By Ruth Callahan
ALBANY — For the eighth time, the New York Legislature has voted to restore state recognition to the Montaukett Indian Nation of eastern Long Island. For the eighth time, the decision sits with a governor. And for the Montauketts, the question is whether Buffalo-born Gov. Kathy Hochul will finally undo a 1910 court ruling that declared a living people “extinct.”
The bill, sponsored in the Assembly by Assemblyman Tommy John Schiavoni, whose district includes Southampton, passed that chamber unanimously in March, The East Hampton Star reported, and has since cleared the Senate. “Once more the bill is headed to Hochul, who is up for reelection in November,” Rolling Stone reported Thursday in a lengthy feature on the tribe’s fight.
Previous bills have been vetoed seven times — three times by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and four times by Ms. Hochul.
A ruling built on ‘blood’
The Montauketts’ ancestral homeland spans the South Fork of Long Island from East Hampton to Montauk Point. Developer Arthur Benson began buying up vast tracts of it to create a summer resort, bypassing tribal consent, according to Rolling Stone’s account.
In the 1910 case Pharaoh v. Benson, with Montaukett leaders and 75 tribal members in the courtroom, state Supreme Court Justice Abel Blackmar ruled that because the Montauketts had intermarried, their blood had “become so mixed that in many of them Indian traits were obliterated.” He declared the tribe extinct and conferred its remaining lands to Benson.
Just four years earlier, a 1906 memorandum from the acting commissioner of Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior had acknowledged the Montauketts as “an existing Indian tribe.” The department continued to count the Montaukett population until 1930.
“It’s one of the most racist court decisions in the history of New York State jurisprudence,” former Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who carried the recognition bill for years, told Rolling Stone. “There’s a wrong that needs to be corrected, and we shouldn’t be making them go back to square one to prove something that we already know is true — we should just be correcting that wrong.”
Vetoes, and unanswered questions
The pattern has become painfully familiar to the tribe. The bill passes with overwhelming bipartisan support. Then, near the year-end holidays, the veto arrives — timing that all but ensures lawmakers will not be in session to override it. Mr. Thiele said the practice “compounds the original sin.”
Ms. Hochul announced her November 2023 veto during Native American Heritage Month. In a subsequent veto statement, she wrote that she was “constrained” to reject the bill because of “still outstanding questions and issues concerning the Montauketts’ eligibility for recognition according to traditional criteria.”
The tribe says it has never been told what those questions are. “I still don’t have a clue what those issues are,” said Sandi Brewster-walker, the nation’s executive director. “They never communicated them.” Rolling Stone reported that Ms. Hochul’s office at one point said it could not find thousands of pages of historical records the tribe had submitted from 2017 to 2025, including answers to a 54-question review the state had requested, and asked her to resubmit.
The governor’s office says it is acting carefully. “Gov. Hochul is committed to supporting and strengthening relationships with Indigenous peoples and Nations across New York State,” spokesman Ken Lovett told Rolling Stone, adding that the governor “takes seriously the responsibility of determining whether to recognize a Native American tribe, which would be a sovereign nation. That includes ensuring any claims of tribal leadership can be substantiated.”
No land claims — just a name
The Montauketts have been explicit that recognition is not a path to taking anyone’s home. “I don’t want to throw anybody out of their houses, and I’m not looking for any big pieces of land,” Chief Robert Pharaoh told Rolling Stone. “The only thing I want is a piece of property big enough that I can put a museum or cultural research center on, and maybe put up a natural Indian village outside. That’s all.”
Local government has already moved. In November 2024, Ms. Brewster-walker and Chief Pharaoh accepted a proclamation from East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez naming November Native American History Month, The Star reported.
“I grew up with Montauketts,” Mr. Schiavoni said. “To me, it’s just self-evident that this should happen.” After the Assembly vote, he said he was “grateful to my colleagues for again unanimously voting to pass this measure in the People’s House.”
Neighboring nations stand with them. “Persistence overcomes resistance every time. We’ve been here for 400 years, and we’re not going anywhere. We are forever,” said Lance Gumbs, vice chairman of the Shinnecock Nation’s Council of Trustees.
Why it matters upstate
Western New York is home to Haudenosaunee nations whose sovereignty New York has long acknowledged, including the Seneca Nation and the Tonawanda Seneca Nation. The Montaukett case asks a different question: whether the state will keep honoring a judgment, issued in an era steeped in eugenic ideas about “mixed” blood, that erased a nation by decree.
It is a question with a straightforward answer. The Legislature has given it eight times, unanimously or nearly so. The Montauketts have answered the state’s questionnaires, submitted their records and disclaimed land claims. If the governor’s office still has specific concerns, it should put them in writing to the tribe now — before the bill reaches her desk — so they can be answered on the record rather than in another holiday-season veto.
“Every time we get vetoed, we get stronger,” Ms. Brewster-walker said. “This is a matter of justice, of right and wrong, and we’re not going to be erased.”
Rolling Stone noted that its reporting was supported by a grant from IllumiNative.
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