Stockbridge-Munsee casino has significant hurdles to overcome

By FRITZ MAYER

ROCK HILL, NY — The Stockbridge-Munsee Indians would like to build a casino in Sullivan County, and their leader thinks residents here should know a little about the tribe’s history. With that in mind, Robert Chicks, the president of the tribe, gave a presentation to local politicians and community leaders on August 14 at Bernie’s Holiday Restaurant.

According to information from two videos and three speakers at the event, the Stockbridge-Munsee Band is a confluence of two tribes: the Mohican, whose numbers lived along the Hudson River, and the Munsee Delaware, whose members lived in and around the Delaware River.

The Munsees had a presence in what is now the Village of Wurtsboro, and a significant community on Minisink Island, located in the northern portion of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. Chicks said the community at Minisink Island, which is still an active archeological site, was destroyed in a war with the Mohawks in the 1660s. (The St. Regis Mohawks Tribe is now awaiting approval for a casino at Monticello Raceway; the Stockbridge Munsee casino would be located in Bridgeville at Route 17.)

The most important factor, however, in the demise of the Munsees was previously unknown diseases brought by European settlers, which killed up to 90 percent of tribal members by the 1700s.

The Mohicans, meanwhile, were forced out of their

traditional lands along the Hudson River to Stockbridge, MA, where they were later joined by the Munsee survivors. After the Revolutionary War, the now united tribes moved to land that belonged to the Oneida tribe in central New York. But that stay proved short lived.

According to narration from the video, “In the early 1800s, in violation of federal law, devious land companies conspired with the state of New York to rob the [tribes] of their land through a series of so-called treaties. The tribe was forced to move to Wisconsin.”

The Indians had lived for at least a 1,000 years in this area, and perhaps much longer. A tribal elder in the video said, “After contact [with the Europeans] our people never stayed in one place for more than 50 years.”

At several points, Chicks pointed to irony in the tribe’s seven-year effort to gain a casino. For instance, in a reference to environmental concerns about a casino on the Neversink River, he said, “We find it ironic that we managed to live in harmony with our natural surroundings for thousands of years, and the people who paved, polluted and processed their environment choose to lecture us on the damage our project will do.”

In 1985, federal courts declared the treaties from the early 1800s void, and the Stockbridge Munsees have pursued land-claim lawsuits since then.

The Current Status

The Stockbridge Munsee tribe still faces significant hurdles before they can start to build their proposed casino. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is still reviewing the tribe’s environmental impact statement, and the BIA has not yet determined whether the site along the Neversink River is suitable for a gambling operation.

But the biggest obstacle for the tribe is the same one facing the St. Regis Mohawks in their pursuit of a casino: Dirk Kempthorne, the Secretary of the Interior, who oversees the BIA. His objection to allowing new off-reservation casinos to open is well known. However, he has said if there were exceptional circumstances in a specific case, he might be persuaded to bend a little.

Chicks believes his tribe’s historical ties to the area will help sway Kempthorne. Morever, the tribe is attempting to settle the land claims issue with two Central New York counties in connection with the approval of a casino, and Chicks sees that as an additional special circumstance that might appeal to Kempthorne.

So far, however, Kempthorne has proven to be a very formidable obstacle to the many tribes that want to open off-reservation casinos in the country.