Relates to the reinstatement of state recognition and acknowledgement of the Montaukett Indian Nation

• Democratic1

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why Anthony H. Palumbo says this is needed

The Montaukett Indian Nation seeks reinstatement of its recognition and acknowledgment by the state of New York. Such recognition and acknowl- edgement was improperly removed from the Montaukett Indian Nation in 1910 in the case of Pharaoh v. Benson,69 Misc. Rep. 241 (Supreme, Suffolk Co., 1910) affirmed 164 App. Div. 51, affirmed 222 N.Y. 665, when the Montaukett Indian Nation was declared to be extinct". The court ruled that "the tribe has disintegrated and been absorbed into the mass of citizens and at the time of commencement of this action there was no tribe of Montaukett Indians". This arbitrary ruling ignored earlier U.S. Supreme Court decisions defining Indian Nations according to criteria under which the Montaukett Indian Nation qualified as an existing sovereign tribe and giving Congress, rather than the courts, power to decide the status of an Indian. In the first of these U.S. Supreme Court decisions, United States v. Roger, 45 U. S. 567 (1848), the court ruled that the primary criteria for an Indian identity were evidence that an Indian had to have some genealogical connection with a recognized group that had existed before the arrival of the European white explorers, traders and settlers. Veri- fied evidence demonstrates that the Montaukett Indian Nation existed prior to the Doctrine of Discovery and as a sovereign tribe ruled from the end of the Island to what is today the town of Hempstead. Subsequently, a decade before the Montaukett decision, in Montoya v. U.S., 180 U.S. 261 (1901), the U.S. Supreme Court further defined an Indian tribe as "a body of Indians of the same or similar race united in a community under one leadership or government and inhabiting a partic- ular though sometimes well-defined territory". The Montaukett Indian Nation also met these criteria. Further, at the time of the Pharaoh v. Benson decision, the judicial branches of state and federal governments had no authority to determine the status of an Indian tribe. Only the U. S. Congress had such power. In 1903, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in the United States v Rickert, 188 U. S. 432 (1903) that only Congress can determine when changes in customs are sufficient to invalidate tribal status. The U.S. Supreme Court also ruled in Butts v Northern Pacific Railroad (1911), that neither the lapse of time, allotment of a portion of the tribal lands in severalty, immigration of a majority of the tribe nor the act that the habits and customs of the tribe have changed by inter- course with whites, authorize the courts to disregard tribal status. That same year, the U. S. Supreme Court again spoke to the question of judicial authority in cases involving tribal existence, holding Tiger v. Western Investment Company, 221 U.S. 286 (1911) that only the U.S. Congress had the authority to determine changes in tribal status. In 1994, the State Supreme Court, in the case of Breakers Motel, Inc. v. Sunbeach Montauk Two, Inc., subsequently described the Pharaoh case as being of "questionable propriety', a recognition by the State Supreme Court that the decision removing the recognition and acknowledgement from the Montaukett Indian Nation was dubious. This legislation finds that in Pharaoh v. Benson, the Court improperly ignored U. S. Supreme Court precedent and lacked jurisdiction to judge the status of the Montaukett Indian Nation. It is the purpose of this legislation to reverse this improper and illegal result by the rein statement of acknowledgement and recognition by the state of New York to the Montaukett Indian Nation.

This is the sponsor's own case for the bill, quoted from their memorandum. It is not Agora's description of what the bill does.