THE ONONDAGA NATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP

For the past several years, the people of the Onondaga Nation have worked cooperatively with their neighbors to protect the environment, clean up pollution, and promote economic development in the Syracuse/Onondaga region of Central New York. For the Onondagas, these goals are logically inseparable from the goals of their land rights law suit. Restoring the health of the Onondaga Creek watershed, for instance, is every bit as important as recovering ownership of the land. The health and well-being of the Nation is interconnected with the health and well-being of the land, air and water.

The Onondaga Nation has an historic claim to recover much of the land that was illegally acquired by the State of New York, land that now includes the City of Syracuse and much of the surrounding area. The Nation is planning to file a law suit for title to this land, but more importantly, the Nation is also carrying out a long-term strategy to use its land rights to promote conservation, environmental protection and responsible economic development.

Certainly, the Nation is sensitive to the fact that it is surrounded by other communities that now make up the Syracuse area: rural villages, affluent suburbs, urban middle-class neighborhoods, and many others. Most of these communities share the Onondaga goal of regional economic growth, and many are eager to work for environmental protection and restoration. Fully aware that they cannot prosper if their neighbors do not share that prosperity, the Onondagas have sought ways to use their land rights and their own distinct legal and political powers to collaborate with other communities in order to achieve common environmental and economic goals.

For example, the Onondaga Nation joined forces with the town of Tully, a small community south of the Nation’s currently-recognized territory, in an effort to stop a gravel mine in that community. The mine threatens to pollute and degrade Onondaga Creek, which flows through the Nation’s territory and continues through downtown Syracuse into Onondaga Lake. The Nation initiated a legal action to stop the mine and subsequently joined the public campaign in support of the Tully community.

Closer to Syracuse, the Nation has been working with the inner-city neighborhood of South Syracuse, along with the Syracuse-based Atlantic States Legal Foundation (ASLF) and the local chapter of the Sierra Club, in joint opposition to an ill-conceived sewage treatment plant scheduled to be built in that neighborhood, on the banks of Onondaga Creek. Not only is the proposed plant in the heart of the Onondaga land claim area, it would also disturb important Onondaga archeological sites as well. The Nation has agreed to assist in legal actions that have been filed by neighborhood and environmental groups united in opposing the plant.

The large African-American community in South Syracuse has created the Onondaga Creek Partnership, an organization that, together with the ASLF and others, is leading the effort to oppose the sewage treatment plant and to clean up Onondaga Creek and Onondaga Lake. The Foundation and Partnership asked the Onondaga Nation to join them in fighting the plant, which the Nation has enthusiastically agreed to do. The encouraging response to these cooperative efforts to fight the sewage plant indicates that there is widespread regional support, and perhaps even political consensus, about the need to protect and clean up Onondaga Lake and Onondaga Creek.

The extraordinary multi-cultural, multi-racial, environmental and political collaboration that exists between the Onondaga Nation and neighboring communities is not only encouraging, but may well become the centerpiece of a wholesale economic revival in central New York, a revival based on promoting the natural resources of the region without exploiting them irresponsibly. It is the hope of the Onondaga people that this revival will benefit every community in the region, regardless of size or ethnic makeup, and that through their land rights lawsuit, the Nation can continue to pursue, and to realize, these important goals.

The Onondaga Nation, its leaders and its people, continue to operate under their traditional mandate to be stewards of the earth, and to preserve the land, water and their fellow creatures for the Seventh Generation in the future. This land rights suit will be an important step toward fulfilling that mandate. The Nation hopes to continue working with its neighbors, as it has for years from Tully to Richland, toward reversing some of the environmental damage that has affected everyone in Central New York, and re-establishing the area as one of the most beautiful and important ecological regions in the world.