By Staff Reporter December 16, 2025
SYRACUSE, N.Y.—In a courtroom drama that laid bare the bitter fissures within one of New York’s smallest Native American nations, a federal jury on Thursday handed the Cayuga Nation a backhanded victory in its long-running racketeering lawsuit against two members of a rival political faction.
The verdict—finding defendants Dustin Parker and Nora Weber liable under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act for operating an unauthorized smokeshop—affirmed the tribe’s sovereign authority over its lands. But in a stinging rebuke to the suit’s architect, tribal leader Clint Halftown, the panel awarded the defendants nearly $1.2 million in damages for what it deemed an overzealous police raid, effectively turning the tables on the plaintiffs.
The three-day trial in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, before Judge Brenda K. Sannes, capped a legal odyssey that began in February 2022 and has cost the Cayuga Nation hundreds of thousands in legal fees. At its core, the case wasn’t just about untaxed cigarettes and illicit cannabis; it was the latest skirmish in a decade-plus civil war between Mr. Halftown’s federally recognized council and the traditionalists of the sovereign Haudenosaunee Confederacy, led by the Confederacy’s Grand Council comprised of hereditary chiefs and clan mothers, who view him as a usurper bent on commercializing sacred territory.
“This isn’t justice—it’s a shakedown dressed up as sovereignty,” said Mr. Parker, a 48-year-old Cayuga citizen and self-described traditionalist, speaking to reporters outside the Seneca Falls courthouse. Mr. Parker, who ran the Pipekeepers smokeshop on tribal land in Cayuga County, accused Mr. Halftown’s enforcers of “stormtrooper tactics” during a New Year’s Eve 2021 raid that shuttered his business and seized $800,000 in inventory.
The jury agreed, finding the seizure excessive and awarding compensatory damages that dwarfed the Nation’s claims for lost revenue.
Mr. Halftown, the Nation’s federal representative since 2004, struck a defiant tone in a statement released Friday.
“The jury’s finding of RICO liability validates our fight against those who flout our laws for personal gain,” Halftown said. “We’ll appeal the damages—our police acted to protect the Nation’s interests, not to harass.” A spokesman for the Halftown council declined further comment, citing ongoing post-trial motions.
The Cayuga Nation, with fewer than 500 enrolled members scattered across upstate New York, has been riven by infighting since Mr. Halftown’s rise. Appointed as interim leader after the death of a clan chief, he consolidated power through alliances with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and a 2016 referendum that traditionalists dismissed as rigged.
Critics, including Mr. Parker and Ms. Weber—both members of the Bear Clan—allege Mr. Halftown has weaponized tribal law to enrich allies, including through a network of convenience stores and cannabis outlets that generate millions in tax-free revenue.
The lawsuit accused the pair of running a “criminal enterprise” by selling unstamped cigarettes and unlicensed marijuana products without council approval, siphoning profits from Nation-sanctioned businesses. Prosecutors pointed to emails and ledgers showing Pipekeepers grossed over $2 million in 2021, much of it from non-Native customers looking to avoid New York State’s hefty sin taxes.
But the defense painted a darker portrait of Mr. Halftown’s regime.
Lawyers for Mr. Parker and Ms. Weber, including veteran Indian law specialist Reid Peyton Chambers, argued the suit was retaliation for the defendants’ support of a rival council that claims legitimacy under traditional clan protocols. They introduced evidence of prior clashes, including a 2023 appellate ruling that curtailed Mr. Halftown’s tribal court powers and a Bureau of Indian Affairs memo questioning his eviction orders against dissidents.
The jury’s split decision hinged on a pretrial ruling that undercut the Nation’s strongest hand. On Dec. 2, Judge Sannes barred the tribe from seeking lost profits tied to cannabis sales, citing marijuana’s status as a Schedule I controlled substance under federal law.
“RICO doesn’t reward violations of the Controlled Substances Act,” the judge wrote in a 15-page opinion, effectively slashing the plaintiffs’ potential recovery by an estimated $750,000. Legal experts say the decision could ripple through tribal gaming and cannabis disputes nationwide, where sovereign immunity often clashes with federal prohibitions.
Jurors deliberated for six hours before returning their verdict late Thursday. They found Mr. Parker and Ms. Weber liable on all RICO counts, including predicate acts of mail fraud and extortion. But on the counterclaim—for unlawful seizure under the Fourth Amendment and tribal tort law—the panel sided decisively with the defendants, awarding $850,000 for lost inventory and business interruption, plus $350,000 in punitive damages against the Nation’s police chief.
The award, which includes interest, could force the tribe to liquidate assets or seek federal reimbursement, sources familiar with the matter said.
“This verdict exposes the fragility of Mr. Halftown’s grip,” said Matthew L.M. Fletcher, a University of Michigan law professor and director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center. “Winning on liability is hollow when your own heavy-handedness bites back. It raises questions about whether his council can sustain these wars without alienating members or inviting more federal scrutiny.”
The Cayuga conflict traces roots to the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua, which ceded vast Haudenosaunee lands but preserved tribal self-governance. Today, with reservation holdings limited to six square miles near Auburn, N.Y., economic survival depends on ventures like the Nation’s Lakeside Trading chain.
Traditionalists, who reject Mr. Halftown’s “corporate” model, have staged protests, filed parallel suits in state court, and even sought intervention from the United Nations’ indigenous rights body.
Broader implications loom for tribal sovereignty. The RICO verdict reinforces a tribe’s right to police internal commerce, even against fellow members—a tool increasingly used in disputes over gaming and vice industries. Yet the damages award underscores limits: Federal courts, wary of overreach, have dismissed similar claims when enforcement veers into “self-help vigilantism.”
As appeals loom—expected to hit the Second Circuit by spring—the Halftown faction faces mounting pressure. A separate suit over emergency dispatch access, filed in September, alleges anti-Native bias by local counties, while traditionalists gear up to remove Halftown through clan-based deliberations that could upend the status quo.
For now, the Pipekeepers verdict serves as a cautionary tale: In the shadow of federal dockets, even sovereigns must tread carefully.
Cayuga Nation members living in Ontario demand recognition and rights to thier aboriginal homeland
For the roughly 2,000 Cayugas living in exile at the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve in Ontario, the recent courtroom battles in Syracuse serve as a stark reminder of lands lost and rights deferred. Displaced during the American Revolution for their allegiance to the British Crown, these “Grand River Cayuga” view the Finger Lakes territory not merely as a historical footnote, but as an inalienable birthright shared equally with their approximately 500 kin living in Upstate New York.
The story traces to 1779, when Gen. George Washington‘s Sullivan Expedition razed over 40 Cayuga villages, scorching fields and forcing survivors northward and westward into Canada. In gratitude for their wartime service, the British granted the Haudenosaunee exiles the Haldimand Tract along the Grand River in 1784, based on the terms of the Haldimand Treaty, sprawling 950,000 acres intended as recompense for New York homelands ceded by the Crown without consent in the Treaty of Paris.
“Our aboriginal homeland in New York belongs to all Cayuga, not just the 500 enrolled there. It’s time for repatriation—not as invaders, but as family reclaiming what’s ours,” a traditionalist living at Grand River explains.
These calls have gained fresh urgency amid a resurgent “land back” movement sweeping Indigenous North America. Inspired by victories like the Onondaga Nation’s 2024 reclamation of 1,000 acres near Syracuse through a Superfund settlement, Grand River advocates are pressing for cross-border recognition of Cayuga sovereignty.
Traditional chiefs argue that the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua, which affirmed U.S. recognition of Iroquois lands, extends to exiled members and that Cayugas now located on both sides of the border are equal parties to it.
“The treaty doesn’t expire at the border,” the petition states. “It binds the U.S. to protect our collective title, including the right of return for those Washington drove out.”
For Clint Halftown’s faction, the specter of Canadian claims complicates an already thorny sovereignty landscape.
The New York Nation’s 2014 land-claims settlement with the state, which netted $81.5 million but dismissed broader aboriginal title arguments, explicitly applied only to enrolled members. Integrating Grand River Cayuga could swell the rolls overnight, diluting political power held by particular families and straining scant reservation resources.
“We’re fighting to hold our ground here, not invite a flood from the north,” a Halftown aide confided, citing the BIA’s affirmation of his Council’s recognition status.
As federal courts mull post-trial appeals, Haudenosaunee officials are holding closed-door talks, sources say, with Cayuga Nation repatriation and reunification on the agenda.
Whether this leads to dual recognition and multi-national land trusts remains unclear. But in the long shadow of revolution, the exiled Cayugas’ demand resonates: True sovereignty, they insist, can’t be litigated in silos—it must span the very borders drawn to divide them.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that attorney Joe Heath was representing Mr. Halftown, and wrongly attributed a quote to him. That reporting was incorrect.
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