The fact of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ granting – after three decades – of federal status to the 1,300 members of the Shinnecock Nation was quickly overshadowed by speculation about the tribe’s casino intentions. Here‘s how Danny Hakim of the New York Times puts it:

With federal recognition, the tribe can build a casino on its 800-acre reservation in Southampton, N.Y., but the tribe, the state and local officials would prefer to find another location, in New York City or its suburbs, for the casino. That would mean plunging into a thicket of complex federal law, court rulings and political considerations.

Still, there are powerful motivations to help the tribe locate its casino anywhere but the Hamptons, where traffic is already choked by tourists in the summer. The state has been negotiating with the tribe in anticipation of the recognition.

The recognition becomes official after 30 days for public comment. The new status will let the tribe build a Class II casino with slots on its own land, but it would rather build a Class III casino with both slots and table games, elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Jed Morey of the Long Island Press takes New York state Sen. Craig Johnson to task, here, for his report recommending that the state revoke recognition of the should revoke its recognition of the Unkechaug Tribe. Except that Johnson called the tribe Poospatuck.

Morehy writes:

First of all, the tribe is Unkechaug. The reservation is Poospatuck. Second, not only is there no legal precedent for this ridiculous recommendation, there have been numerous opinions written by New York State itself declaring this idea (not the first attempt at this) unconstitutional.

This recommendation can only be classified in the following categories:

A) Stupid
B) Ignorant
C) Racist
D) All of the above

Just for the record, Morey says the correct answer is “D.”

Gwen Florio

Do these words mean anything to you? Cws. cotokr.

Unfortunately, the words — meaning, respectively, “father” and “to stand” — aren’t recognizable to present-day members of the Unkechaug Tribe, either. That’s because neither the language of the Unkechaug nor the Shinnecock, both of whom live on Long Island, has been spoken in more than two centuries.

Now Stony Brook university on Long Island is helping the tribes to revive their lost languages, according to this story by Patricia Cohen in today’s New York Times.

They’re relying on sources as diverse as a vocabulary list drawn up by Thomas Jefferson when he visited New York in 1731 and interviewed three elderly women — the source of the two words above. The idea is to help tribal members become proficient in their own languages:

Chief Harry Wallace, the elected leader of the Unkechaug Nation, said that for tribal members, knowing the language is an integral part of understanding their own culture, past and present.

“When our children study their own language and culture, they perform better academically,” he said. “They have a core foundation to rely on.”

The Long Island effort is part of a wave of language reclamation projects undertaken by American Indians in recent years. For many tribes language is a cultural glue that holds a community together, linking generations and preserving a heritage and values. Bruce Cole, the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which sponsors language preservation programs, has called language “the DNA of a culture.”

At the University of California, Berkeley, the Breath of Life program has seen people whose heritage includes 25 languages in its workshops. The people who created that program are looking to start a similar one in Washington, D.C. And at the Myaamia Project that’s a joint effort between the Miami Tribe and Miami University in Ohio, director Daryl Baldwin has helped his children become fluent.

That’s really important. As Cohen reports:

Of the more than 300 indigenous languages spoken in the United States, only 175 remain, according to the Indigenous Language Institute. This nonprofit group estimates that without restoration efforts, no more than 20 will still be spoken in 2050.

Gwen Florio

We don’t much care for the “totem pole” headline on this story in the Long Island Press, nor the accompanying illustration – but the story itself is a useful examination of the challenges facing some tribes in New York state. (For an explanation of the headline and illustration, please click on the comments section below.)

It looks at the Unkechaug tribe on the Poospatuck Reservation on Long Island, which derives a large part of its income from cigarette sales.

Harry Wallace serves as chief of the Unkechaug Nation, and also owns the Poospatuck Smoke Shop. Because the reservation is a sovereign nation, Wallace doesn’t have to charge tax on the cigarettes he sells – to other Native Americans. Traditionally, though, tribal smoke shops haven’t charged taxes to anyone, and just as traditionally, the state of New York has declined to demand those taxes.

Jed Morey’s story tells how that’s changed:

With the Great Recession as the backdrop to this unfolding drama, the stage is set for a David versus Goliath battle between Indian Country, the US government and Big Tobacco.

The price disparity between cigarettes available from reservations and traditional American-based retailers is at an all-time high. A carton of Marlboro cigarettes, the most popular brand in America, will run the consumer as much as $95 in New York City (NYC), where Mayor Michael Bloomberg has initiated an all-out war on smoking. The same carton costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $43 at a Native American-owned smoke shop on reservation land.

Morey’s story further points out that income from cigarette sales on the reservation has boosted the tribe’s overall economic standing. New York’s gain in taxes would almost certainly be the tribe’s loss.

Gwen Florio

A decision yesterday by a New York court means that people who aren’t members of the Unkechaug Tribe can’t buy tax-free cigarettes in four stores on the Poospatuck reservation on Long Island.

There are about 14 cigarette stores on the small reservation. But the court order was limited to just the group of shops sued by the city of New York City, according to this Newsday story. The story reports that other smoke shops not included in the lawsuit were still in business, cars filling the narrow streets as they do most days when Long Islanders travel to Mastic to buy tax-free cigarettes.

Unkechaug Chief Harry Wallace says he expected the court order would be overturned when the appeal is heard early October.

New York law bans the sale of tax-free cigarettes to state residents who are not members of an Indian tribe. But lawyers for several tribes have argued for decades they are independent nations recognized by numerous treaties, and that Indian shops cannot be made to enforce it, the story by Mitchell Freedman says.

New York, suffering the financial effects of the recession, decided this year to go after tax revenues from tribal cigarette sales.

The tribe’s objections to that move were spelled out on a banner hanging from one Poospatuck smoke shop yesterday: “Sovereignty yes, sales tax no.”

Gwen Florio