022, officials in Evanston, Ill., began distributing $25,000 to Black descendants of enslaved people as reparations for housing discrimination.
In New York, people who were once imprisoned for marijuana crimes received preference for licenses to sell cannabis; Gov. Kathy Hochul last year also created a statewide task force to examine whether reparations can be made to address the legacy of racial injustice.
Some Native nations have been willing to drop land claims in exchange for licenses to operate casinos. But the Onondaga say they are not interested in cash. Nor are they interested in licenses to sell cannabis or operate a casino — which they consider socially irresponsible and a threat to their tribal sovereignty.
There’s really just one thing that Hill says would be an acceptable form of payment: land.
The Onondaga insist they are not looking to displace anyone. Instead they hope the state might turn over a tract of unspoiled land for the nation to hunt, fish, preserve or develop as it sees fit.