[CPEO-MEF] REUSE, TRIBES: Air Force land (NY) to Oneida Nationa

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Newsday.com
NY tribes ponder implications of land transfer

By WILLIAM KATES, Associated Press Writer
Long Island Newsday (NY)
February 22, 2009

VERONA, N.Y.

It's an 18-acre parcel, cluttered with abandoned buildings and ringed by 
wooded lots and fields, and once used by the U.S. Air Force for testing 
radios and radar.

But the fate of the small parcel in Oneida County looms large for New 
York's Indian tribes looking to have thousands of acres of upstate land 
put into federal trust _ and beyond the control of state and local 
governments.

Late last year, with little attention and less fanfare, the Air Force 
transferred the tract to the U.S. Department of Interior, which put it 
into trust for the Oneida Indian Nation under a provision of the Base 
Realignment and Closure law.

"It's a precedent. It's the first land in New York to be taken into 
trust. Although it's a different process ... it's trust land 
nonetheless," said Dan French, a former federal prosecutor who is now 
attorney for the Cayuga Indian Nation, which has an application pending 
to put 125 acres in Seneca and Cayuga counties into trust.

....

For the entire article, see
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--oneida-trustland0222feb22,0,5518968.story

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org




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