MOHAWK NATION ALLEGEDLY "LEASED" BARNHART ISLAND IN 1796, NY TOOK IT IN THE 1820s, 9 MOHAWK TRIED TO TAKE IT BACK IN 2024.

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Members of the St. Regis Mohawk tribe attempted to reclaim a key island in the St. Lawrence River from New York last week—along with a massive hydroelectric dam that connects the US to Canada and helps power both Montreal and New York City.

The action ended when State Troopers arrested five men, three women and a juvenile hours after the occupation began last Tuesday. All were charged with trespassing and misdemeanor conspiracy. One was charged with felony criminal mischief, for allegedly using a backhoe to clear land. 

The tribe calls the 1,700-acre island "Niionenhiasekowá:ne." New York calls it Barnhart. 

The island is one of the Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence River—which forms part of the US's northern border with Canada. It is home to the Eisenhower Lock of the St. Lawrence River Seaway, the seaway's Dwight D. Eisenhower Visitors' Center, the Robert Moses State Park-Thousand Islands and the Robert Moses-Robert H. Saunders Power Dam.

The massive dam spans the river, connects the Canadian province of Ontario with New York, regulates the level of Lake Ontario and generates almost 2 million kilowatts of electricity with its 32 water-driven generators—which are evenly split, 16 each, between Canada and the US.

"It proudly stands as a crucial pillar of New York State's electric generation and transmission system," the New York Power Authority, which operates the dam, says. It's an "engineering marvel that contributes mightily to New York State's clean and economical energy resources."

But to the Mohawk, Barnhart island is stolen. Niionenhiasekowá:ne belongs to their ancestral homeland. 

“We are here to build housing for our community," the Mohawks who attempted to reclaim it said when confronted by police on May 21, according to a news release from the group. "This is Onkwehonwe land.”

Onkwehonwe is Mohawk for "people of the earth." It refers to the Native American group the French named the "Iroquois Confederacy." 

The island is named for George Barnhart, a Loyalist who fled to Canada after the Revolution. Barnhart originally "leased" the island from the Mohawk, according to the United Empire Loyalists’ Association of Canada. He lost it when Canada swapped the island for one closer to their shoreline and under American control as part of the peace deal that ended the War of 1812.

The Mohawk's decades' long fight to reclaim their land was chronicled by The Free Lance last June.

The current phase of the Mohawk's fight dates back to 1974. That's when an armed band seized an abandoned summer camp New York State acquired for addition to its state Forest Preserve. It became known as the Moss Lake Stand-Off. 

The group issued the Ganienkeh Manifesto explaining their action, sure the "public shall see the justice and the rights of the American Indian people to such a move."

"No deed signed by Joseph Brand," the manifesto argued, "can extinguish the rights of the Mohawk to their own country."

Brand was the British-educated Mohawk who claimed to sign the 1796 treaty on behalf of the entire tribe that surrendered nearly all Mohawk land to New York. To sell out his people, the mercenary Brand got paid at least £1,450—more than $5 million today.

The Moss Lake occupation was "the beginning of an effort to not only get back some of the land they say Brand illegally sold," participants told the New York Times then, but a fight "to regain a culture and a way of life that were in peril." 

The stand-off lasted for a year-and-a-half before then-Secretary-of-State Mario Cuomo negotiated a peaceful end. In return for leaving the camp, the group was given about 5,000-acres surrounding a lake in Clinton County. They call it Ganienkeh. It has grown in size since then, and survives to this day. 

The Mohawks pressed their land claims further via a federal lawsuit in 1982. The lawsuit s-l-o-w-l-y wound its way through court for four decades. Finally federal judge Lawrence Kahn ruled in a precedent-setting 2022 decision that the 1796 treaty Brand signed purporting to transfer title to all Mohawk land in New York to the State was invalid because Congress never approved it. 

Since Judge Kahn's decision, the Mohawks, New York State, St. Lawrence and Franklin counties and everyone else with a legal interest at stake have reached a tentative agreement to settle the lawsuit. 

In return for forever waiving their rights to any land claims, the Mohawks get $70 million from NYPA for Barnhart Island, the right to purchase land in a relatively small 13,400-acre area around its remaining territory in St. Lawrence and Franklin counties and free tuition in SUNY colleges, according to a draft of the agreement. 

The agreement has yet to be finalized. Negotiations remain ongoing, court records show. The negotiations are largely shrouded in secrecy, but the hang-up appears to be the extent of the Mohawk's access to Barnhart, according to court records.

"The State recently received feedback from NYPA that will need to be circulated to the parties," a letter New York Assistant Attorney General Ryan Hickey sent the court on May 4 states. That suggests some part of the agreement controlling Barnhart is problematic to NYPA—which operates the power dam. 

"This language is critically important to NYPA," Hickey's letter states. 

According to a letter the Mohawk's lawyer, Alexandra C. Page of Berkey Williams, sent the court dated May 8 "the State raised new issues not previously discussed" after a Feb. 26 hearing.

The "State committed to assess whether it could agree to terms proposed by the Mohawks."

Still, according to Hickey, New York "does not believe that the parties are at an impasse on any issue, however the 'wordsmithing' of the language is not yet complete," according to Hickey's May 4 letter.

At the same time, some Mohawks are questioning the proposed settlement, as it's currently known, and have published a pamphlet explaining why. The Ganienkeh band—the descendents of the Mohawks who occupied Moss Lake 1974-75—also issued a communique to "condemn and denounce" the agreement.

Chief among their objections appears to be tribal leaders' plan to approve the agreement without a popular referendum among tribe members whether to approve or reject any deal.

One Mohawk told The Free Lance last June that a direct vote was required by the tribe's constitution, which they call the Great Law.

After the Barnhart Island action, one of the Mohawk who was arrested published a statement through an intermediary on Facebook explaining the attempted occupation as a protest against the tentative agreement.

"The Akwesasne Mohawk Land Claim Settlement agreement seeks to sever and suffocate Onkwehonwe relations to Niionenhiasekowá:ne, formally ceding the island’s title to New York State and subjecting our hunting and gathering rights to a foreign government," the statement said. "The state and federal government can not and will not ostracize us from our lands and waters."

The Tribe issued a news release responding "to the action on Barnhart Island." 

It agreed that the island was historically Mohawk, and was seized from them "due to illegal takings." But, the statement added, the renegade action could "set back our progress in the land claim settlement, which is nearing a positive resolution and could bring over 14,000 acres of Mohawk homelands to the community.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said through a spokesperson that her "top priority is the safety and well-being of all New Yorkers." She "directed the New York State Police to take the necessary steps to ensure the public is safe."

The Free Lance reached out to the occupiers, but they either did not respond or declined to comment.

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