The Cayuga Indian Nation has prevailed in a nearly 20-year effort to have some of its land placed into federal trust.
The nation announced Thursday that Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland notified Clint Halftown, the federally-recognized representative for the nation, that the Bureau of Indian Affairs has approved the nation鈥檚 application to transfer land within its historic reservation boundaries into trust.
The nation submitted its land-to-trust application in April 2005, seeking to exempt the nation from local and state taxes and land use laws. The nation said that Thursday's decision means 101 acres of land in Cayuga County will be placed in federal trust status. The nation operates a number of businesses on the land, including an electronic gaming facility, a gas station and a convenience store.
The trust application had long been opposed by numerous local governments, including the village of Union Springs, town of Springport and the Union Springs Central School District.
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The BIA had rejected the nation鈥檚 application in July 2020, but the nation challenged that decision in court, and the BIA later announced that it would reconsider the nation鈥檚 application after the nation provided unspecified new information about the matter.
The 2020 rejection of the application was based on a determination that trust status would further aggravate unrest within the nation, which could also affect non-nation neighbors. The BIA specifically pointed to violence that broke out on nation-owned land in Seneca Falls in February 2022 a key factor in the decision.
A Cayuga Nation police department formed by Halftown demolished properties that had been under control of an opposing faction with the nation that doesn't recognize Halftown as their leader, and a violent clash later broke out when Halftown opponents came onto the property and were met by nation police.
The nation said that its efforts had been the longest pending trust application before the BIA.
The 2020 denial of land-into-trust came 15 years after the nation first applied for the status. A 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision said such exemptions are not automatically applied to properties that Native American nations purchase on the open market, and so a land-into-trust application must be filed and approved by the federal government.
鈥淒espite many delays and constant political opposition, the Cayuga Nation never stopped fighting for approval of its trust application," Halftown said in a statement. "Today is a historic day for the Nation and its citizens. We applaud the BIA and Assistant Secretary Newland for seeing the merit of our application and having the courage to approve it after all this time."
The nation said that the decision "reaffirms the Cayuga Nation鈥檚 rights under the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua and sends a clear message to those who questioned the Nation鈥檚 sovereignty."
Halftown also said that the trust land "accounts for only a small portion of the Nation鈥檚 64,015-acre reservation in what are now Cayuga and Seneca Counties" and that the nation "will continue to reclaim our land and build a strong economic foundation for Cayuga citizens. Today鈥檚 BIA decision is good news for our citizens, but our work is far from finished.鈥
