GOV. HOCHUL AND SENECA NATION TRIBE TO NEGOTIATE A DISPUTE OVER LAND, THE FUTURE OF THE NEW YORK STATE THRUWAY AND HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS IN ANNUAL REVENUE

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Another Native American tribe is winning its legal battle to regain control of allegedly stolen land.

New York must renegotiate a 69-year-old legal agreement it made with the Seneca Nation that allowed the State Thruway to be built on tribal land, a Federal court in Buffalo ordered Aug. 1. Negotiations must start by Oct. 8, the order says.

At stake is the Thruway itself, a cash-cow that reliably generates almost $1 billion in toll revenue for New York State every year. 

The agreement to be renegotiated was signed by the Seneca and Gov. Thomas E. Dewey in 1954. It gave the State the right to build the Thruway across a 3-mile long, 300-acre wide tract of Seneca territory between Buffalo and the Pennsylvania border. 

New York needed to build what it calls the Erie Spur of the superhighway across Seneca land because, without it, it would not have been a complete "Thruway" that traversed the entire state—not without a lengthy, costly and time-consuming detour around what the Seneca Nation calls its Cattaraugus Territory.

Federal law requires all transfers of control of Native American land be approved by Congress. New York never obtained the required Congressional approval, a federal appeals court found in Jan. 

During the original negotiations in 1954, New York officials threatened to flood Seneca territory by damming the Allegheny River if it did not agree to the deal, the Seneca say. The tribe accepted a one-time payment of $75,000, even though it wanted a perpetual percentage of Thruway toll income.

"The Thruway is a 300-acre scar on our Cattaraugus Territory," Seneca Nation President Rickey Armstrong Sr. says. It violates "promises made to us by treaty." 

The Federal Government eventually dammed the Allegheny river anyway, taking 10,000 acres of the tribe's land and turning residents into refugees, again.

As America continues to grapple with its racist history, the Aug. 1 decision by US magistrate Michael J. Roemer requiring New York to renegotiate the land deal with the Senecas over the Thruway puts the State's treatment of them and other Native American tribes living within its borders front and center. 

The ruling is the second in less than a year from a Federal judge favoring a Native American tribe alleging New York stole land from it. The St. Regis Mohawk tribe won a ruling in 2022 that resulted in negotiations and an agreement that it can regain control of 13,400-acres of land taken by New York without Federal approval, as previously reported by The Free Lance.

Raising the stakes of the Thruway land negotiations, the Seneca and New York also have to renegotiate a 20-year-old treaty allowing the tribe to operate three casinos in exchange for a percentage of proceeds. The deal generates about $100 million a year in revenue for New York; totalling about $2 billion in the last two decades. It expires Dec. 9.

The casino negotiations have been contentious. They were deadlocked until New York agreed to allow the Seneca to build a new casino near Rochester. But the preliminary agreement allowing the new casino was squashed by the state Assembly because Rochester representatives objected. Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration never consulted them, they said.

For her part, Gov. Hochul abstained from being directly involved in the casino negotiations because her husband, Bill, is a Senior Vice President and General Counsel for a gambling corporation called Delaware North that was the Seneca's competition. 

But now, in a twist to the ongoing saga, Bill Hochul announced his resignation from Delaware North effective Aug. 15. When reporters asked Gov. Kathy Hochul to explain what this meant for the casino negotiations at an Aug. 3 news conference, Hochul answered it meant she would personally oversee the renewed negotiations.

“Any recusals will be eliminated when his job is gone," Gov. Hochul told Bloomberg News' Zach Williams.

Meanwhile, outspoken Seneca advocate, Let's Talk Native radio show John Kane, told Spectrum News any profit-sharing deal with New York had little chance of being ratified by a majority of the tribe—which, under present tribe rules, it must be.

Instead, Kane said, the "vast majority of Senecas that I talk to want no revenue sharing deal." They would rather take their chances negotiating with the Federal government than deal with Hochul.

Still, Kane explained, Seneca leadership presses on because of the regional “exclusivity” on gambling a deal with New York State but not the Federal Government gives them. Kane called that exclusivity illusory in light of the spread of gambling, online and otherwise, in the last 20 years.

"There was no way that this deal was going to pass through a referendum," Kane said. 

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