A top U.S. Department of Interior official has promised to visit the four upstate New York counties opposing applications by the Cayuga and Oneida Nations for the federal government to take their land holdings into sovereign trust status.

James Cason, associate deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, was one of four federal officials who met Thursday in Washington, D.C., with U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer and eight officials from Cayuga, Seneca and Madison counties. Oneida County officials participated by conference call. Local officials and Schumer are opposing the applications.

Schumer said he arranged the meeting after local officials in all four counties said they found the agency in charge of processing and approving land in trust applications, Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs, to be remote.

“If the BIA understands the problems they face, they will come to a good and amiable solution,” Schumer said in a conference call following the meeting. “If they try to do it on paper, we could have a real problematic answer.”

The Cayuga Nation and the Oneida Nation both submitted land-into-trust applications last year following a March 2005 U.S Supreme Court decision ruling the Oneidas cannot reestablish sovereignty over land purchased on the open market and a lower federal court dismissed the Cayugas' land claim.

Cason's visit will come in the next month or two, Schumer said, and he will be accompanied by local officials at points during the visit. Cason was a one-time resident of Youngstown, a northwest New York village on Lake Ontario, which helps him to understand the culture of upstate, Schumer added.

Also on Thursday, the part of the Cayuga Nation that filed the trust application for the tribe's 125 acres in Union Springs and Seneca Falls issued a copy of a letter sent to Cayuga County Attorney Fred Westphal and Seneca County Attorney Steven Getman. The tribe told the attorneys that it desires a “partnering relationship” with Cayuga and Seneca counties over its trust applications with the goal of benefiting both the Cayugas and residents neighboring the potential trust parcels.

Nation representatives also met with Cason Tuesday. “During this meeting, Secretary Cason expressed his department's own endorsement of the concept of the Nation partnering with municipalities and advocated prompt initiation of such a relation,” the letter said.

“The Cayuga Nation is the only treatied nation in the country that's landless and the Interior Department is not going to leave the Cayuga Nation in that position for long,” said Dan French, an attorney who represents the Cayugas federally recognized representative, Clint Halftown. “The Cayuga Nation is confident its lands will be taken into trust and is willing to work with the counties on how that best serves the Nation's purposes and the counties' purposes,” French said.

The tribe's 125 acres fall within its 64,000-acre reservation first defined in a 1700s-era treaty.

Getman said in a release that Seneca County is willing to dialogue, but “Seneca County's position has always been to oppose special privileges based upon race.” He also said the county would want the Nation to waive sovereignty.

Cayuga County Legislator Ray Lockwood, R-Aurelius, represented the county. Robert Shipley, chairman of the Seneca County Board of Supervisors, and David Dresser, the board of supervisor's Native American Affairs committee chair, and attorney Brian Laudadio of the Pittsford-based Harris Beach law firm also attended.

Federal officials who attended included Cason, as well as Tom Blazer, an attorney in the U.S. Office of the Solicitor General, Dave Moran, councilor to the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, and Mike Olsen, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs.

In fiscal year 2005, more than 90 percent of 87 land in trust applications were approved. There are now 54 million acres held in trust by the federal government.

Staff writer Amaris Elliott-Engel can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 282 or at amaris.elliot-engel@lee.net