I would have liked to have learned from this article what other transportation issues the Senecas want addressed.
18
Drive Sunrise Highway Highway in Patchogue. It is in terrible shape for several miiles. One can not blame Native Americans but the State DOT.
7
I cannot believe I'm siding with Tom Reed on anything but he's right here.
6
Hey, look! A Republican with an idea!
4
The state should look to trade with the Senecas to settle this once and for all. State would take the Thruway corridor, and would give the Senecas a chunk of state park land which would be added to their territory. There is plenty of state park land available for this purpose- some very close or even adjacent to Seneca territories. Seems like a no-brainer for both sides- unless one or both sides prefer to continue fighting as they have since the 50s...
6
We are recognizing the trend to become ' ununited' as a country.
States in the south are moving away from pol. trends in NY & NE and western state govs. have no Fed. cost sharing in their E coast neighbors.
Without a strong Fed. voice supported by Congress to finance ( and maintain ) the interstate system, we will continue to become more 'regional' , witn no Natl, outlook.
Europe maintains its '1st world' highway infrastructure as it cooperates between borders. We no longer have Fed. bureaus that cooperate and coordinate construction in distant states.
We need to fund rebuilding programs as a ( regional) group of states.
8
What is missing from this article is an explanation of the exact terms of the $75,000 payment that granted the right to build the stretch of road. Was it an easement? Think telephone/ cable company easements, that also grant the right to enter and maintain. Perhaps Mr. McKinley can ask to see the actual agreement.
17
@Tony Ferrara
The Seneca Nation granted NY State an easement to build the Thruway across the reservation.
5
In a nutshell. This is a "observation moment' and the democrats best be wary. The tribe now claims it doesn't have to honor the agreement from the 1950's. Nor does it have to honor its casino agreement. This is one of the best augments ever made on why reparations for a single group will never work out.
9
The federal government has made and backed out of their treaties for almost 200 years, consistently leaving their nation imperiled. Is it any wonder they should want to do the same?
Now that money is involved, money that is being used to elevate their status and protect their citizens and land, we want to take it from them? Because there’s cold hard cash involved, that gives them no right to back out of an agreement?
I travel this corridor frequently. I would happily pay a toll — to both the tribes AND the state government — to cross this land if the road could be fixed. Please, let’s come to repair agreement before it gets as bad as the Ontario State Parkway got. That took at least a dozen years and a closure (long before the repair was scheduled) to fix.
19
Having driven down using an EZ Pass to pay toll homage to NY, perhaps everyone should detour and use US 20 or NY 5 which has Lake Erie views.
25
Where on I90 is this exactly.? I’m guessing somewhere past Buffalo.
@Pepper
Yes
Heading toward the Niagara region where grapes are grown
1
@Paul Duesterdick
Actually, heading toward the Chautauqua region and the Pennsylvania State line, south of Buffalo. The Niagara region is north of Buffalo. Both do grow grapes and produce wines, however.
4
Sounds to me like the Seneca should be paying for the road repairs.
5
Let me get this straight. The Seneca Nation doesn’t have to pay the state it’s negotiated share of casino revenue, a facility which one presumably accesses via state maintained roads and uses public utility provided power, but the State owes the Seneca Nation 50 years of back tolls on an agreement the Seneca’s signed with the State???
Maybe the state and Seneca meet in the middle and gets this fixed???
8
@JerseyJon
It is Seneca land and Americans forget we are all guests and immigrants on this continent. Only this year did the Navajo Nation get running water throughout its reservation. And if someone is stupid enough to gamble then the Senecas deserve the money.
9
I'm with the Senacas...stick it to the man!
17
Cuomo thinks playing yesteryears politics is going to put him in tomorrow’s cat bird seat. He’ll cruise along on empty until the inevitable dead end, screaming for attention along the way.
6
This is I-90, part of NY's corridor to Pennsylvania and beyond. This is truly cutting off your nose to spite your face. Not using I-90 doesn't really hurt the Senecas but it does hurt businesses up and down the Lake Erie shore and beyond. The issues with the Senecas go back to the early 19th century and NY has never quite effectively coped with them or the Mohawks at Akwesasne. Don't hold a major interstate hostage and victimize a good chunk of western NY in the process.
10
@AnObserver: Why not?
As you observe, the native Americans of New York have been victimized, plundered, lied to, exploited, and killed at every opportunity.
Why should the victims of this oppression not use whatever leverage they have to exact some measure of compensation?
9
I've driven through there several times and I've gotten off the freeway to do some exploring. There's an awful lot of abject poverty in the Seneca Nation. The state should throw them a piece of that toll revenue; it could do a lot of good.
33
I don't know, doesn't sound any worse than the stretch of the Thruway that runs through The Bronx.
20
It's a Federal Highway, and the impasse is at the state level. New York State, where Andrew Cuomo is governor. Donald Trump is not going to go out of his way to help the State of New York, and he is not going to go out of his way to help the owners of casinos he has no financial interests in. If Donald Trump really was the best negotiator ever this would have already been taken care of, even if Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has better things to do than to make sure the Federal highway system is in working order.
14
@Vanessa Hall
it's a federal highway, but de facto control residents with the states for care of the highway using federal funds. Trump, Obama, Reagan, Clinton, none of them could make a difference in this situation.
11
Unfortunately, the Senecas sided with the British during the Revolutionary War which led to the loss of 3.5 million acres of territory pushing them to ten small reservations in Western New York. They were a model for our young democracy (google it), holding council, a matriarchal society, loving, living in harmony, and caring for the earth.
The Treaty of Big Tree was signed in 1797, and so began the Seneca (as well as other Haudenosaunee tribes) version of the "Trail of Tears".
The amount paid by the US government was $100,000 ($1,793,000 in 2018 value) with perpetual annuities and hunting and fishing rights for the Seneca in Western New York.
We should re-negotiate this treaty to include gaming and road maintenance. It is also well past the time to recognize this sovereign nation, the people who are our neighbors, and make reparations. Infrastructure, education, health care,including mental health and substance abuse should be part of the package. Then again, we can't agree to provide this for our own citizens. Sad.
64
NYS would like to repave the highway and pay for it.
Past time for the Senecas to let the work commence.
12
@Luke
The myth of the environmental/ecological indian is just, that, a myth. It was made up by white authors. It's a racist caricature of Native Americans and was never true.
It seems like a "good" thing ("but we're saying that they live in harmony with nature!") but it's just as racist and untrue as saying something like "I was just saying that Jews are good with money, that's why there are so many Jewish accountants."
15
What I cannot figure is why the Federal government built an interstate on someone else's property.
13
@jopar
The highway was built only after receiving full agreement from the tribe. This same tribe now does not wish to honor that agreement and essentially is forcing everyone to drive over an poor highway in a thuggish attempt to extort additional funds from New York State.
16
@20002
Not honoring an agreement; I wonder where they got that idea from?
9
So why exactly York want to discuss transportation issues on the Seneca Reservation? I get the impression that the only road New York wants to repair or improve is its money making thruway.
4
@Richard Wright This section of road IS the NY Thruway -- a toll road.
5
Why oh why can’t New York share some of the toll money collected on that stretch of Thruway that occupies Indian land?
What is so difficult to understand? If New York needs to renegotiate the gaming compact as a condition of toll revenue sharing, well, so be it!
As for the previous commenter who suggested that New York simply build a loop around the reservation, I think you would find that to be prohibitively expensive.
24
If a certain Party Currently In Power had their way, all of our roads would look like this. We've got to get government hands off our infrastructure, doncha know. #winning
9
@The View From Downriver - So, go back to the old days of toll roads to everywhere? That would probably be OK with you, until it was your ox that got gored. Public infrastructure is a public good. It moves goods and services and even makes sure an ambulance can get to your house or the school bus can pick up your kids. In that part of NY keeping roads cleared of snow in the winter is no small task. But those small roads, the places with few people there isn't much profit in those now is there.
13
@AnObserver
I think you didn't recognize the sarcasm.
5
@AnObserver
I think you missed the /sarcasm flag...
3
What is it about the Cuomo family and their total lack of understanding of tribal sovereignty? You would think they were in the Seventh Cavalry the way they treat native American nations in NY.
28
This doesn't make any sense...I-90 is an interstate. It's a federal road. The tolls maybe collected by the state, but the interstate highway system falls under federal manadates and so does any native american reservation.........this should take intervention by the feds and it'll over with quickly!
7
@Jay
Except that interstate roads are maintained by the states, not the federal government. The federal government gives money to maintain them which is mixed in with state money.
That being said, even if it was the federal government who was maintaining the road (which it isn't), the reservation is also a sovereign nation under U.S. law, adding yet another layer of complexity.
27
@Jay: Sorry, reservations in New York and the original thirteen colonies are independent nations, created and recognized before US independence, before the Federal government existed. Therefore their status is different than all the reservations West of the Mississippi. They are not Federal lands. This status has been recognized by the Supreme Court. Marching in to take control would be marching in to sovereign lands and nations. This is the 21st century, Andrew Jackson is not President, we no longer have a policy of genocide, of obliteration of Native Peoples nor a philosophy of Manifest Destiny and colonization. Such is the crux of this article: The Governor of New York State must negotiate with the Seneca People to settlement.
11
This stretch of route 90 is not in Tom Reed’s district. It is in Erie County area. Nor is it in George Borello’s county, Chautauqua, or in the 57 state senate district. Should it be fixed? Yes. Are these politicians helping? No. Better they address the needs of dairy farmer families including the 11 suicides of Western NY dairy farmers this year. Oh wait, that would go against their position that it is “just the market.” Divert and distract the voters! Now there is a policy Tom Reed can agree with. What a disservice he is to the people he represents.
48
@Tracy Mitrano - Sour grapes - you ran against Reed and lost badly.
As to the I-90 issue, bad faith and bad blood on both sides, there is no right or wrong, just a lot of casualties among innocent drivers passing through WNY from the vindictiveness of the Seneca Nation and the state.
5
So, while the state is failing in their responsibility to provide safe pavement in return for the tolls, are they skipping the tolls for this particular section? Of course not. This impasse is saving the state money.
16
There are no Thruway exits on the 3-mile stretch that traverses the reservation, and therefore no tolls collected on that land.
10
What the Seneca can't learn from the same New Yorker's who gave us maximizing profits as a god?
Seems like most of what they want they are entitled to anyway.
9
How are they entitled to $650MM???
5
Time for the Thruway Authority to build a new route around the disputed section of highway and cede the old route back to the Seneca Nation. This should have been done a quarter century ago. That action should resolve the Nation's land claim and bolster NY State's position on unpaid Nation casino revenue.
55
@Jack be Quick It looks like the bypass would be, by my layman's estimate, 20 miles. The Cattaraugus Indian Reservation (Google map that), is bordered by the lake to the West and is at least a 15 mile rectangle.
11
@Jack be Quick Bypassing the current route would make I-90 significantly longer in that area, be very expensive to pull off due to the need to buy land, and of course would be disruptive to the communities through which it was routed.
11
@Jack be Quick
Based on the boundaries of the reservation, the only way that might be economically feasible would be to route it over Lake Erie, either on a long bridge or by building an artificial island on which to run the road.
1