City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation: Supreme Court Review

Introduction and Historical Background

This paper reviews the U.S. Supreme Court decision in City of Sherrill, New York v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York, et al. It examines the historical background of the dispute, the contentions of each party, the decisions rendered at each level of the court system, and the significance of the Supreme Court's final ruling for federal Indian law.

Summary of the Conflict

The Oneida Indian Nation of New York descends directly from the original Oneida Indian Nation. The Oneida Nation's aboriginal homeland consisted of approximately six million acres in central New York State, stretching "from Pennsylvania border to the St. Lawrence River and from Lake Ontario to the Adirondack foothills" (Grant, 2005). In 1785, the Oneida Tribe sold 300,000 acres to the State of New York through the Treaty of Fort Herkimer. In 1788, New York State and the Oneida Indian Nation entered into a further treaty in which the Oneidas released additional lands to the State of New York, while retaining a reservation territory of 300,000 acres.

Under the Act of November 11, 1794 — 7 Stat. 44, 45, Art. III, Treaty of Canandaigua — the United States guaranteed the Oneida Indians the "free use and enjoyment" of this reservation. Nevertheless, New York continued purchasing land from the Oneida Nation, with the administration in Washington at the time objecting. Subsequent administrations, however, did not object and are noted to have "pursued a policy designed to open reservation lands to white settlers and to remove tribes westward" (Cornell Law School, n.d.). By 1920, the Oneida Nation owned a mere 32 acres in the State of New York.

The earliest litigation brought by the Oneida Nation sought monetary compensation. Eventually, the Nation filed suits against local governments and brought a federal case against two New York counties in 1970, alleging that the land sold to New York in 1795 violated the Non-Intercourse Act and that, because of this violation, the land should revert to the Oneida Nation. The Nation also sought damages for fair rental value. The lower courts decided in favor of the Oneidas regarding their rights of possession; however, the question of whether the present-day Oneida Nation was entitled to equitable compensation was reserved by the court.

In 1997, the Oneida Indian Nation purchased a parcel of land in the City of Sherrill, New York. The Oneidas received a property tax bill but declined to pay it, claiming that under federal law the land was exempt from state and municipal taxation. This refusal resulted in a legal dispute that reached federal court in late 2000.

Contentions of Each Party

The Oneida Nation contended that, because the land had originally been reservation land, it should not be subject to taxation. The City of Sherrill countered that because the land had been sold to a non-Indian owner and later repurchased by the Oneida Nation, and because the land had been classified as an Indian reservation in the late 1800s but was no longer Indian country, the Oneida Nation was required to pay property tax.

The City of Sherrill advanced three principal arguments. First, it asserted that the land's reservation status had been lost when it passed into non-Indian ownership. Second, Sherrill contended that any reservation status was further extinguished when the tribe relocated from New York to Kansas under the 1838 Buffalo Creek Treaty. Third, the City argued that the Oneida tribe had ceased to exist as a legal entity in the latter part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century. In response, the Oneida Nation maintained that only the federal government has the authority to alter or extinguish the status of Indian reservation land, and that no congressional act had ever formally disestablished the reservation.