Wampum

City of Sherrill is about the right of return. Do New York Oneidas have a right of return to land they were illegally driven from (isloated murders, collective dispossessions and house burnings, etc) just under 190 years ago? How about the Oneidas of Wisconsin? Do they have the right compel the Secretary of the Interior to take land into trust in a state other than Wisconsin?

Just this month the Governor of New York, apparently a sovereign in his own right, or in the right of the non-Indian inhabitants of New York state, announced that the time available to the Indian Nations that border New York for negotiations is very limited, and that New York will impose its taxes on those Indian Nations it chooses, unless its terms are meet before this limited time runs out.

MB's family fled Norridgewock to Portland only 120 years ago after a relative, a decorated veteran of the Civil War, was lynched there for being Abenaki. The Abenaki Bounty Law was still law in Maine at the end of the 19th century, so there was "no crime" in the killing. Land, houses, outbuildings, stock, seed, plows, tools, trees, abandonded or "sold" at give-away prices.

Liberal Americans look to Justice Ginsberg as a guarantor of what is good. She wrote the majority opinion in City of Sherrill. As a bit of BRAC list trivia, she also wrote the majority opinion in New Hampshire v Maine, which is why, when the gates at the Portsmough Yard are shuttered (except for the BTC staff, the LRA staff, and the BCT staff, who may in fact still be dithering about on Seavey Island until 2012), the padlock will be "in" Maine rather than "in" New Hampshire. In the Seavey Island case the determinant fact was the 1740 decree of King George II delimiting the Colony of New Hamphsire from the Northern Extent of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (now Maine) as the "Middle of the River". In City of Sherrill Justice Ginsberg wrote that too much time had passed for the Oneidas to now claim tribal sovereignty over a property, and if upheld, the claim would create a "disruptive" patchwork of local and Indian jurisdiction.

How much time is "too much" depends if the claimant is a sucessor in interest to a colonial corporation "chartered" by the English monarchy, or a polity that pre-exists the arrival of Europeans, lynchings are not "disruptive" and no crime or duty arises from their commission.

Before going to Norridgewock due to the early 19th century expulsion of "breeds and indians", MB's family were at Cape Porpoise and Kittery (the intermarried Seavey and Huff families identified as "English" and "Wawenock Abenaki", respectively). What is now Seavey Island was originally three islands, Seavey's, Dennett's and Jamaica, connected by toxic landfills (33!) and old stoneworks.

At the end of the 19th century Seavey Island was the Gitmo of the North, the Naval Stockade for Spanish POWs taken in the Cuban War. The legality of the torture systematically committed upon persons held by the United States at Gitmo since the winter of 2001/2002 rests on territorial status arising from that war. The liner "City of Rome" which brought the 1,600 Spanish POWs taken to Seavey Island in July 1898, back to Spain. Shown off of Kittery Point, Maine, on September 12, 1898. The past is not so distant.

Millions of Palestinians at home and in the Diaspora on Sunday commemorated the 57th anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe).