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More than 1,000 acres of land in the Tully Valley will be returned to the Onondaga Nation as part of an agreement between New York state and the federal government, the Onondaga Nation announced in a statement Friday.

The agreement is part of the Onondaga Lake Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Program, a plan to restore and rehabilitate natural resources damaged by the release of hazardous substances, according to the statement.

“The Nation hopes that this cooperative, government-to-government effort will be another step in healing between themselves and all others who live in this region which has been the homeland of the Onondaga Nation since the dawn of time,” said Chief Tadodaho Sidney Hill of the Onondaga Nation in a press release from the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation along with the federal Fish and Wildlife Service directed Honeywell Inc. to transfer the title of the land to the Onondaga Nation in a 2018 settlement, Gov. Kathy Hochul wrote in a press release.

The land has been damaged by decades of mining by Honeywell Inc., the Onondaga Nation wrote in their statement.

“Numerous scientific studies have established that Indigenous land management practices protect biodiversity and healthy forests, preserve clean soils and waters, and better prepare communities for climate resiliency and adaptation,” the Onondaga Nation wrote.

The settlement also requires Honeywell to implement 17 other restoration projects. The company will also pay more than $5 million toward additional restoration of the Onondaga Lake Watershed, according to the USDOI’s release.

The Onondaga Nation will work with the state and federal government to develop a Restoration Management Plan, the USDOI continued.

The returned land is part of approximately 2.5 million acres of Onondaga Nation land taken by New York state between 1788 and 1822, according to a petition filed by the Onondaga Nation and the Haudenosaunee in 2014.

“The Onondaga people have a unique spiritual, cultural and historic relationship with the land, which is embodied in the Gaya•neñ•hsä•’gó•nah – the Great Law of Peace,” said Joe Heath, who served as legal counsel to the Onondaga Nation, in the Onondaga Nation’s statement. “This relationship goes far beyond U.S. federal and state legal concepts of ownership, possession, or legal rights. The people are relations with the land, and consider themselves the land’s caretakers.”

The Onondaga Nation will use the land — which includes the headwaters of the Onondaga Creek as well as wetland, floodplains, forest and successional fields — to create a Wildlife and Brook Trout Sanctuary, according to Hochul’s release.

“The Nation has a vision for their ancestral lands, rooted in the quality and purity of water and the respectful tending of land, wildlife, and other non-human relatives,” the Onondaga Nation’s statement read. “The return of the Tully property to Nation stewardship is a good initial action in this long journey.”

Published on July 1, 2022 at 9:24 pm

Contact Jana: jlseal@syr.edu | @JanaLoSeal