Rejected by US courts, Onondaga Nation take centuries-old land rights case to international panel

The nation received $33,380, an annuity of $2,430, clothes worth $1,000 and 150 bushels of salt for their land over several decades. They lost wide expanses of land where they once hunted, fished and lived.

The Onondagas have effectively spent more than 200 years seeking recognition their land was unlawfully taken. They’re not seeking money as reparations, but land. Though Syracuse and crowded suburbs sit on much of the ancestral territory, nation attorney Joe Heath said there’s land that could be made available, such as state parcels.

“We’re not going to take land from people that don’t want to give it,” he said.

The nation filed a federal lawsuit in 2005 claiming the illegally acquired land was still theirs. A judge dismissed the claim five years later, ruling it came too late and would be disruptive to people settled on the land.

“So what about our disruption?” Hill asked recently on a break for a longhouse meeting.

After the court loss, the Onondaga Nation and the Haudenosaunee petitioned the commission in 2014, alleging violations of provisions of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. Two claims were ruled admissible in May. Now the commission can consider the merits of whether the nation’s rights to equality under the law and judicial protection were violated.

Heath said this was the first land rights case admitted by the commission from a Native American nation against the U.S., though it has heard other Indigenous cases against the United States.

What will the U.S. do if the commission issues an opinion on merits favoring the Onondaga Nation?

If history is a guide, not much.

The U.S. is an influential member of the OAS. But human rights experts note that commission opinions are not considered legally binding to the U.S., which resists having international bodies telling it what to do.

“The State Department sends their professional lawyers, who are very talented, to make the arguments. And they participate. And then at the end of the day they’ll say, ‘But this is all non-binding, so we’re not going to follow it,’” said Paolo Carozza, a Notre Dame Law School professor and former commission president.

Notably, the U.S. took no action after the commission in 2002 found it failed to ensure the rights of two Western Shoshone Nation sisters in Nevada who argued they were denied use of their ancestral lands, according to attorneys.

The U.S. has already argued in response to the Onondaga petition that the commission has no business “second-guessing the considered decisions” of domestic courts.

A State Department spokesperson said in an email that the U.S. takes seriously petitions filed against it before the commission, calling that a “critical regional human rights body.”

In the end, the nation’s biggest gain in pursuing the case is likely to be attracting more attention to Onondaga’s 240-year-old argument. Carozza said a ruling in favor of the nation also would add “moral weight” to their cause.

“I think a recognition that the human rights of Onondaga and other tribal nations have been violated is a powerful recognition and can be utilized in numerous ways of advocacy, and potentially be used in the courts down the line,” said Matthew Campbell, deputy director of the Native American Rights Fund.

While an opinion could be years off, the Onondagas are used to waiting. Jeanne Shenandoah, who has spent decades working to reclaim nation lands, said they will never give up hope.

“We are here, and have never not been here. People don’t realize that,” she said outside the longhouse. “And that’s why that acknowledgement is so important.”