Blackbear

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FROM: THE SYRACUSE POST-STANDARD NEWSPAPER - AP WIRE NEWSFLASH SECTION

http://www.syracuse.com/newsflash/re...12/11146337243
6590.xml&storylist=ny

Tuscarora Indian Challenges State Over Fine

4/27/2005, 4:35 p.m. ET
By CAROLYN THOMPSON
The Associated Press

A Tuscarora Indian who says the state's hunting and fishing regulations do
not apply to him or other tribal members is fighting a $25 fine in the state's
highest court.

Neil Patterson Jr. says his rights to fish are protected by a 1794 treaty.

"What's at stake here is basically the ability of the Tuscarora people to
continue to exercise their treaty rights free from state interference," said
Patterson's lawyer, Christopher Amato, who was to argue the case before the Court
of Appeals in Albany Thursday.

Several members of the Tuscarora tribe planned to car pool from their western
New York reservation to attend the hearing. About 1,200 Tuscaroras live on
the 5,700-acre reservation in Niagara County.

Patterson was ticketed by a state conservation officer in February 2003 while
ice fishing off the reservation at Wilson-Tuscarora State Park. Patterson did
not have his name and address on his ice-fishing gear as required by state
regulations.

Patterson said he was exercising fishing rights under the Treaty of
Canandaigua, which guaranteed the Tuscarora and the other five nations of the Iroquois
Confederacy "the free use and enjoyment" of lands encompassed within the
treaty. State regulations would only apply, he argued, if the state proved they
were necessary for the conservation of a particular species of fish.

Wilson Town Court rejected the argument, convicted Patterson and fined him
$25. The conviction was upheld by Niagara County Court.

The higher court ruled that the Tuscarora lost their rights under the Treaty
of Canandaigua when the Seneca Indian Nation sold the land three years later
in the Treaty of Big Tree.

The state points to a U.S. Supreme Court decision which said the Treaty of
Big Tree had undone the effects of the Treaty of Canandaigua in ruling that the
government had the right to take over land for a power project in the 1950s.

But Amato said the Supreme Court has also ruled that fishing rights and
possession are two different things under Indian treaties.

"The fact that an Indian nation may choose to sell its possessor rights does
not mean they've automatically also sold their treaty fishing rights," he
said.

He added the Tuscarora were not even a party to the Treaty of Big Tree.

"There's not a single case out there that treaty rights held by an Indian
nation could be extinguished in a treaty with a different Indian tribe," Amato
said. "It just doesn't make any sense."

A Court of Appeals ruling is expected several weeks after Thursday's
arguments.

__________________
Don't worry that it's not good enough for anyone else to hear... just sing, sing a song.

DeusExMachina

typical whitie government bullsh*t. still trying to f*ck the indians over every way they can. I guess maybe it's because most of the time Native people LET THEM SCREW US! Sick, ennit? you'd think we like it or something, as little as NDN country reacts to sh*t like this. we should all be up in arms over this kinda crap, but nooo. we're sitting around eating cheetos while the Man schemes and plots our eventual downfall and extinction. Does anybody realize that the treaty infractions are becoming hella frequent? Does anybody care? Speak up now, people, or there won't be anybody left to speak when they get around to you and yours!

__________________
Mad Scientists Union Local 42
Evil Geniuses For a Better Tomorrow

The secret of my succes is 30% natural talent, 10% inspiration, and the remaining 60% is just the fact that I am nucking futs.

Blackbear

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http://buffalonews.com/editorial/20050429/1070991.asp

Indian fishing dispute has first day in court
By TOM PRECIOUS
News Albany Bureau
4/29/2005

ALBANY - When Neil Patterson Jr. stood shivering near his ice fishing gear on a bay off Lake Ontario on a bone-chilling February day in 2003, he wasn't thinking about the state's highest court. Nor did he envision becoming embroiled in a lofty legal debate over Indian treaties that stretch back to the days of George Washington.


He just wanted to catch some fish.

Yet for 40 minutes Thursday, with Patterson watching from the back of the chamber of the state's Court of Appeals, attorneys battled over whether the state had a right to ticket and fine him for breaking a New York fishing regulation.

Though on the surface it's a case over a $25 fine that already has been paid, the stakes are much higher: Do Patterson and other members of the Tuscarora Indian Nation in Niagara County have broader rights than others when it comes to fishing and hunting on ancestral lands that are not part of Indian reservations in Western New York?

"It is a real threat not only to our (Tuscarora) nation's political standing and legal standing, but our nation's culture as well," Patterson said on the courthouse steps after his case was heard Thursday afternoon. He was surrounded by more than a dozen members of tribes from across New York.

Patterson, 30, said he is pursuing his case to end what he calls years of harassment by state environmental conservation police, who he says illegally ticket Native Americans for fishing and hunting on lands protected by rights dating from the Treaty of Canandaigua in 1794. It is a legal challenge, funded by tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy, that his attorneys vow will go to the U.S. Supreme Court if New York's Court of Appeals rejects their arguments.

The legal run-in began where Twelve Mile Creek spills into Lake Ontario at the Wilson-Tuscarora State Park in Niagara County. An officer from the state Department of Environmental Conservation ticketed Patterson for failing to place his name and address on his fishing gear - as required to ensure that catch limits are followed.

Though charged for failing to put his name on his equipment, Patterson was not ticketed for failing to have a fishing license, because of a state rule that exempts Indians enrolled in a New York-based tribe. Christopher Amato, Patterson's attorney, says that this legal distinction "underscores the absurdity" of the state's policies toward Indians.

Patterson argued unsuccessfully before a Wilson town justice and later in Niagara County Court that as a Tuscarora Indian, he did not have to abide by the state fishing law. He pointed to the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua, a document that guarantees "free use and enjoyment" of certain ancestral Indian lands in Western New York - not only to the Seneca Nation, the chief beneficiaries of the treaty, but to the other Iroquois tribes, including the Tuscaroras. But the Senecas in 1797 sold the lands, including the state park in Wilson, under the terms of the Treaty of Big Tree. As such, the state contends, any rights the Tuscaroras might have had under the original treaty were lost once those lands were sold by the Senecas. In their line of questioning, the high court's judges appeared skeptical of the arguments made by Patterson's attorney.

"Why is it the guests of the Senecas would get more rights than the Senecas themselves?," said Judge Victoria A. Graffeo.

But Amato said the later treaty involving the Seneca land sale in 1797 did not matter to Patterson's case because the Tuscarora tribe did not sign that treaty and, as such, is still covered by the terms of the earlier Treaty of Canandaigua.

The issues of how much land and which specific properties may be covered - public as well as private - are unclear, according to Patterson and his attorneys. Patterson talked of all lands west of the Genesee River being part of land covered by the original treaty.

"This issue happens everywhere Indians live in New York State," Patterson said of what he believes are illegal fishing and hunting rules by the state. He said other states long ago worked out agreements with Indian tribes for fishing and hunting rights on ancestral lands located off the reservation. In a separate suit brought by a member of another tribe from Western New York, the state's top court Thursday struck down a challenge to a state law banning Internet cigarette sales. The lawsuit, though, was not over the merits of whether such sales are legal, but over an often-used and much-criticized route by the governor to submit bills to the State Legislature without the legally required three-day waiting period before passage.

__________________
Don't worry that it's not good enough for anyone else to hear... just sing, sing a song.

DeusExMachina

Good, now why isn't everyone else doing something? It's time to start stepping up, people. time to put aside that "well it's not My people" bullsh*t before there's nothing left to defend.

A United front from us all will scare the hell out of the occuation government, set them aback, and give us some breathing room. Tuscaroras, and all others from all nations who are fighting for your rights, I may be just one random Creek, but I'm with You!!

__________________
Mad Scientists Union Local 42
Evil Geniuses For a Better Tomorrow

The secret of my succes is 30% natural talent, 10% inspiration, and the remaining 60% is just the fact that I am nucking futs.

Blackbear

Thank you!

__________________
Don't worry that it's not good enough for anyone else to hear... just sing, sing a song.