Newsday: Waiting to be recognized

Waiting to be recognized
Shinnecock Indians have years to go until the government rules on their authenticity as a tribe

BY JOHN MORENO GONZALES

Newsday Staff Writer

Long before federal court cases and a casino controversy, the Shinnecock Indians began what is now 30 years of research into the history of each family on their reservation, and they may have another 15 years of heavy genealogical lifting ahead of them.

Since 1978, it has been one of the hoops the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs insists the tribe must jump through toward its goal of federal recognition, a necessary step before having the right to build an East End casino. But because of a near half-century backlog at the bureau, the Shinnecocks may have to wait as long as the year 2014 to learn if they are a sovereign people in the eyes of the government.

Beginning the same year the BIA instituted the federal recognition process still in use today, the tribe has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and some emotional currency on the effort to trace Shinnecock family trees, tribal leaders say.

"It's a process that is extremely costly, extremely time-consuming and personally burdensome," said Marguerite A. Smith, a chairwoman of the Shinnecock Reservation's recognition committee. "People are offended that they should have to justify their very being."

Quality of life in the balance

More than just the casino effort is at stake, tribal leaders emphasized. Opportunities for better educational and housing assistance programs also would come with BIA recognition.

"We want to provide a better education for the children, better health care, better homes," said tribal chairman Lance Gumbs in a recent interview. "It has never only been about a casino."

The Shinnecocks, numbering 1,300, remain on the "ready waiting for active" list of American Indian tribes who have petitioned for recognition. The understaffed BIA says it could get to the tribe's case by 2009, then it typically takes another five years to make a decision.

There is no certainty the Shinnecocks will receive a favorable ruling.

"You have to wait until it plays out and see where the chips fall," said Gary Garrison, a BIA spokesman. "Everybody eventually gets through the process. But there has been more [tribes] who have been denied federal recognition than have been given.

"The nation began the process in 1978 when the BIA told them if it wanted sovereignty it must use the newly instituted method, Smith said. But the Reagan administration's institution of Indian gaming in 1988 has made the process a political minefield, experts said. Its public hearings are akin to amped-up town hall meetings, experts say, with hundreds of millions of dollars of gambling proceeds on the line and power plays clouding the more fundamental question of whether a tribe has met historical criteria for recognition.

"The Shinnecocks are at a disadvantage," said Donald A. Grinde Jr., a professor and chairman of American Studies at the University of Buffalo who has closely watched the process for the Seneca Indians upstate. "There are more than a few people in the Hamptons [opposed to a casino] who have some pull in New York State and the federal government.

"In a bid to obtain recognition sooner, attorneys representing the Shinnecocks filed court petitions based on the Tribe List Act of 1994, which says federal courts have the authority to recognize an American Indian tribe. In November 2005, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Platt recognized the Shinnecocks as a sovereign nation, but the BIA countered two months later that it was not compelled to recognize Platt's ruling.

The bureau argues that judicial recognition is unfair to other tribes because it allows some to leapfrog others.

"The federal courts kind of have a knee-jerk reaction and want recognition to happen sooner," Garrison said. "You're going to play round robin with the whole list. "

More hurdles

For now, the Shinnecocks are ninth on the ready waiting active list, meaning the applications of eight tribes will be reviewed before theirs is even considered. In addition to the recognition issues, the tribe faces a Town of Southampton effort to block construction in Hampton Bays on a parcel of Shinnecock-owned land known as the Westwoods. The Shinnecocks broke ground on the site after Platt's ruling, but were forced to halt by the town's federal lawsuit.

The nonjury trial before Judge Joseph Bianco is scheduled to resume on Wednesday, with the Shinnecocks attempting to counter the town's claims that the tribe has no legal right to build on the land because it historically has not been a part of the larger reservation to the east.

Faced with those hurdles, Shinnecocks continue to build the proof needed to navigate a federal recognition process that in itself could end up being a tale spanning 50 years.

BIA spokesman Garrison, himself a Choctaw Indian, said he realized the bureau was asking much of Indian tribes to retrace their history for the same federal government that once displaced them.

"We understand it's a slow process for the tribes," Garrison said. "After all, the resources of the federal government were once aligned against them to break them up."