NYCO had the story first and the NYT has it this morning, the paper version with this sweet map which you can click for a larger version. The digital version of the paper has it here. I have said it before but one of the great things about the New York Times is its excellent mapping.

This is a very interesting claim, if only as is clear from the map, that it butts right up to Canada. The history of the Mohawk and this side of the river have been the subject of a fairly recent ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada, not to mention through the loyalty of Molly Brant being one of the central facts of Canada's history. The Mohawk are one of the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy or Haudenosaunee as are the Onondaga. Yesterday's Syracuse Post-Standard explained the nature of the Onondaga this way:

The Onondaga will take a much different approach in the land/money settlement formula," said Robert Odawi Porter, director of Syracuse University's Center for Indigenous Law, Governance & Citizenship. He said the Onondagas are the most traditional of the six nations of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy, and they revere the land. The Onondagas will be "tough negotiators for strengthening their land base - their unpolluted land base," Porter said...the Onondagas want air and water cleanup to be part of any settlement...that's why the Onondagas named as defendants in the suit five Syracuse-area corporations that they allege are polluters... The Onondagas consider Onondaga Lake as sacred ground because the Iroquois Confederacy was founded on the lake's shores hundreds of years ago...Clark Concrete began operating a gravel mine in Tully in 1997 on land the Onondaga say is sacred. That's where the Onondagas say wampum, the beads used to communicate and record history, was invented

The Onondagas are the last of the five original Haudenosaunee nations - which include the Mohawks, Oneidas, Cayugas and Senecas - to file a land claim. Based on the Oneida and Cayuga cases, the Onondagas appear to have a good chance of winning a land claim for any land New York acquired after 1790, said Porter and Oberg. Those cases relied on the 1790 federal Trade and Non-Intercourse Act, which barred states from obtaining Indian land without Congress' approval. In the United States' infancy, New York regularly ignored the Trade Act as the state spread west.

These are important matters. The Iroquois Confederacy served as a model for the US Constitution and wampum is now recognized in the court as a historical record. By identifying the well being of the lake on which Syracuse sits as the main objective of the claim, the Onondaga challange not only the validity of what has been done to this place but also how it is valued. Not seeking monetary compensation from the outset signals a wish to make no exchange. Rather they want restitution - legal and environmental. Putting it back as it was.

BTW, this passage from a web history of the Onondaga reminds me of the speech Mi'kmaq Chief Membertou gave to the French at Port Royal at a gathering of the Order of Good Cheer greasing them out for being such boneheads about the living you can make off the land.

In 1744, when the Virginia legislature offered free tuition at the College of William and Mary to six Iroquois youths, the Iroquois politely declined. Explaining their reasons, the great Onondaga spokesman Canasatego told why a college education made no sense at all:

"We have had some experience of it. Several of our young people were formerly brought up in the colleges of the Northern provinces; they were instructed in all your sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, nor kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors, nor counselors; they were totally good for nothing.

"We are however not the less obliged for your kind offer, though we decline accepting it; and to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we will take great care of their education, and instruct them in all we know, and make men of them."