Senecas not honoring Treaty of 1794????

[dtwarren]

From: http://www.buffalonews.com/city/comm...icle872203.ece

The Seneca Nation is demanding about $1 million from Albany before state contractors can rehab an ailing stretch of the Southern Tier Expressway through the nation's Allegany Territory.

Seneca Nation President Robert Odawi Porter says he will bar the heavy machinery and other fixtures of road work unless the state again adheres to a Seneca rule adopted in 1993.

The Tribal Employment Rights Ordinance -- known as TERO -- requires a 3.5 percent administrative fee whenever the state comes onto tribal lands to undertake major projects. For the most part, the state has followed the Seneca law, but state officials have declined to do so in this case.

The money pays, among other things, the Senecas who monitor the state's work and "look out for nation interests." The fee would reach almost $1 million on the $28.5 million job, which could have begun soon after the state signed a contract next month.

But the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua promised free passage. Honor the treaties!

And the Six Nations, and each of them, will forever allow to the people of the United States, a free passage through their lands, and the free use of the harbors and rivers adjoining and within their respective tracts of land, for the passing and securing of vessels and boats, and liberty to land their cargoes where necessary for their safety.

[sharky]

this whole separate state within a state thing needs to end.

[BorderBob]

this whole separate state within a state thing needs to end.

Nation.....Nation within a state.....



b.b.

[nogods]

They are not a separate nation - they are what is known as a dependent domestic nation -their "nation" status exists at the pleasure of Congress and only so long as Congress chooses to recognize a tribe a s a"nation."

[dtwarren]

From: http://www.buffalonews.com/city/capi...icle981998.ece

ALBANY - The Cuomo administration threatened today to shift nearly $50 million in state road projects within Seneca Nation territories to other communities unless the tribe quickly drops its demands for "exorbitant'' payments from Albany.

Worsening relations between the tribe and state was evident in two dueling media events: one called by the head of the state transportation department a few miles outside the tribe's Cattaraugus reservation to deliver the project cancelation threat and one later in the day by Seneca officials to declare the Cuomo administration's actions may be putting motorists at risk.

The Senecas urged federal transportation officials to step in and investigate the Cuomo administration's actions involving the use of federal road funding money for the stalled projects, including the interstate highway known as the Southern Tier Expressway.

"We're getting to the breaking point and the state's willing to jeopardize public safety to achieve political purposes," Seneca Nation President Robert Odawi Portersaid.

The Buffalo News reported earlier today of a plan by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to place into escrow $3.4 million to satisfy Seneca demands that the state pay a 3.5 percent fee and other amounts for state road work performed on its reservations. That, the state said, would clear the way for a couple projects, including work on a delayed, $29 million initiative to repave a 12-mile portion of the Southern Tier Expressway running through the Seneca Nation's Allegany reservation.

But Cuomo said the money would be taken as a "credit'' against the more than $400 million the tribe owes the state as part of a separate dispute with Albany involving revenue sharing payments from the nation's three Western New York casinos.