Southampton sues Interior Department over Shinnecock land designation

The Town of Southampton has filed suit against the U.S. Department of the Interior and a Bureau of Indian Affairs official, challenging the process that led them to classify the Shinnecock Indian Nation’s Westwoods property as specially restricted, aboriginal land.

The suit is the latest salvo in an escalating legal war between the town and the Shinnecocks over a gas station/travel plaza on its long-held 84-acre parcel in Hampton Bays. The tribe simultaneously is fighting legal challenges by New York State over its electronic billboards on the same parcel on Sunrise Highway in Hampton Bays.

The latest suit was filed by the town Monday in federal district court in the District of Columbia against the Department of the Interior and Scott Davis, assistant secretary for Indian Affairs.

It challenges the department’s written determination in December that classified Westwoods as federally protected "restricted-fee" land, calling the finding "arbitrary, capricious and otherwise unlawful." Southampton’s lawyers argued the parcel is "within the town’s jurisdiction."

Southampton and New York State had previously raised challenges with the federal agency, but those challenges were rejected, Newsday has reported.

The town argues the Westwoods property was "acquired" by the Shinnecock nation 200 years ago, "after the nation’s aboriginal title was extinguished by a series of conveyances," a characterization that has been strongly challenged by the nation, historians and legal scholars.

Southampton Town has "never had jurisdiction over this land and has always recognized it as our sovereign territory, until we decided to develop it for our people," said Shinnecock Nation vice chairman Lance Gumbs. The tribe is not named as a defendant in the suit. "The bottom line is the town will stop at nothing to deprive the nation of its sovereignty and our rights to our economic development to better the lives of the people of the nation."

Gumbs said the suit is riddled with "inaccuracies and flat-out lies" and charged the town with attempting to "destroy the Shinnecock Nation and take what little bit of land we do have left."

An attorney for the town didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. A Department of the Interior spokeswoman said the agency doesn't comment on litigation.

The town first filed suit against the nation in December seeking to stop construction of the travel plaza, arguing it violated town codes and was under the town’s jurisdiction. Residents who live around it have complained about the scope of the project and its construction, and its impacts on their properties.

The town earlier this year won a state-court pause on construction that remains in effect, but the Shinnecock Nation has filed an appeal of that decision and in June separately sued Southampton in federal court. The latter suit challenged the town’s attempt to block the tribe’s use of Westwoods for parking during a music festival, but also shifted the larger issue of tribal sovereignty over Westwoods to the federal court.

The town’s suit this week against the federal government notes it "does not challenge" the tribe’s ownership of Westwoods, but rather "challenges the administrative process by which the Department changed Westwoods’ status."

The town suit argues that change to federally restricted status, "according to the [Shinnecock] Nation, has the dual effects of stripping the town’s long-settled jurisdiction and installing the [Shinnecock] Nation as the sole nonfederal sovereign government over the Westwoods parcel."

The town notes that the federal determination was the result of the Shinnecock Nation asking the federal agency "to conduct an ‘investigation’ three years ago" concerning its ownership of Westwoods, resulting in a determination that "removes any basis for the town’s attempt to exert regulatory authority over Westwoods."

The determination came in the form of a single-page memo dated Dec. 24 from the Department of the Interior, directing the BIA to record the Westwoods title as restricted fee in the government’s Trust Asset and Accounting Management System.

The tribe’s assertion that Westwoods is Indian property "destroyed" the town’s regulatory jurisdiction over the parcel, the suit alleged. But the tribe has maintained it has had sovereign status all along.

The Shinnecock Nation has repeatedly taken issue with the town’s claim of jurisdiction over Westwoods, and challenged state courts’ authority to rule on such cases. The issue has become so inflamed that the nation this summer demanded the town return the tribe’s official seal which had hung in its main town meeting room since 2008.

"It’s become abundantly clear that we are not respected as a government, as a nation, and we no longer want to deal with the hypocrisy," Gumbs said at a town meeting. The seal was returned to the nation several weeks later. 

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.