At issue in the case City of Sherrill, New York v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York, is roughly 18,000 acres of land within the area of a historic Oneida Indian Reservation of some 270,000 acres. The Oneida Indian Nation purchased these lands in the late 1990s on the open real estate market.

When the Oneida Indian Nation, on the basis of its sovereign status, refused to pay property taxes assessed by the City of Sherrill, the city threatened the Oneidas with eviction and the dispute went to court. The Oneida Nation won a huge victory in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second District, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

During oral arguments in the Sherrill case, Justice Sandra Day O’Conner asked, “If the tribe has sovereignty status with regard to this property, then presumably this city can’t tax it. So we have to decide that, do we?”

And decide they did. Eight out of nine justices held that, “‘Standards of federal Indian law and federal equity practice’ preclude the Tribe from rekindling embers of sovereignty that long ago grew cold.” On the basis of the principle of “laches,” the court said that by allowing two centuries to elapse before they raised a legal challenge, the Oneidas had not pursued their challenge in a timely manner.

In its March 29 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court said in footnote 1: “Under the ‘doctrine of discovery…’fee title [ownership] to the lands occupied by Indians when the colonists arrived became vested in the sovereign—first the discovering European nation and later the original states and the United States.’”

So, how did the European colonists that arrived in North America become, as the Supreme Court claims in Sherrill, “vested” with “fee title” to “the lands occupied by Indians”? According to the court, the Europeans became vested by generously giving themselves a right, or title, to Indian lands on the basis of the claim that they, as “Christian people” had discovered the “heathen” lands of North America. This infamous discovery of Christian doctrine is most fully articulated in Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823).

In both the Johnson v. M’Intosh and Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) rulings, Chief Justice John Marshall said that this self-granted and self-vested “fee title” takes effect as soon as the Indians give up their own right of possession. Thus, whenever Indians sell, convey, or cede any portion of their lands to the Europeans or later to the U.S. government by treaty, the self-granted European title becomes a fully completed “fee title,” which is “consummated” when the non-Indians take possession.

Based on the Sherrill ruling, once lands are ceded by an Indian nation, even if the cession was illegitimate or in violation of a federal law such as the 1790 Non-Intercourse Act—which was at issue in this case—original Indian title and sovereignty in relation to those lands cannot be restored. This is true even if the Indian nation in question has reacquired those lands by purchasing them on the open real estate market.

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It has become popular to pity the Natives and re-write history to grow the suffering. It is always dangerous to put the past into modern context and then judge. Long before Europeans showed up, Natives were fighting plagues and each other. The leading cause of death among Natives was starvation. The Native culture was hundreds of years behind Europe. Easy to say that we stole their lands. But the reality is that Natives traveled about, not settling in any one area. Kill off all the wildlife and move to a different area. Travel north in the summer, go south in the winter. When starvation hit, it was the children that suffered first and most often. In most areas, when Churches provided education for Native children, they also provided warm housing, a clean place to sleep and nutritious meals. Generally, tribal Chiefs and tribal families were happy to give up care for their children to the Church. Many understood that their Native culture was far behind Europe and if they were to survive, they needed to learn the skills of the Europeans. But, sadly, the children that came to the schools were not healthy. Years of malnutrition, right from birth, left them fragile. Tuberculosis was common. In the 1800s, child mortality, within the tribe and at the schools was far higher than in modern times. Unfair to dwell on the deaths of children with any sort of accusation, out of context with that era. Nearly every acre of this earth is owned by the winner of a war. Land acquisition was often the purpose of war, even among Natives. The Native graves in my area were marked with pine crosses and never maintained. Seems unreasonable to expect anything different from the schools.

 

Wow! I never saw it that way before.

The white European by coming here and spreading diseases that killed untold thousands; developing a governmental policy of genocide against the Native Americans and breaking every treaty they made with them, butchering them at The Great Swamp Fight (massacre), near South Kingston, Rhode Island, in December 1675, Sand Creek, in Colorado, November 29, 1864, Wounded Knee, in South Dakota, December 29, 1890 and other places, stealing their land and forcing their children into state sponsored "schools" where they were stripped of their heritage was in fact the best thing that could have happened to a people who had survived for thousands of years on the North American continent.

Hooray for Manifest Destiny!

To the conqueror goes the spoils!

Makes me want to murder my neighbor and take over his property.

As long as he is non-white, I should get away with it.

 

Haypoint, you simply put a white dude spin on history. Not much different in that PROCESS from the Native spin. Just different cultures and outcomes.

 

Someone once told me history is written by the victors.

 

The only way to really win a war is to fight with total warfare. This includes the propaganda of painting them as Krauts or Japs. It's how Victor's have always won, by dehumanizing the enemy.

In what way do you feel the US is currently hypocritical against the American Indians?

 

In 1868, Two Nations Made a Treaty, the U.S. Broke It and Plains Indian Tribes are Still Seeking Justice | At the Smithsonian | Smithsonian Magazine

Christian Discovery and Indian Sovereignty | Cultural Survival

Gov. Jared Polis rescinds Colorado’s 1864 order to hunt down and kill Native Americans - The Washington Post

 

Anything current?

160 years ago we were in a war against American Indians which, yes, resulted in us taking their lands, cause we won.

 

Anything current?

160 years ago we were in a war against American Indians which, yes, resulted in us taking their lands, cause we won.

You are the epitome of, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."

Therefore:

No matter how good you are,

Attempting to reason with some is like trying to play chess with a pigeon.

They knock over all of the pieces, crap all over the board and then strut around as if they had won.

 

That's your opinion, of course you haven't offered anything except your wild accusation that the current US is hypocritical against the American Indian. Instead you post some stuff that does show we were victorious 160 years ago.

Sounds like you are full of feelings with no reality to back it up.

 

We've been over this many times. The natives, in terms of military, society, infrastructure, agriculture, communication, technology, disease resistance, and transportation, were unfortunately inferior. They lost, and they have only themselves to blame. Maybe spend less time camping and more time domesticating livestock and perfecting metallurgical skills. They certainly aren't alone, and aren't special, in any way.

 

Yes, of course.

They only have themselves to blame because they were invaded by "civilized" white "Christian" Europeans who declared Manifest Destiny as an excuse to exterminate the Native American and steal their land.

You appear to be of the same mentality as the looters and burners that plague the land today.

Smash and grab and burn what's left.

Shop owners' property is as much yours as it is theirs and they are rude to think that they are special enough to retain rightful, unmolested ownership.

Huzzah for anarchy!

Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out!

I have the advanced metallurgy of a loaded pistol in my pocket, and I have no qualms about blowing you out of your socks for your personal property.

Have I got it right?

Am I now up to your advanced speed?

 

We are all savages. Some have better odds. Some have better publicists.

 

I enjoy camping as good as the next guy, but sometimes you have to call the camping trip short, invent television, and show Star Trek to all would be European invaders so they are aware of the prime directive. The native americans had no reasonable expectation to not be invaded, destroyed and or assimilated at the time it occurred. To survive first contact with ANY part of their populace or culture intact is the epitome of fortune.

 

While the “majority” of my ancestry is from European settlers I still have a significant amount of “Indigenous” ancestry as well. And have many relatives that are enrolled tribal members. I was born in the Creek Nation.
We all have trouble with being objective when emotions get involved.
People lose sight of ,or simply ignore the facts if they don’t fit their narrative.
Yes Native peoples were conquered and dispossessed of land.
Yes promises were broken.
Yes massacres have taken place.
At the same time native people also committed massacres against Europeans and other native people as well.
The vast majority of native peoples who perished did so due to diseases which they had no immunity to… You can’t blame Europeans for this , they had zero control over this. Modern medicine and the science behind understanding the diseases didn’t exist even in Europe.
There’s probably not a single ethnic group in existence that hasn’t at some point conquered another or been concerned by another.
While we shouldn’t forget history, we also shouldn’t look at it in any way other than to objectively consider the facts of what happened.
We can’t judge any of our ancestors by our current social and moral values… because times and circumstances were far different then.
What we can do is strive to be better human beings and better neighbors to all.
I don’t have Native friends, White friends etc, I have friends and that’s it.
Same goes for my family members.. they’re just family…
Today many nations have come together to be one nation… and if we love our neighbors we can create a future that all can be proud of.
(A photo of me as a wee lad , the product of loving relationships between people of different cultures.)

 

Ummm.... Many of the same issues up here... Unfortunately I saw some of the same as a kid growing up in the late 1950s and early 60s... Kids from the reserve and outlying ranches lived the school week in the dorm and many the weekends depending on weather... The kids from the Catholic school used the public school cafateria as they didn't have one of there own.. It was not an ideal situation in many respects, like if a cold or flu came into the system.. The system likely set up to be the most cost efficient depending on the resources available at a given location.. As good or bad as it were, if it wasn't available at the time people like Shirley Sand, Lional Iron Mococin and others would not have been at a level to go to college eventually..

Yes.. As in any popuation some did not survive.. According to my parents at the time if someone passed most times the family did not have resources to take care of the deceased.. So they ended up in the local church cemetary of the area..

Now to the churches roll in much of this... A lot of the country seems was divided up between churches.. The governments divided the country among churches to deal with the indiginous populations.. Some churches it seems more focused on booking numbers of "converts" rather than the needs of the populations.. A whole different thread..

It seems the indiginous population here is a dependable source of votes for the liberals who keep the checks coming and do photo ops at a grave site holding a Teddy bear... Never let a good crisis go to waste..

This being one of many situations, in North America and the world, where there have been injustices committed in how it was managed..

 

That naive?

 

I learned as a wee lad… when the fight starts don’t be the loser.

 

When people of one race force people of another race to live a lifestyle which they never learned, in a barren place that barely supports life, and kills off the animals which the people need to provide food and shelter for themselves, then the people of the second race have to provide support to the people of the first race or the people of the first race will die. It was like putting people in jail or a fenced camp and then getting all upset because the people in the camp were homeless, naked and hungry.

Many times those "gifts" of smallpox infected blankets were given for the purpose of infecting the Indian tribes. Allan Eckert found documents supporting that.

 

Many here seem to forget, or be unaware, government, as talked about here, was incapable of either good or ill. Rather, it was agents acting in the name of government who did the good and the bad.

Too, just as the language of the Bible changes from publisher to publisher, history changes with the telling by one group or another.

In the end, there were no saints, as we perceive them, anywhere about since the first of the two perfect men blew it.

 

there were no saints, as we perceive them, anywhere about since the first of the two perfect men blew it.

Three perfect men, according to the Bible.
Just semantics, but the one verse popped into my head.

 

So it sucks to loose, and the winner wrights the history. That part isn't going to change. Slavery was a bad thing. Every Indian tribe captured, kept, owned, and traded slaves. So people, European or Native had many of the same bad habits.

The Indians in the southwest didn't build their villages high up on the cliffs, because their neighbors were friendly. The Pima Indians built canals and farmed the desert in what is now Arizona. And the Apache raided them every year. Taking women, children, and food.

Humans as a whole are nasty critters, if given the chance. That part isn't going to change.

 

So it sucks to loose, and the winner wrights the history. That part isn't going to change. Slavery was a bad thing. Every Indian tribe captured, kept, owned, and traded slaves. So people, European or Native had many of the same bad habits.

The Indians in the southwest didn't build their villages high up on the cliffs, because their neighbors were friendly. The Pima Indians built canals and farmed the desert in what is now Arizona. And the Apache raided them every year. Taking women, children, and food.

Humans as a whole are nasty critters, if given the chance. That part isn't going to change.

Exactly so. I get so tired if the “noble savage” myths.
People are people. We are a violent bunch sometimes.