Blackbear

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FROM: THE UTICA OBSERVER-DISPATCH NEWSPAPER

_http://www.uticaod.com/archive/2005/08/01/news/5771.html_
(http://www.uticaod.com/archive/2005/...news/5771.html)

Longing for home; Return of Wisconsin Oneidas could cause tension
The Oneida Nation's success and pending land-claim deals are luring
displaced tribal members back to Central New York
Mon, Aug 1, 2005

KRISTA J. KARCH
Observer-Dispatch
TREVOR KAPRALOS / The Observer-Dispatch
Oneida Nation member Kathy Kuhl sews beads on deer skins at Fort Stanwix
National Monument in Rome Tuesday. She works for the Oneida Nation at the fort
three days a week. KRISTYNA WENTZ-GRAFF / Appleton Wisconsin Post-Crescent
Jaycob Johnson, 7, of Oneida, Wisc., wears a traditional smoke dance outfit
to compete in a contest.
A LOOK AT THREE ONEIDA COMMUNITIES
When Kathy Kuhl's mother left her Syracuse home, people shouted epithets at
her. Kuhl and her nine siblings were belittled in public.
Kuhl's eyes filled with tears when she remembers it. That was just life, the
53-year-old said. Life as an Oneida Indian in Syracuse.
"I think there's still prejudice," Kuhl said, smoothing a length of sinewy
leather inside the living history artisan's cabin at Fort Stanwix in Rome.
"They think we're all on welfare."
Kuhl paused to hold the leather - the beginnings of a beaded pouch - up to
the sunlight streaming through the window. "My great-granddaughters will see
this someday," she said.
It's for that reason - for the future of the Oneida tribe -- Kuhl packed up
her children and became the first family to move into the Oneida Indian
Nation's Village of the White Pines in 1994.
Now, the village, a housing complex near the Nation's 32-acre reservation in
Madison County, is home to dozens of Oneidas who returned to the area to
reclaim what they once had. Members of Oneida tribes across the country also are
looking at land here, and working toward settlements of their own land claims
with New York State.
The largest Oneida tribe, centered in Wisconsin's Green Bay area, has pushed
for a small block of land they say would be symbolic of their ancestral
presence here, but the tribe has also begun to purchase acreage here. Oneida
leaders in southern Ontario, Canada, say there is an on-going push to rejoin the
New York Oneidas. The New York, Wisconsin and Canadian Oneidas have together
claimed up to 280,000 acres in lawsuits that have stretched over more than
three decades.
It is the land of the People of the Standing Stone, as the Oneida are called,
for the boulder placed at the entrance to each tribal village. The U.S.
government's push westward forced them out of the region, and now, armed with
wealth from gaming venues, they're working to return to their homeland.
To all three Oneida tribes, that's the driving force behind the land claim: a
chance to reclaim the culture of the Standing Stone where it belongs, in the
ancestral lands.
The legal fight for land and disagreement between which tribe is most
deserving of a settlement, however, has marred the hope that has brought the tribe
through generations of struggle, many Oneidas interviewed for this story
said.
Many of those local Oneidas believe some out-of-state Oneidas have legitimate
interests here, but say most want a piece of the New York Oneida's new-found
wealth. Kuhl, like many Oneidas, grew up near the Onondaga Indian
Reservation south of Syracuse. Many Oneidas from farther away are regarded with
suspicion.
About 500 Oneidas live in Central New York outside the Nation's 17,000 acres,
Nation spokesman Mark Emery said. Thousands more live around the United
States and Canada.
So far, about 100 Oneidas from outside the Syracuse-Utica region of Central
New York have returned, Emery said.
"They're coming back because of the resurgence of the Nation," Emery said.
There are no specific numbers about returns to tribal homelands, but
anecdotal evidence suggests the migrations are increasing, said Syracuse
University's Center for Indigenous Law, Governance and Citizenship director Robert Odawi
Porter.
"It's been a general suspicion (about the return to tribal homelands)," he
said.
The population influx has brought a cultural resurgence, fueled by the
success of the Nation's Turning Stone Resort and Casino. The money also brings new
hope the Nation could settle its decades-old fight for Central New York land
- land they say was violently stolen from them in generations past.
"Probably 300 people have moved back," said Terri Hoffmeister, an Oneida
Turtle Clan member. "Land is what it's all about."
Fighting back
For the first time in personal memory, many Oneidas say they can fight back -
in a big way - against what they say is prejudice.
For the first time, they can afford to. The Oneida Indian Nation took money
it earned through its Turning Stone Resort and Casino straight to lawyers who
work to regain land. It's been an up and down ride for more than 30 years,
but the Nation's business ventures and land holdings continue to expand and
harbor Oneidas such as Kuhl, who have longed to be among their own.

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

Blackbear

Kuhl works for the Nation as a living history artist at Fort Stanwix, where
she entertains throngs of visitors with her textile skills. The products she
makes - clothing, knife sheaths, and bags - mirror the items Kuhl watched her
own grandmother make when she was young.
"We all came (back) for the same reason," Kuhl said. "To start over, to learn
our heritage."
The tribal wealth that can support a movement back toward ancestral Oneida
land, however, can also be a deterrent to cultural authenticity, Odawi Porter
said.
"On one hand, are you at a point of cultural degradation?" he asked. "On the
other hand, are you just satisfying economic needs? Does the pursuit of the
resources of gaming in particular mean you're (culturally) doomed? I doubt
we'll see the real answer for decades."
It's an evolving experiment, he said. But success, whether culturally
traditional or otherwise, breeds resentment.
On the original 32-acre reservation in Madison County - a holding place for a
rustic longhouse and a few trailer homes - and in the Nation's crisply
landscaped Village of the White Pines a few miles away, many New York Oneidas are
opposed to the return of tribal members from outside New York. The others,
particularly the Wisconsin Oneidas, sold off their rights to New York State
land years ago, New York Oneidas say, in a greedy episode that sparked years of
poverty and chaos for Oneidas who chose to stay at their homeland.
"They sold out on land and left," Hoffmeister said. "We stayed here and had
to continually fight to keep our properties. If the (Turning Stone) casino
hadn't happened, we wouldn't have heard anything from them."
Lure of ancestral land
While the New York Oneidas lived in poverty, the Wisconsin Oneidas never
offered any help, said Kandice Watson, a lifelong reservation resident.
During those dark years in the 1970s and 1980s, a trailer fire claimed lives
as a conflict between the New York Oneidas and local towns forced
firefighters to stand by. Arsons destroyed a Nation-owned bingo hall, and armed
conflicts - among Indians and between the tribe and outsiders - were common. High
school degrees were rare on the reservation, Watson said, and alcoholism was
rampant.
"I remember we were very, very poor," Watson said. "There was just a dirt
road. And it seemed like the person with the biggest gun ran the show. It was
scary to live there."
Things changed, Watson said, when Ray Halbritter, an Oneida who lifted
himself from the reservation to attend Harvard Law School, took the bingo hall
arsonists to court. Halbritter is now Nation CEO and Representative.
"We were going to start making something of ourselves," Hoffmeister said.
Oneidas elsewhere in the country, however, say New York is their land, too.
"We weren't rounded up by soldiers to leave New York, but the political
pressures caused the removal," Wisconsin Oneida member Loretta Metoxen said.
Many Wisconsin Oneidas say they don't plan to leave their cash-flush
reservation, where the tribe enjoys its own school system among a host of other
benefits, Wisconsin tribal historian Gordan McLester said. Visits to Oneida
ancestral lands in New York are common, he said. A land claim settlement in New
York and more education among Oneidas about their own roots there could spark a
large-scale return.
"New York is the homeland of all Oneidas," Metoxen said. "Whether we'll
return to New York to live is a difficult question. We've been here for 175 years
- that's seven generations. There are many of the younger folks who have no
historical memory of New York. One hundred years ago, everybody knew about
it."
That ancient heritage is easily forgotten, even by New York Oneidas, who say
the visits by Wisconsin Oneidas are actually covert spy operations.
"Now that there's money involved, they come to see where we're going, what
we're doing," Hoffmeister said.
Thames presence
Meanwhile, between 500 and 700 members of the Thames band of the Oneidas in
Canada have returned to live in Central New York, Thames tribal leader Alfred
Day said.
"We have an ongoing desire to move back," he said. "Before politics entered,
our people used to move throughout all three communities. It seems to me that
now the most divisive factor in all this is money. They're confused about
who should have it, how much they should have."
Day said the Thames government has "cool" relationships with both the New
York and Wisconsin Oneida governments, but that the tension doesn't filter down
to tribal members.
"With people in all three communities, there's ongoing dialogue," he said.
Thames Oneidas are welcomed by New York Oneidas, Kuhl said, echoing a
sentiment expressed by many Oneidas interviewed for this story. Even Keller George,
Halbritter's right-hand man, is from the Canadian band.
"They're not after a bite," she said.
Many New York Oneidas believe the Thames Oneidas were pushed out, while the
Wisconsin Oneidas left in search of a climate more hospitable to tribal
business ventures, Kuhl said. Oneidas who return to New York should agree to live
under Halbritter's government, which she says is an authentic leadership model
that will secure traditional life for the future.
"Eventually, this will be a cultural center for Oneidas," she said. "The only
thing they couldn't take away from us 200 years ago was our pride, and
that's what keeps us going."


Is this for real? Any of you Wisconsin Onieda's on Powwows heard this? What's your opinions?

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