RIGHTS OF RETURN

I would like to explain to you why we have the right and the desire to return to our native land here in New York:

Each tribe here represented today has a similar story to tell regarding what happened during the Revolutionary War years and immediately thereafter. Scattered to the winds, literally struggling to survive and find food on a daily and weekly basis ‘The history surrounding what they had to go through’ makes me shocked and dismayed that now, when we’re litigating, and we have successfully litigated at least a portion of our land claim, the state’s saying the Cayugas voluntarily left the state of New York. I wonder what the state’s definition of voluntarily means. Imagine yourself, if anyone here has small children ‘ I have 5-year old and a 2-year old ‘ if your children were starving, what would you do to save them?

Would you walk 100 miles? Would you walk 300 miles? And I think clearly the answer is yes, and that’s what many of our people did.

Scott Wood Business Committee Member/ Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma Symposium at Syracuse University Syracuse Post-Standard November 20, 2003

A large group went to live with the Senecas immediately after the Sullivan-Clinton campaign due to starvation. Some stayed in the claim area near Cayuga Lake, where most of the children died that next winter, which was a very harsh one. Another group joined Senecas and Cayugas that had moved farther west earlier and were never present, never advised, never notified of the subsequent treaties that were made which purportedly gave away their land.

…Since that time we began efforts to reacquire some land, to put it in title and bein our quest to return home. … I see no reason why we cannot come here and prosper in unity… The red white and blue stand for the proposition that you can’t take people’s lands by trickery, without just and due compensation, which clearly, obviously has been the case with all of the removal of the New York Indians…

Scott Wood Business Committee Member/ Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma Symposium at Syracuse University Syracuse Post-Standard November 20, 2003