NYS Senate again approves bill restoring state recognition to Montaukett Indian Nation

The State Senate on Tuesday night once again voted to approve a bill that would restore state recognition to the Montaukett Indian Nation, following approval earlier this year by the state Assembly.

The Senate bill, sponsored by Sen. Anthony Palumbo (R-New Suffolk), marks the eighth time the bill has passed the State Legislature.

It has been vetoed four times by Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has cited a range of reasons, including a controversial 1910 state court decision that declared the tribe "disintegrated" and therefore extinct. That decision came despite more than a dozen Montaukett members in the courtroom at the time and widespread criticism that the court ruling was racist.

Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo also vetoed the measure three times.

Sandi Brewster-walker, executive director of the Montauketts and a historian, on Tuesday thanked the Senate "for sticking with us, for being with us and supporting us on this issue."

Her message to Hochul: "I hope that over the past seven years that the governor has learned more about the Montauketts and the Indians [in this state] and she realizes that we’re still here and she should sign the bill."

A spokesman for Hochul didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Palumbo, in an interview Wednesday, said he's hopeful Hochul will sign the bill this year. 

"We now have to work with the governor's people" to get the bill approved and signed, Palumbo said. He said one concern he heard previously from Hochul's staff was "the potential for land claims for property rights in light of the battle the governor saw is going on with the Shinnecock Nation. That was a new concern we never heard before." 

The Shinnecock Nation of Southampton is locked in a series of legal battles with the state and the Town of Southampton over existing digital billboards and a travel plaza/gas station under construction on tribal land called Westwoods in Hampton Bays.

The Montaukett bill provides no land-claim rights, even though the Montauketts occupied vast tracks of what is now state and Suffolk County parkland at the time it was annexed in the early 1900s. Brewster-walker said the tribe lost 17,000 acres during that period.

Brewster-walker said Senate passage, like the Assembly’s persistent taking up of the bill, is critical. "It shows that they [legislators] are not letting go of it. They believe in it. Most of the people on Long Island and even upstate that I talk to are very supportive of us."

She cited federal court papers submitted during the 1910 case — documentation the judge ignored — showing that the Montauketts were federally recognized and protected at the time of Judge Abel Blackmar's verdict. "We were recognized by the federal government and the state judge had no jurisdiction over us. It was an illegal move on his part," Brewster-walker said.

In that decision, Blackmar ruled the Montauketts were so dispersed as to be "disintegrated," ignoring a July 7, 1906, memorandum filed in the case by C.F. Larrabee, acting commissioner of Indian Affairs for the U.S. Department of the Interior, who wrote that the Montauketts were "an existing Indian tribe" with land rights in Montauk. Larrabee wrote that those attempting to annex the tribe's land, including businessman-developer Arthur Benson, should be "forever" restrained.

Newsday in a 1998 investigation found that the process by which developers and the Long Island Rail Road annexed Montaukett and Shinnecock Indian Nation lands over the past 200 years was rife with "deceit, lies and possibly forgery."

Palumbo said the chief concern of the bill is to "bring back to the Montauketts the dignity they deserve." 

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.