Oneida tribe

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For other uses, see Oneida.

The Oneida (Onyota'a:ka or Onayotekaono, meaning the People of the Upright Stone) are a Native American/First Nations people and comprise one of the five founding nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.

The Iroquois call themselves Haudenosaunee ("The people of the longhouses") in reference to their communal lifestyle and the construction of their dwellings.

Originally the Oneida inhabited the area that later became central New York, particularly around Oneida Lake and Oneida County. They broke with the other nations of the Haudenosaunee to side with the United States in the Revolutionary War, in particular aiding George Washington at Valley Forge in 1777. After the war they were displaced by retaliatory and other raids. In 1794 they, along with other Haudenosaunee nations, signed the Treaty of Canandaigua with the United States. They were granted 6 million acres (24,000 km²) of lands, primarily in New York; this was effectively the first Indian reservation in the United States. Subsequent treaties and actions by the State of New York drastically reduced this to 32 acres (0.1 km²). In the 1830s many of the Oneida relocated into Canada and Wisconsin, due to the rising tide of Indian Removal.

In 1974 and 1985 the US Supreme Court ruled that the treaties between the State of New York and the Oneida that had deprived them of these lands were illegal. Litigation in these matters is ongoing.

More recent litigation has formalized the split between the Oneida tribe that stayed in New York and the Oneida tribe that left to live in Wisconsin. These litigations focused around the Wisconsin Oneida tribe's desire to reacquire lands in their ancestral homelands as a part of the settlement of the aforementioned litigation. An additional part of that proposed settlement is land for a casino of their own in New York, in lieu of a large cash settlement; these proposals are also a part of the ongoing litigation.

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Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin

The Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin is a sovereign nation, enjoying the same tribal sovereignty as all recognized Indian tribes in the United States. Theirs is a limited sovereignty--the tribes are recognized as "domestic dependent nations" within the United States--but to the degree permitted by that sovereignty, they are an independent nation outside of state law. The tribe's sovereignty means the state of Wisconsin is limited in the extent to which it can intervene legally in tribal matters.

With a series of casinos near Green Bay, Wisconsin, the Oneida tribe has, in a manner of only a few decades, gone from being a destitute people to enjoying a fair amount of social prosperity by investing a large portion of their profits back into their community. The means by which the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin betters its community has raised controversy, as has Indian gaming throughout the country.

The new wealth generated by the tribe's gaming and other enterprises has enabled the tribe to provide many benefits for the members on the tribal rolls. As with all other tribes, the Oneidas themselves define who qualifies to be on those rolls. The Oneidas' requirements are fairly liberal, based entirely blood quantum: members are those with at least 1/4 Oneida blood. There is no additional requirement of matrilinearity, as with the New York Oneidas and other tribes.

Many citizens of Green Bay, and many members of the Oneida tribe itself, have voiced concerns about the long-term detrimental effects a casino could have on the social structure and economy of Green Bay and within the tribe itself.

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