How will land settlement fare this time?

SYRACUSE - In February 2002, then-Gov. George Pataki traveled to upstate New York to surround himself with local officials and trumpet a $500 million land claim settlement with the Oneida Indian Nation.

Within weeks, the agreement unraveled, partly because no one bothered to include two other out-of-state Oneida tribes that were party to the land claim.

Last week, the Cayuga Indian Nation of New York and Gov. Eliot Spitzer quietly unveiled a proposed settlement of the Cayugas' claim to 64,000 acres of ancestral lands in the Finger Lakes - one that not only left out the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma, but would also press Congress to ban the out-of-state tribe from opening a casino in New York.