Over 1,000 acres of land in Central New York’s Tully Valley has been transferred to the Onondaga Nation.
Attorney General Letitia James, Governor Kathy Hochul, US Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams, and Onondaga Nation Tadodaho Sidney Hill announced on Wednesday that 1,000 acres of Onondaga ancestral homelands have been transferred to the nation.
“Today is a historic day for New York and for the Onondaga Nation,” said Attorney General James. “For too long, Indigenous communities have been forced from their ancestral homelands, and I am proud that we can begin to right some of those wrongs by returning this resource-rich land to its rightful caretakers. Thank you to Governor Hochul, the U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and DEC for their partnership in shepherding the return of this land to the Onondaga Nation.”
The transfer is part of the Onondaga Lake Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration program settlement with Honeywell International Inc. In 2022, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the NY Department of Environmental Conservation signed a resolution in 2022 directing Honeywell to transfer the land to the Onondaga Nation to restore and act as stewards of the property.
“Onondaga Creek’s headwaters hold profound significance for the Onondaga Nation, and I am thrilled New York State and the U.S. Department of the Interior succeeded in taking an innovative path to address damages from legacy contamination and return a beautiful ecological resource to the Nation’s stewardship,” said Governor Hochul. “Establishing this preserve is a remarkable collaboration to restore access to ancestral lands and waters and serves as a historic milestone in New York State’s ongoing recognition of the cultural and environmental heritage of Indigenous Peoples.”
The land consists of over 45 acres of wetland and floodplains and approximately 980 acres of forest and successful fields.
“The headwaters of Onondaga Creek in the Tully Valley are part of the system of waterways leading into Onondaga Lake that have sustained our Nation for millennia, and we are grateful that the Department of the Interior and New York State have worked with us to return to our stewardship the first 1,000 acres of the 2.5 million acres of treaty-guaranteed land taken from us over the centuries,” said Onondaga Tadodaho Sidney Hill. “This is a small but important step for us, and for the Indigenous land back movement across the United States.”
The nation plans to restore and protect the property in accordance with Onondaga cultural, spiritual, and educational practices, and science.
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