Indians Lose a Case

The Shinnecock Nation Won’t Be Evicting You After All

By Dan Rattiner

For the last year, the residents of a good part of the town of Southampton have lived under the cloud of a lawsuit filed by the Shinnecock Indian Nation in that town. The lawsuit laid claim to all the land in town from about where McDonald’s is today all the way to the Shinnecock Canal. This would include the National Golf Links, the Stony Brook Southampton College, the Shinnecock Golf Club and the Greek Orthodox Church as well as all other institutions and residence in the proscribed area. McDonald’s too.

The Shinnecocks claim that about two hundred years ago, at about the time the Southampton Town government gave up any claims to the 800-acre tribal grounds on the peninsula of land where they now have their reservation, a second deal involving a lease was agreed upon regarding this much larger area. And the Town reneged on those arrangements. Therefore that lease had to be null and void. And so therefore the tribe still owned the land.

Judge Thomas C. Platt, a Federal Judge who agreed to hear the case in spite of the fact that the plaintiff still has not been recognized by the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, (the tribe IS recognized by the State of New York), ruled last week against the tribe. In a 17-page decision, based on all he heard in his courtroom over the past year, he said that although it was clear to him the 155-year-old deal had been reneged upon, the tribe could not make the claim for the land. He ruled for the Town.

The reason he gave was because of a particular American civil law that involves what is known as adverse possession.

If you live on a half acre of land next to an absentee neighbor who has a whole acre and for a period of fifteen years fence off his land and proactively and clearly claim that it is yours, it will become yours after the fifteen years are up, provided that the neighbor during that whole time does not dispute the claim.

The Indians got cheated out of their land in 1849. From time to time, they claimed this land as theirs. But they did not do so continuously — and no historical record exists to say that they did — for periods less than the fifteen years necessary for them to keep their rights to the property. Meanwhile, the newcomers, the townspeople, did continuously and openly claim the land. So the land is theirs.

The Shinnecocks plan an appeal.

In a related matter, the Shinnecocks are proceeding with a case involving land that everyone agrees that they DO own, about 50 acres of woodland in northern Hampton Bays. The Shinnecocks wish to build a gambling casino or bingo parlor on this land. It belonged to a local man in Southampton for many years in the early twentieth century, and this man, having befriended the Shinnecock people and noting that no structures had ever been built on it — none are on it today — and that the Indians would conduct sacred tribal ceremonies on it, just GAVE the land to the Shinnecock Nation. They would be free to use the land in whichever way they wished, provided of course that they abided by the laws of Southampton Town in whose jurisdiction it sits.

Under those circumstances, the Shinnecocks, treated as a private entity such as a corporation or a partnership, would not be permitted to build a casino on this property. It is zoned residential. But the Shinnecocks, treated as a separate nation — could make its own laws about what they want to do there. They are recognized by the state as an independent tribe after all. They are going to court to pursue those rights.

In some ways, this second lawsuit asserts that they be considered owners of this land in the same way that, for example, the residence and offices of an embassy from a foreign country are considered. I do not know if, in terms of building materials and zoning laws, structures built on a property owned by a foreign country — and yes , embassies are considered foreign soil — the foreigners have to abide by the rules of the community or by the rules of their back-home country, but I do know that Diplomats who work in those Embassies do not have to obey traffic laws and parking regulations when driving around in the cities where they are located.

The real bottom line here is that the Shinnecock Indian Nation, as an entity, owns all the tribal land in the reservation and the 400 or so tribal members who live there — and are considered tenants by banks — do not have the ability to obtain credit cards or mortgages or even get a credit rating that would take into account the residences they have on that property. The failure to decide who gets what rights and who owns what has helped create true poverty on this reservation in the midst of plenty. This needs to be addressed and once and for all decided upon so everybody can proceed.