Four or five years ago, Sidney Hill’s young son came to him with a question that Mr. Hill did not know how to answer.

The boy had learned that day about the millions of acres of land his people, the Onondaga, had once called home, and the way their homeland had been taken piece by piece by New York State until all that was left was gone . 18 square kilometers south of Syracuse.

“We lost all this land,” Mr. Hill recalled his son saying. “How can that be?”

In many ways, Mr. Hill was the best person to answer that question. As Tadodaho, the spiritual leader of the Onondaga Nation, he was responsible for protecting its legacy and guiding it into the future. He was one of a handful of elders who worked for decades on a legal and diplomatic strategy to fight back against the historical abuses that his son was now trying to understand.

Still, it threw him off balance.

The younger generation needed to know, he said. “But they have little interest in that.”

Mr. Hill tried to reassure his son that all those injustices were in the past.

But he knew how difficult it was to accept past mistakes, especially when their consequences so affected the present. That was why he had pushed for so long for a correction of that history—first the Onondaga elders, then the United States legal system, and finally an international human rights commission.

The Onondaga claim the United States violated a 1794 treaty signed by George Washington that guaranteed them 2.5 million acres in central New York. The case, filed in 2014, is the second filed by an Indian nation against the United States before an international human rights body; a finding is expected as early as this year.

Even if the Onondaga are successful, the result will be largely symbolic. The entity, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, has no power to enforce a finding or settlement, and the United States has said it does not consider the commission’s recommendations binding.

“We could beat them, but that doesn’t mean they have to comply with anything,” Mr. Hill said in an interview.

Its 2.5 million hectares have long been transformed by highways and utility lines, shopping centers, universities, airports and roller rinks.

The territory includes the cities of Binghamton and Syracuse, as well as more than 30 national forests, dozens of lakes and numerous streams and tributaries. It is also home to 24 Superfund sites, the environmental waste of the powerful economy that helped downtown New York thrive in the early and mid-20th century.

The most infamous of these is Lake Onondaga, which once held the dubious title of America’s most polluted lake.

Industrial waste has left its mark on Onondaga territory, depriving the country of fishing in its streams and rivers. The history of environmental degradation is part of what motivates the Onondaga, who see it as their sacred responsibility to protect their land.

One of their main goals in filing the petition is to have a seat at the table on environmental decisions on the native territory. The other is an acknowledgment that New York owes them, if only in principle, 2.5 million acres.

Across the country, government officials have grappled with the idea of ​​reparations to address historical injustices. In 2022, officials in Evanston, Illinois, began distributing $25,000 to Black descendants of enslaved people as reparations for housing discrimination.

In New York, people once imprisoned for marijuana crimes were given preference for licenses to sell cannabis; Gov. Kathy Hochul also created a statewide task force last year to explore whether reparations can be made to address the legacy of racial injustice.

Some indigenous nations have been willing to drop land claims in exchange for licenses to operate casinos. But the Onondaga say they are not interested in cash. They are also not interested in getting licenses to sell cannabis or operate a casino – whatever they are considering socially irresponsible and a threat to their tribal sovereignty.

There is really only one thing that Mr. Hill believes would be an acceptable form of payment: land.

The Onondaga insist they don’t want to displace anyone. Instead, they hope the state can turn over some pristine land to the nation to hunt, fish, preserve or develop as it sees fit. A Such repatriation efforts are underway: the return of 1,000 acres as part of a federal settlement with Honeywell International for the pollution of Onondaga Lake.

The United States has not disputed the Onondaga’s account of how the country lost its land. The lawyers representing the United States in the Onondaga case have focused their argument on legal primacy, noting that courts at every level — including the U.S. Supreme Court — have rejected the Onondaga’s claims as too old and denying most remedies too disruptive for the region’s current residents. .

To the Onondaga, the logic required to substantiate these claims seems disingenuous. Why should the United States be allowed to steal its land and not be obligated to give anything back?

Joe Heath, an attorney representing the Onondaga, said the refusal to acknowledge the past prevents healing from the future.

“If we don’t admit that these things happened, how can we move forward together?” he said. But Mr Heath understood that such an admission would have serious legal and practical implications.

“The problem is that all the land in New York, in the United States, is stolen Indian land,” he said. “What does that mean in terms of American property law?”

‘All of our country and for a very little something’

There was a time when the United States worked with the Haudenosaunee, the confederacy that included the nations of Onondaga, Cayuga, Oneida, Tuscarora, Mohawk, and Seneca, as the fledgling government sought to defuse conflict in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War.

The federal government entered into three treaties that affirmed the Confederacy’s sovereignty and ownership over much of the northern part of New York State. Crucially, these treaties guaranteed that no one other than the federal government would have the authority to deal with the Haudenosaunee.

But as early as 1788, New York State had begun to chip away at the Haudenosaunee’s land and sovereignty. Over the next 34 years, the state would gain control of nearly all of the Onondaga land—as well as most of the land owned by the other Haudenosaunee nations—through a series of transactions that the Onondaga believed were illegal.

“The [New] The people of York have received almost all our country, and that for a very small thing,” Onondaga leaders told federal officials in 1794, according to the papers of American Indian Commissioner Thomas Pickering.

Over the next two centuries, the Onondaga continued to press their case fruitlessly in countless personal meetings with presidents, members of Congress, and governors of New York.

Legal options were limited: in New York, for example, it was not accepted until 1987 that indigenous peoples could sue in their own names.

When Indian lands reached the courtroom, many claims were dismissed.

The Onondaga’s decision to go to court had been decades in the making, with the first discussions beginning more than four decades ago. For the next twenty years, the Council debated in the long house – a long, low building made of whole logs that was used for ceremonial events and Haudenosaunee gatherings.

Mr. Hill is one of fourteen leaders on that council, each representing a different clan. In the Onondaga tradition, these leaders are male, but are appointed by the clan mothers.

Leaders did not initially embrace the idea of ​​a lawsuit, seeing it as another venue for broken promises.

“Our elders were always afraid of going to court,” Mr. Hill said. Many were concerned that a loss in court could result in them losing what little land they had left.

“Finally we said, we have to do something,” Mr Hill said.

In 2005, the Onondaga filed a version of their current claim in the Federal District Court in the Northern District of New York, naming as defendants the State of New York, the Governor, Onondaga County, the City of Syracuse and a handful of the responsible companies mentioned. for environmental degradation in recent centuries. A similar case, filed by the Oneida Nation, was pending in the Supreme Court at the time.

But just 18 days after the Onondaga filed their petition, the Supreme Court dismissed the Oneidas’ case. The decision referenced a colonial-era legal theory known as the Doctrine of Discovery, which holds in part that native title claims were nullified by the “discovery” of that land by Christians.

The “prolonged passage of time” and “the associated dramatic changes in character” prevented the Oneida Nation from the “disruptive solution” they sought, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the majority decision.

The ruling appeared to undermine the chances of any indigenous nation seeking compensation through the courts. History seemed set.

‘Disruptive to whom?’

Of the more than 1,600 words in the Supreme Court’s ruling, one stood out to Hill: “disruptive.”

“When I heard that, I said, ‘Well, okay, disruptive to who?’” he recalls. “It has already disrupted us, as indigenous people.”

Some may have left it at that: the recognition that Indigenous people could never be healed because of the profound injustices inflicted upon them.

Instead, Onondaga attorneys used the rejection as a starting point for a new argument. They argued that the American legal system’s refusal to rule in their favor proved that they could not find justice in the United States.

The petition filed with the international commission amounts to the most direct challenge to the United States’ treatment of indigenous peoples in terms of human rights to date – and the first to apply the lens of colonialism.

“What the Onondaga lawsuit does right now is force a political dialogue with the colonial occupier,” said Andrew Reid, an attorney representing the Onondaga, adding that a favorable outcome could lead to a political conversation about how the United States treats indigenous peoples. the world stage.

State Department representatives declined to be interviewed and did not respond to requests for comment. But in legal documents, the United States claimed that the Onondaga’s central claims had been dismissed in previous cases; that they have had “abundant opportunities” to have their cases heard; and that they are just unhappy with the outcome. It also claimed that the commission has no jurisdiction as most of the country’s losses occurred two centuries before its founding.

“The judicial process functioned as it should in this case,” the United States wrote in legal documents.

The committee’s decision could come at any time, but Sidney Hill is trying not to focus on that.

Most days he’s glad he tried.

“We’re not sure yet how it will go,” he says. “But at least it won’t stay there for the next generation.”

The American Museum of Natural History will close two major galleries where Native American artifacts are displayed, leaders said Friday, in a dramatic response to new federal regulations that require museums to obtain permission from tribes before displaying or researching cultural objects.

“The galleries we are closing are artifacts from an era when museums like ours failed to respect the values, perspectives and even shared humanity of Indigenous peoples,” Sean Decatur, president of the museum, wrote in a letter to museum staff Friday morning . . “Actions that may seem sudden to some may seem long overdue to others.”

The museum will close galleries dedicated to the Eastern Woodlands and the Great Plains this weekend, and close several other display cases of Native American cultural artifacts as it reviews its vast collection to make sure it complies with new federal rules. which came into effect this month.

Museums across the country have covered exhibitions as curators scramble to determine whether they can be shown under the new regulations. The Field Museum in Chicago has covered some display cases, Harvard University's Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology said it would remove all funerary belongings from its exhibits and the Cleveland Museum of Art has covered up some cases.

But the action of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which attracts 4.5 million visitors a year, making it one of the most visited museums in the world, sends a strong message to the field. The museum's anthropology department is one of the oldest and most prestigious in the United States and is known for its groundbreaking work under a long line of curators, including Franz Boas and Margaret Mead. The closures mean that almost 10,000 square meters of exhibition space are no longer accessible to visitors; the museum said it could not provide an exact timeline for when the reconsidered exhibitions would reopen.

“Some objects may never be displayed again as a result of the consultation process,” Decatur said in an interview. “But we want to create smaller-scale programs throughout the museum that can explain what kind of process is going on.”

The changes are the result of a concerted effort by the Biden administration to expedite the repatriation of Native American remains, burial objects and other sacred objects. The process began in 1990 with the approval of the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, which established protocols for museums and other institutions to return human remains, burial objects, and other property to tribes. But because these efforts have dragged on for decades, the law has been criticized by tribal representatives as too slow and too susceptible to institutional resistance.

This month, new federal regulations came into effect and were intended to expedite returns, giving institutions five years to prepare all human remains and associated funerary objects for repatriation, giving tribes more authority throughout the process.

“We are finally being heard – and it's not a fight, it's a conversation,” said Myra Masiel-Zamora, archaeologist and curator at the Pechanga Band of Indians.

Even in the two weeks since the new regulations took effect, she said, she has felt the tone of conversations shifting. In the past, institutions often viewed indigenous oral histories as less convincing than academic studies when determining which modern tribes to repatriate objects to, she said. But the new regulations require institutions to “adhere to Native American traditional knowledge of direct descendants, Indian tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations.”

“We can say, 'This has to come back,' and I hope there won't be any pushback,” Masiel-Zamora said.

Museum leaders have been preparing for the new regulations for months, consulting with lawyers and curators and holding lengthy meetings to discuss what might need to be hidden or removed. Many institutions plan to hire staff to comply with the new rules, which may require extensive consultation with tribal representatives.

The result is a major shift in practice when it comes to Native American exhibits in some of the country's most important museums – a change that will be noticeable to visitors.

At the American Museum of Natural History, portions of the collection once used to teach students about the Iroquois, Mohegans, Cheyenne, Arapaho and other groups will be temporarily inaccessible. That includes large artifacts, such as the birch bark canoe of Menominee origin in the Hall of Eastern Woodlands, and smaller ones, including darts dating to 10,000 B.C. and a Hopi Katsina doll from what is now Arizona. Student field trips to the Hall of Eastern Woodlands are being reconsidered now that they cannot access those galleries.

“What may seem out of alignment to some people is the result of an idea that museums put in amber descriptions of the world,” Decatur says. “But museums are at their best when they reflect changing ideas.”

The display of Native American human remains is generally prohibited in museums, so the collections under review include sacred objects, grave belongings and other items of cultural heritage. While the new regulations have been discussed and debated over the past year, some professional organizations, such as the Society for American Archaeology, have expressed concerns that the rules are overreaching in museums' collection management practices. But since the regulations came into effect on January 12, there has been little public resistance from museums.

Much of the human remains and indigenous cultural artifacts were collected through practices now considered antiquated and even odious, including donations by grave robbers and archaeological excavations that cleared indigenous burial sites.

“This is human rights work, and we should look at it as such and not as science,” said Candace Sall, director of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Missouri, which is still working to repatriate the remains of more than 2,400 Native Americans. individuals. Sall said she has added five staff members to work on repatriation in anticipation of the regulations, and hopes to add more.

Criticism of the pace of repatriation had put institutions such as the American Museum of Natural History under public pressure. In more than 30 years, the museum has repatriated the remains of approximately 1,000 individuals to tribal groups; it still contains the remains of approximately 2,200 Native Americans and thousands of funerary objects. (Last year, the museum said it would review practices that extended to its larger collection of some 12,000 skeletons by removing human bones from public display and improving the storage facilities where they are kept.)

A top priority of the new regulations, which are administered by the Ministry of the Interior, is to complete the work of repatriating the human remains of the indigenous population in institutional enterprises, which number more than 96,000 individuals. according to federal data published in the fall.

The government has given institutions a deadline giving them until 2029 to prepare human remains and their burial belongings for repatriation.

In many cases, human remains and cultural objects have little information associated with them, which has delayed repatriation in the past, especially for institutions that have sought demanding anthropological and ethnographic evidence of ties to a modern indigenous group.

Now the government is urging institutions to follow through with the information they have, in some cases relying solely on geographic information – such as in which province the remains were discovered.

Some tribal officials are concerned that the new rules will result in a flood of requests from museums that may exceed their capabilities and impose a financial burden.

In June I spoke with a Commission assessing the law's implementation, Scott Willard, who works on repatriation issues for the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, expressed concern that rhetoric about the new regulations sometimes made it sound as if Native ancestors were “disposable.”

“This garage sale mentality of 'give it all away now' is very insulting to us,” Willard said.

The officials who drafted the new regulations have said institutions can get extensions on their deadlines as long as the tribes they consult with agree, stressing the need to hold institutions accountable without overburdening tribes. If museums are found to have broken the rules, fines may be imposed.

Bryan Newland, the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs and former tribal president of the Bay Mills Indian Community, said the rules were developed in consultation with tribal representatives, who wanted their ancestors to regain their dignity after death.

“Repatriation is not just a rule on paper,” Newland said, “but it brings real meaningful healing and closure to people.”

At an informal meeting last summer at the Executive Mansion in Albany, N.Y., Governor Kathy Hochul shared an anecdote about making an unpleasant discovery there not long after moving in: a painting depicting the wedding of Pocahontas.

The governor thought Pocahontas looked young and scared and had the painting removed. In its place was what she considered a more tasteful representation of the indigenous people in Niagara Falls.

But she was undoubtedly aware of a far more incendiary art display just outside her executive office in the State Capitol: a centuries-old mural depicting French explorer Samuel Champlain's victory in battle, with an accompanying caption: “Champlain Killing First Indian.”

No, Mrs. Hochul replied. She and her top lawyer, Liz Fine, said they were not familiar with that artwork in the governor's reception room, known as the War Room because of its many battle images. Ms Fine said the matter would be investigated.

Last week, the governor formalized the investigation. In her list of policy proposals in her annual State of the State message, Ms. Hochul pledged to conduct a comprehensive investigation into all “artistic representations of Indigenous peoples in the Capitol” and come up with a plan that has yet to be fully defined. to deal with.

“The New York State Capitol is for the people,” Ms. Hochul said in a written statement. “Everyone should feel welcome in the hallowed halls.”

The push to reconsider the paintings comes in a broader era of reconsideration of — and often reconciliation with — America's treatment of non-white people.

In the racial unrest that followed the killing of George Floyd by police officers, several institutions faced questions about statues glorifying Confederate leaders and bloodthirsty explorers.

The village of Whitesboro, New York, made national news in 2017 when it finally decided to change its seal, which showed a white man with his hands around a native man's neck during a wrestling match. The state of Minnesota in 2023 has redesigned its flagwhich seemed to celebrate Native Americans being driven off their land.

Advocates have long protested artwork in the United States Capitol that depicts indigenous people fighting, shrinking, dying and dead. One sculpture, depicting a settler dominating a Native American, was deemed so offensive in 1939 that lawmakers called for it.ground into dust.” Still, it remained on display until 1958, when it was moved to storage.

In the New York Statehouse, the face of Christopher Columbus, reviled by many Native Americans for his brutality toward their ancestors, is etched into the red sandstone of the Million Dollar Staircase.

And on the east side of the Capitol stands a statue of a U.S. Army general, Philip Sheridan, who amassed a record of barbarism against tribes west of the Mississippi and is widely credited with coining the phrase, “the only good Indian is a dead man. Indonesian.”

“Unfortunately, offensive images and distasteful representations of people groups in the art adorning the Capitol can alienate visitors,” Ms. Hochul's staff wrote in the 2024 State of the State briefing book.

The report noted that Indigenous people in particular are often depicted in ways that “reflect harmful racial stereotypes and glorify violence against Indigenous people.”

The policy brief does not specifically mention the War Room, but examples of it are among the most disturbing.

Champlain is shown in hand-to-hand combat with a muscular, unnamed Native. In 1609, Champlain and a group of Native people he was traveling with encountered a group of Native people belonging to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy — also known as Iroquois, a term some now consider offensive — near the area that is now Fort Ticonderoga is.

A battle ensued and Champlain killed two of the group's leaders, sparking a larger war between the Confederacy and the French.

“They had guns. They came across a hunting party. They shot them,” said Oren Lyons, a Faithkeeper with the Onondaga Nation, part of the same Haudenosaunee confederacy. “Our people had a bow and arrow.”

The depiction of indigenous people – such as the fearsome warrior on the War Room ceiling – was not just an inaccuracy that could be consigned to the past, Mr Lyons said.

“They always call the Haudenosaunee – the Iroquois – fierce, fierce warriors and fierce warriors – and our mission has always been peace,” he said. This statue had a purpose then and it has a purpose now, he said, adding: “To put it bluntly, you really can't take a country away from a good guy.”

Ms. Hochul, like Governor Andrew Cuomo before her, has had a rocky relationship with indigenous groups. She clashed with the Seneca Nation in Western New York over disputed gambling revenues that she ultimately used to pay for the Buffalo Bills' new stadium.

Several vetoes of pro-Indigenous bills, including one a few weeks ago that cited racist court rulings from the early 20th century as part of the justification for denying state recognition to the Montaukett Indian Nation of Long Island, have also threw indigenous groups and their legislative supporters into turmoil. .

But Ms. Hochul also signed sweeping protections for ancient Indigenous graves into law last year and elevated Indigenous issues into her own office with the appointment of Elizabeth Rule, an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation, as deputy secretary of First Nations. Ms. Hochul also became the first governor in at least 50 years to visit the home territory of the Onondaga Nation.

In addition to confronting the offensive art, Ms. Hochul pledges this year to improve access to and financing of dental care for Indigenous peoples and to correct historical injustices inflicted on Indigenous children, including in New York boarding schools, by promoting strategies to the objectives of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act.

“Since taking office, I have worked to strengthen nation-to-nation ties between New York State and its indigenous peoples, and I will continue these efforts for years to come,” said Ms. Hochul.

Ms. Hochul's policy initiative includes plans to invite representatives from New York's nine recognized tribes to provide input and advice, although the governor would make the final decision on what to do with offensive art.

A spokesperson said possible solutions include providing additional materials such as brochures or placards that would help contextualize existing artwork, as well as adding Indigenous artwork to spaces in the Capitol.

Nowhere does the proposal mention the possible removal of paintings or statues. Still, at least one New York tribal chief, Harry Wallace of the Unkechaug Nation on Long Island, is in favor of getting rid of it.

“I think it should be removed,” he said. “This is just a slap in the face.”

Robert Odawi Porter, former president of the Seneca Nation of Indians, said he would prefer to preserve the mural and use it as a “teachable moment” by including some sort of explanation for visitors to the Capitol. He recalled the many times he waited in the hall outside the governor's office to discuss often controversial issues between the state and his tribe.

He said the mural gave him the energy to advocate more fiercely for his people, who belong to the same confederacy as the one most likely depicted in the painting.

“It was always going to be motivating because I said this is the only real thing in the building,” Mr Porter said. “It's how they think about us.”

A 94-year-old woman who was in the middle of a legal battle with a developer to keep her family’s ancestral land on Hilton Head Island, S.C., has died.

Hilton Head matriarch Josephine Wright died on Jan. 7 surrounded by her family and other loved ones, her granddaughter, Charise Graves, wrote on a GoFundMe page created to raise money for her legal battle.

The company that owns the project next door to her property, Bailey Point Investment, had sued Ms Wright for trespass in February 2023. The company said its satellite dish, shed and screened porch encroached on the land, which had “significantly delayed and hindered” development.

The lawsuit followed decades of land acquisitions that had displaced black families with close ties to Hilton Head as tourism grew, with golf courses and waterfront vacation homes. The status of the case could not immediately be determined Tuesday. Attorneys for both parties were not immediately available for comment.

Mrs Wright previously told The Times that her husband inherited the four-acre estate from his parents, and it was transferred into her name after he died in 1998. It has been a gathering place and a place of memories for Mrs. Wright’s seven children. , 40 grandchildren, 50 great-grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.

“Her legacy as a pillar of strength, wisdom and commitment to justice will forever be etched in our hearts,” Ms. Graves wrote of her grandmother.

Ms. Wright’s legal battle attracted the attention of celebrities, including Snoop Dogg and Kyrie Irving. Snoop Dogg donated $10,000 to the fundraiser, and Kyrie Irving donated $40,000.

Actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry offered his condolences to Ms Wright’s family in a speech Instagram postsaid he was “heartbroken” when he heard of her death.

“You ran your race and fought an incredible fight!” He wrote. “Have a good trip, my dear lady. You have inspired me.”