Montauketts want State Legislature to override Hochul's veto of recognition bill

Leaders of the Montaukett Indian Nation are calling for the State Legislature to override Gov. Kathy Hochul’s recent veto of the tribe’s state-recognition bill, while criticizing the governor for citing a “racist” court ruling in her veto message.

The tribe of 1,200 enrolled members, 500 of whom live on Long Island, issued a statement Monday noting that the Montauketts'  state-recognition reinstatement bill passed the Legislature unanimously earlier this year.

Calling Hochul’s veto a cruel act, the tribe said it is “calling on the New York General Assembly’s leadership to do the right thing and override Gov. Hochul’s veto.”

Assemb. Fred Thiele (D-Sag Harbor), who has sponsored the Montaukett legislation in each of its five vetoed iterations, said he plans to discuss the prospect of an override with the Assembly speaker and the Democratic conference early next month.

“Overrides are rare,” Thiele said, “but the governor’s tone-deaf response calls out for a legislative response.”

A spokeswoman for Hochul declined to comment.

Author and historian Sandi Brewster-walker, who is executive director of the tribe, noted in a statement that when she heard of Hochul’s veto the night of Nov. 17, “I personally felt like the governor put a knife in my soul and spirit. I could feel the sharp pain …”

Brewster-walker noted Hochul’s veto also got wrong the claim that the most recent legislation was “identical" to legislation she vetoed last year. Brewster-walker said the most recent bill was updated to grant the tribe “reinstatement” of its prior recognition, while adding that the returned tribal status “applied to the blood-right, lineal descendants, who descend from identified Montaukett people throughout” Long Island.

Montaukett Chief Robert Pharaoh said he had not put high hopes in the governor approving the bill. “I knew it wasn’t going to go through. I’ve been spinning my wheels for 35 years," said Pharaoh, a descendant of leaders who have led the tribe for centuries.

Tribal members say Hochul’s veto struck deeper than previous rejections of the bill, citing in its opening lines the 1910 decision by State Supreme Court Justice Abel Blackmar that dealt a  crushing blow   to the Montauketts, some of whom were sitting in his courtroom seeking justice in a land-claim case they had brought years before.

In ruling in favor of the heirs of developer Arthur Benson, whose lawyers had argued that the Montauketts had intermarried with Blacks and diluted their "Indian blood," Blackmar not only handed over tribal Montaukett lands but declared the Montauketts dispersed and “disintegrated.” That stripped away their state status, despite the fact that 75 Montauketts were in court that day, stunned by the ruling.

Hochul cited the ruling in her veto, “A decision of a New York court in the early 1900s determined that the historic Montaukett community in New York no longer functioned as a governmental unit in the state, a decision that was confirmed unanimously by the Appellate Division and the Court of Appeals." 

But those very rulings and the land losses they sanctioned have come under intense scrutiny in the intervening decades, and not just by tribal members whose lives they uprooted. Historian John Strong called the rulings "racist."   

Strong on Wednesday noted that Hochul is basing her veto on a faulty judicial ruling because "decisions about Indian identity cannot be made in a state court, because state courts don't have that authority." 

In a 1998 investigation, Newsday unearthed documents and transcripts that exposed what appear to be “deceit, lies and possibly forgery” in deals that wrested tribal lands from the Montauketts and the Shinnecock Indian Nation.

In 1879, Benson had bought 10,000 acres from Napeague to Montauk Point as part of a plan to create an exclusive summer colony. His only impediment was a Montaukett settlement on the eastern end of the tract  at what is now Montauk County Park near Big Reed Pond.

The Montauketts were living at Indian Fields under terms of a lease with East Hampton that granted them residency and other rights “in perpetuity.” Seeking to undo the lease, Benson hired East Hampton Town Assessor Nathaniel Dominy to persuade the Montauketts to move to homes in the Freetown section of East Hampton. Montauketts were paid $10 to sign deeds to cede ownership of Indian Fields, believing it contained a provision to return to their land as often as they wished.

The homes in Freetown soon were discovered to be “no better than pig pens,” tribe members testified, and Dominy would later admit his promise that they could return to Indian Fields was a lie, according to the Newsday investigation. Tribe members, including Pharaoh’s forebears, sued to block the land deal but ultimately were rebuffed by Blackmar.

Thiele last week called the 1910 decision against the tribe “one of the most racist decisions in New York State jurisprudence.”

“For the governor to cite that decision as a basis for a veto is outrageous,” he said. “I am ashamed of our state government.”

Most of the land that was subject to the 1910 court ruling today is county parkland. Maps on display along the three miles of trails at Big Reed Pond park near the Montauk Airport provide the only mention of the tribe's thousands of years on the land, long before Colonial settlers and wealthy developers landed there.

Listed on the maps are stops marking "Montaukett Village Site" and the site of a tribal sweat lodge. Pharaoh, the Montaukett chief who has led tours of the site, long has said his dream was to open a cultural center in Montauk if the tribe's state recognition is reinstated.

On Monday, he said Hochul's veto dealt what could be the fatal blow to his efforts. 

"To me it's not a priority anymore," he said. "I've got more important things to do." 

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

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