The State Legislature delivered a bill that provides for reinstatement of recognition and acknowledgment of the Montaukett Indian Nation to Governor Kathy Hochul last Thursday, December 12.
The governor — who vetoed similar legislation a year ago — has until December 24 to sign or veto the bill, which supporters say would correct an unjust and racist 1910 ruling in which the tribe was declared extinct.
“We hope she understands,” read a December 12 alert from Chief Robert Pharaoh, that Justice Abel Blackmar’s 1910 ruling “was based on racism and greed,” and that “for 114 years after the Blackmar ruling, the Montauketts have suffered. But we continue to make important contributions to the Long Island, New York State, [national] and international communities through cultural revitalization, educational outreach, the preservation of historic sacred sites, heritage and language.”
The message asked that letters of support be sent to the governor. “We are still here, and preparing for our 115th year since the ruling,” Pharaoh continued, “and will continue our fight for social justice, sovereignty and equality!”
In last year’s bill, which was passed unanimously by both the Assembly and Senate, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and State Senator Anthony Palumbo, its co-sponsors, introduced the word “reinstatement” to the legislation, indicating that recognition that had once existed.
But the governor, citing insufficient evidence to overturn the 1910 ruling, was unmoved. Her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, had vetoed similar bills in 2013, 2017 and 2018.
“The Montaukett Indian Nation seeks reinstatement of its recognition and acknowledgment by the State of New York,” reads the bill’s legislative findings. “Such recognition and acknowledgment was improperly removed from the Montaukett Indian Nation in 1910 in the case of Pharaoh v. Benson … when the Montaukett Indian Nation was declared to be ‘extinct.’”
The “Benson” in that case was Arthur Benson, a developer whose heirs were awarded Montaukett tribal lands in Blackmar’s 1910 ruling.
“The court ruled that ‘the tribe has disintegrated and been absorbed into the mass of citizens and at the time of commencement of this action there was no tribe of Montaukett Indians,’” it continues. “This arbitrary ruling ignored earlier U.S. Supreme Court decisions defining Indian Nations according to criteria under which the Montaukett Indian Nation qualified as an existing sovereign tribe and giving Congress, rather than the courts, power to decide the status of an Indian.”
The legislature finds “that in Pharaoh v. Benson, the court improperly ignored U.S. Supreme Court precedent and lacked jurisdiction to judge the status of the Montaukett Indian Nation. It is the purpose of this legislation to reverse this improper and illegal result by the reinstatement of acknowledgment and recognition by the State of New York to the Montaukett Indian Nation.”
Thiele said in an email this week that “we have had several discussions with representatives of the governor’s office during the 2024 session,” which he expects to continue before any action is taken.
“For the record, I continue to believe that the court decisions in Pharaoh v. Benson, issued more than a century ago, wrongfully declared the Montaukett Indian Nation to be extinct in one of the most racist decisions ever issued by a New York court. The time to right that wrong is long overdue. The governor has a rare opportunity to reverse this injustice by simply signing the bill. It is never too late to do the right thing.”
Chief Robert Pharaoh of the Montauketts, who did not reply to an email seeking comment, was named grand marshal of East Hampton Town’s 375th anniversary parade in September 2023.
Last month, with Sandi Brewster-walker, the Montaukett Indian Nation’s executive director, and Lance Gumbs, the Shinnecock Nation’s vice chairman, in attendance, the East Hampton Town Board proclaimed November to be Native American History Month.
“I’m not sure to this day how one person can, through the stroke of a pen, erase a whole people,” Gumbs told the Town Board on November 12 at its work session in Montauk, “but it happened. This has been a long fight to regain it.”
