When the bill to restore state recognition to the Montaukett Indian Nation arrived on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk for a signature last week — the sixth time in the last 12 years that such a bill got to this point — many involved in its passage were certain that, this time, things would be different.
Fred W. Thiele Jr., its sponsor in the State Assembly, had a good feeling about it, as did Sandi Brewster-walker, executive director of the Montaukett Nation. According to both, they’d bent over backward to provide the governor’s executive staff with everything needed and requested over the course of months of meetings.
But Governor Hochul vetoed the recognition bill on Dec. 21. For those who had held high hopes, this latest veto stings even more than the last five times a New York governor killed the tribe’s recognition.
We believe the governor has made an ugly mistake. Governor Hochul shouldn’t have had to look further than the injustice of the 1910 court case, Pharaoh v. Benson, that caused the tribe to lose its status in New York in the first place: That decision, which has been widely decried as a disgraceful miscarriage of justice, was based on racially tinged arguments and influenced by land-development efforts. The need for a reversal of that outcome should have stood as the basis for reinstatement.
Furthermore, the Montauketts have by now provided volumes of genealogy records, historical documents, current tribal enrollment figures, supportive letters from New Yorkers, and other material to substantiate their case. The bill to reinstate tribal status had passed the Assembly and Senate unanimously; that is a clear indication of support transcending party lines, and another strong argument for a signature.
In the final hour, the governor’s executive staff raised the specter of a land claim — a claim the Montauketts themselves hadn’t even broached, and say they don’t plan to make. In our opinion and others’, those officials seem to have been groping for a reason to deny the tribe the recognition that was scandalously stripped from them in 1910. Shame on Governor Hochul, who in her veto claimed to support New York’s Indigenous communities in their fight against centuries of injustice.
Really? How so?
She needs to do much better.