Power Struggle Divides New York Tribe in US, State Courts (1)

In Varick, N.Y., a speck of a town nearly five hours northwest of Manhattan, sit the remnants of a two-story farmhouse and barn.

Known as the Varick House, the property once was the home of Wanda John, a member of the Cayuga Nation of Native Americans. The barn served as a ceremonial building for Cayuga citizens; its garden was where John’s son says his mom years ago taught her grandchildren how to plant vegetables.

These days, the site symbolizes something greater: a power struggle that’s divided the tribal nation, entangled state and federal courts, and raised questions about the nation’s sovereignty.

Two years ago, a police force dispatched by the tribal government partially demolished the structures, claiming the site was uninhabitated and had become “a haven” for illegal activity. It’s one of multiple businesses and properties seized under Clint Halftown, the Cayuga Nation leader who says he’s trying to restore the nation in its ancestral homeland.

Opposing him are clan mothers, elders, and other Cayuga members who assert the Halftown-led council is running roughshod over their rights and violating their traditional way of governance. During one 3 a.m. raid, they say, tribal police arrested and zip-tied Cayuga men trying to guard a cluster of buildings, then herded them into a bus to watch as the structures were razed.

The ongoing clash has led to at least 10 lawsuits, forcing multiple courts to grapple with the issue of where tribal and state jurisdictions intersect or collide.

Lawyers for the Halftown-led Cayuga Nation government on Nov. 7 urged a federal judge in Rochester to recognize its authority and rebuke a New York state judge who’s repeatedly blocked the nation’s efforts to fine or evict Cayuga business owners and citizens. At the same time, a state appellate court is weighing a request to enforce more than $330,000 in unpaid rent levied by the tribal council.

Tribal sovereignty is “something that all of us want to protect,” said Michael Sliger, who teaches federal Indian law at Cornell Law School and represents Cayuga Nation citizens challenging the tribal government’s decisions. But individual rights also matter, he said. Cayuga members trying to reconcile both, he added, have found “surprisingly few remedies available to them.”

Returning Home

Roughly 2.5 million American Indian and Alaska Natives belong to one of the 574 federally recognized tribes in the US.

The Cayuga, or Gayogo̱hóːnǫʼ in their native language, is among six tribal nations in New York commonly known as the Iroquois Confederacy—along with the Seneca, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora. Each has traditionally been governed by a council of chiefs chosen by clan mothers. Some also have their own courts.

Halftown, a member of the tribe’s Heron Clan, stepped in for an ailing Cayuga chief about two decades ago, and later rebuffed critics’ calls to step aside.

The council tasked Halftown with helping to advance its economic development plan, secure property, and serve as a liaison with the federal government. Its goal was to lure back tribal members whose families were forced 200 years earlier to leave their homes around Seneca and Cayuga counties and had scattered around the country.

Under the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua, the Cayuga were granted 64,000 acres in the Finger Lakes region—a reservation large enough in size to rival US cities like Milwaukee, Wis. and Tallahassee, Fla. Immediately after the treaty, tribal leaders began selling the land off to the state government.

Parcel by parcel, Halftown’s government has been trying to repurchase it. Fewer than 100 tribal citizens live there now, most in modest houses with farms, sprawling green flatlands and lakes as their backdrop.

Other than the occasional roadside historical marker, homes and businesses bearing traditional symbols, or a Cayuga Nation-owned building waving the nation’s flag—white with a maroon crest and outlines of the animals representing the clans—the community might pass for any small US town.

Dylan Seneca, a member of the Turtle Clan, moved back with his family from across the state in 2011, lured by Halftown’s promise of a home and jobs. Within months, Seneca said, they recognized the tense divide on the six-member governing council, with one side supporting Halftown and others backing alternate leaders, Chief William Jacobs and Sachem Sam George.

For a community governed by unwritten oral laws and tradition, the dispute couldn’t have been bigger: At issue was who would lead the nation—including in conversations with the US government—as well as who owned and had rights to Cayuga Nation land.

Seneca and his family began asking questions about the power structure and if there were plans for fostering the nation’s culture and language, he said.

“It raised red flags amongst their group,” Seneca recounted last month, sitting in the one-story, rectangular shed that Halftown’s opponents use as their longhouse, or gathering place. “They were starting to push us off to the point where they’re having their little secret meetings, and weren’t allowing us to be a part of their meetings.”

He said the Halftown-led faction is fixated on four priorities: “money, gas, cigarettes, and power.” Cheap gas and cigarettes have long been vital revenue streams for the reservations.

Halftown, through his attorneys, declined requests for comment or an interview. On the Cayuga Nation website, Halftown has assailed what he calls “hysterical” reactions to its efforts to reclaim property and blamed a “mostly white media” that labels any Indian country conflict as “chaos and violence.”

The nation’s council has publicly touted its accomplishments. It says its economic development plan helped create jobs and raise more than $9 million distributed to its members since 2006.

But John, a member of the tribe’s Turtle clan, said there’s no money being put toward building community centers, such as a daycare. “There’s a lot of money coming in at the expense of children. The children aren’t getting any help,” she said.

By 2014, the dispute had landed in state court, where both sides sought control of multiple pieces of property—including the 154-acre Varick property.

Lawyers for Halftown’s camp argued members of the Jacobs council had illegally seized the buildings and evicted their occupants. But the presiding judge dismissed the matter, saying New York courts lacked jurisdiction to resolve what amounted to a dispute over tribal control.

Halftown’s authority got a significant boost in 2016. The US Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) officially deemed him the “nation representative,” based on the nation’s survey of 392 adult Cayuga citizens. Halftown received more than 60% of the votes; his critics questioned the survey format and argued it flouted the council-based tradition of choosing leaders and representatives.

The BIA endorsement prompted the tribal council to renew its fight over disputed properties clustered in a stretch of Route 89, a few miles east of downtown Seneca Falls. They included a convenience store and gas station known as Lakeside Trading, a one-story building that serves as the nation’s offices, a cannery facility, security trailer, and ice cream stand.

Between 2018 and 2020, the nation also formed a police force and hired two former state judges for a newly created tribal court— “out of a necessity to provide a forum and process to resolve our disputes,” its attorneys say.

The Land Battle

The 3 a.m. police raid happened on the Route 89 land in February 2020. Cayuga men rounded up that night by officers had been staying in cabins on the site; some were helping to build a daycare there, Seneca said.

That building and a longhouse were among the ones they saw torn down. “That’s when it really started getting deep, with a lot of trauma,” he said.

Halftown and the Cayuga Nation government have repeatedly maintained the government simply took back buildings and businesses that had been illegally seized by the opposing faction.

“What does it take to convince the world you have the right to protect your homeland? For the Cayuga Nation, quite a lot, apparently,” he wrote on the nation’s website that month.

Only two structures remain—the office building that now houses the Cayuga Nation Police Department and Tribal Court, and a gas station and mini-casino that had been a convenience store. Most of the others were demolished because they created a public safety risk, Halftown later told the Finger Lakes Times.

The council has since continued imposing fines and seizing property, including the Varick site. John moved miles away to a mobile home on a 20-plus-acre farm that’s become a gathering place—and a ceremonial site—for Halftown’s opponents.

In a bid to enforce its tribal court judgments and get access to assets like bank accounts that aren’t under tribal jurisdiction, the nation has turned to non-tribal courts for validation—a strategy that has yielded mixed results.

In 2021, its lawyers asked the New York state courts to enforce tribal court judgements of nearly $200,000 in fines against two merchants, Dustin “Dusty” Parker of Heron Clan and Carlin “Woody” Seneca of Turtle Clan. Both had been accused of selling untaxed and unstamped cigarettes and marijuana on the reservation.

Seneca County Supreme Court Judge Barry Porsch denied the request. He ruled the nation’s lands aren’t part of a defined federal Indian reservation and that because the businesses lie within Seneca County, the tribal court’s authority to evict and fine the operators is “at best, limited.”

New York’s Supreme Court Fourth Appellate Department upheld the ruling in July, saying the state courts can’t enforce a fine or penalty handed down by a tribal court. The same court is weighing similar appeals in eight other cases in which Porsch vacated $330,000 in unpaid rent judgements imposed by the tribal nation.

The nation argues those eight cases, which the court will consider in February, are focused on rent, which makes them distinct from the fines or penalties in the Parker and Seneca cases. There’s also no support for Porsch’s “preposterous factual assertions such as the Nation’s
Reservation does not exist,” Michael Nicholson of Barclay Damon wrote in a Nov. 7 brief.

While that unfolds in state courts, Halftown’s lawyers, from Jenner & Block, have asked US District Judge Elizabeth Wolford in Rochester to declare Porsch’s rulings “overstep legal boundaries and infringe upon Nation sovereignty.”

They’ve also filed a $15 million racketeering lawsuit against Parker, alleging he falsely operated his business, Pipekeepers, as a Cayuga Nation smoke shop within the reservation, siphoning off potential profits that belong to the nation’s businesses. They point to the 1794 treaty as proof the 64,000 acres belong to the Cayuga people.

“If a treaty of such important promises means anything at all, it cannot be undone by the passage of time,” Halftown told the Finger Lakes Times in 2022. The nation, he added, will “reclaim its land inch by inch to restore the reservation.”

Parker’s lawyers at Nixon Peabody LLP maintain the federal court lacks authority to rule on tribal law issues—essentially mirroring the argument Halftown’s attorneys made to the New York state court.

Continued Unrest

Intra-tribal disputes are rare but not unheard of, said Dorsey & Whitney LLP Partner Ben Kappelman, who represents a Minnesota Native American tribe. They’re also hard to solve, especially when outside parties like state courts get involved, he added.

Parker and other Halftown critics blame the Cayuga Nation’s disputes in large part on the BIA. The agency has refused to respect the role of clan mothers in making leadership decisions, they say.

The agency’s decision to recognize Halftown as leader is part of a “long line of history” in which the US government has disrupted Native American communities, said Rhonda Hill of Wolf Clan—a Cayuga member who lives in Canada.

Parker also pointed to the bureau’s land management process. It dictates they must buy back their ancestral land on the open market, which he contends inflates the price and ignores the right of first purchase they got under the 1794 treaty.

“The BIA is looking at sticking the Cayuga Nation in the same ship or canoe as everybody else, and we’re just not that,” Parker said.

In a statement, the bureau said it supports tribal self-determination and that its role and ability to intervene is limited. “Each Tribe has its own laws and policies that establish how they choose their leadership and what their title is,” the statement said.

The conflicting issues spilled out during a more than two-hour hearing before Wolford on Nov. 7.

The judge seemed particularly taken aback to learn Porsch, who served nearly a decade as Seneca County district attorney, issued restraining orders blocking the Cayuga Nation’s eviction of two citizens in 2021 without giving the Halftown government the opportunity to respond.

“Bananas,” Wolford told the lawyers, as Halftown watched from the public gallery. “It’s crazy what he did, and you can order the transcript [of this proceeding] and give it to him.”

Still, she suggested all the parties take their dispute back to Porsch and have him resolve the issue. Otherwise, she said, she would be forced to decide if she has the authority to issue an injunction essentially blocking Porsch’s orders—a cross-jurisdictional step Halftown’s lawyers acknowledged could be unprecedented.

“I’m not sure I relish that,” said the judge. Wolford told the parties she would issue a ruling as soon as possible.

Federal courts don’t typically intervene in state court decisions, but they do have a “critical role to play” in policing tribal court sovereignty and jurisdiction when it collides with state court jurisdiction, David DeBruin of Jenner & Block argued on behalf of the Cayuga Nation government.

The citizens who oppose Halftown have launched a legal defense fund to potentially challenge the BIA’s recognition of him as leader. They want to return to their previous form of council-based governance in which clan mothers, not a tribal court, handle disputes among members.

Halftown’s attorneys say there’s no confusion about the authority of the Cayuga Nation Council—or Halftown’s role as tribal leader. They declined to comment on any specific future development plans for the nation, but noted the nation has a community center that hosts clan meetings and cultural classes.

Despite the turmoil, the spirit of the community has only gotten stronger, Seneca said one afternoon last month, after some gathered for an annual harvest ceremony on a farm in Fayetteville. He was heartened that younger members of the nation came that day to participate.

“That, to me, shows me that the future generation is getting ready to take our place,” Seneca said. “That’s what it’s all about—being Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫʼ, being proud of who you are.”

Adds details from New York appellate court decision in 37th paragraph as well as argument outlined in a Nov. 7 brief. A previous version corrected details of the restraining order cited in 36th paragraph, and tribal court judgement cited in 50th paragraph.