IRVING, N.Y. (AP) – Seneca Indian Richard Nephew considers
himself a product of the reservation land where his grandfather
hunted deer out his back door and grew corn and beans before New
York paved over part of it in the 1950s.

“I grew up eating those vegetables and eating the deer meat that
my grandfather gathered there,” Nephew said Thursday on the
reservation at the western edge of New York, where his family still
lives.

He remembers his grandfather’s sorrow and anger over losing the
land when the New York State Thruway came through, he said,
feelings he took to his grave.

The family may have gotten a small payment when the Seneca
Nation agreed to accept $75,000 to let Interstate 90 onto its land,
Nephew said. But the amount _ he does not know what it was _ could
not make up for his grandfather’s loss, he said.

“He always felt that we had a bad deal,” said Nephew, now a
Seneca tribal councilor.

He and today’s other leaders of the 8,000-member tribe have
lately come to feel the same way, and over the weekend took a
surprising step that they said would begin to right a decades-old
wrong.

With the Senecas and New York’s new governor already at odds
over the state’s plans to collect sales tax on cigarettes sold by
reservation retailers to non-Indian customers, the Tribal Council
rescinded the 1954 agreement that authorized the Thruway right of
way across 300 acres of their Cattaraugus reservation.

The move effectively turned the state and a three-mile stretch
of thoroughfare into trespassers on Seneca land.

The Indian nation wants to negotiate with the state for
compensation, maybe a yearly payment, for use of the land a few
miles in from the Lake Erie shore. And they are looking at other
roads and rights of way for which they may have been shortchanged,
Seneca President Maurice John said.

“This is only the beginning,” John said Thursday after sending a
letter to Gov. Eliot Spitzer informing him of the council’s
action.

Although John said the move was unrelated to the escalating
cigarette tax dispute, Buffalo-area Assemblyman Sam Hoyt suggested
it was “not at all coincidence.”

“It’s an attempt by the Seneca Nation to try to leverage the
Thruway issue to get a more favorable outcome with regard to their
negotiations with Gov. Spitzer on the tobacco tax issue,” Hoyt
said. “I don’t fault them. In fact, it’s pretty creative.”

Spitzer’s predecessor, George Pataki, backed off collecting
reservation sales taxes after the Senecas burned tires and shut
down part of the Thruway in clashes with state police when the
issue was raised in 1997. The Senecas say federal treaties dating
to the 1700s shield them from state taxation.

This time around, Seneca leaders said, they want a diplomatic
resolution.

“The nation has no intention of shutting down the Thruway,” said
Seneca Treasurer Kevin Seneca, who said talks with Spitzer are
planned.

Spitzer spokeswoman Christine Pritchard on Thursday confirmed
the talks but did not comment further.

“This is not an issue that is going to escalate into violence.
We do not support that,” John said.

But several speakers at a Seneca news conference were clearly
frustrated by what they see as the state’s infringement on their
lives and businesses.

“It’s an ongoing battle with the white man and we will never
stop,” said Linda Doxtator, a tribal councilor.

“Years ago, you killed our people, you killed our children, our
elderly, our women,” another council member said. “We’re still
here. … Now you got to deal with us. We’re not backing down.”

In rescinding the Thruway right of way, the Tribal Council said
the U.S. government never gave the required approvals. Tribal
leaders cited a 1999 opinion by U.S. District Magistrate Carol
Heckman which said that the Secretary of the Interior had not
complied with laws governing rights of way on Indian lands. The
decision was part of a Seneca land claim case involving Grand
Island, north of Buffalo, which the Senecas lost.

“They’re turning up the heat, they’re upping the ante. It should
be recognized for what it is,” said Hoyt, a critic of the Senecas’
plans to build a casino in Buffalo. The nation operates two other
western New York casinos, in Niagara Falls and Salamanca.

John said he and Spitzer had already agreed to meet on the
cigarette tax issue when the council’s Thruway vote was taken
Saturday. He said a date for his meeting with Spitzer had not yet
been set.