Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.

W

hen Honeywell International Incorporated signed over the land which would eventually return to the Onondaga Nation in a historic 1,000 acre landback agreement, the only other party agreeing to the transfer’s terms was New York state.

By the time the Onondaga Nation joined talks about the transfer, its conditions were already set.

The consent decree for the transfer, which Honeywell signed in 2018 in line with the Onondaga Lake Natural Resource Damage Assessment Restoration Plan, was drafted with the intention that New York state would receive the land, but also with a built-in option for a third party, said Joe Heath, legal counsel for the Onondaga Nation.

In June 2022, the Onondaga Nation announced alongside the U.S. Department of the Interior and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation that through an agreement between the state and the federal government, the Nation would receive a land return of over 1,000 acres in the Tully Valley. The Nation’s receipt of the land is one of 18 remediation projects that the state mandated Honeywell Inc. complete as part of the restoration plan.

The plan cites Honeywell and its predecessors’ release of “a suite of contaminants” and large quantities of mercury into Onondaga Lake and its tributaries – including Onondaga Creek in the Tully Valley – from 1881 to 1986.

Heath said he knows the state was intending to approach the Onondaga Nation after the initial transfer. But the gap in between meant the Nation ended up working with a decree that didn’t align with its terms for a land transfer, Heath said.

“We did not have a say in those conditions,” Heath said. “Some people seem to have forgotten that in the intervening time that consent decree imposes certain conditions which we would have tried to resist very vigorously had we been involved in the settlement of the consent decree.”

Under the consent decree, the state reserves the conservation easement – an agreement which allows a unit of government to regulate development and activity on a property – and the recipient of the land agrees not to sue Honeywell for any damage that may result from the ownership.

The Onondaga Nation identifies Honeywell as largely responsible for the environmental degradation of the Tully Valley beginning in 1881 with the incorporation of its predecessor, The Solvay Process Company. Discharge into Onondaga Lake continued until 1990, and by 1992, Allied Signal, another earlier iteration of Honeywell, had signed a consent decree with New York state for a feasibility study.

In 1993, the Tully Valley Landslide piqued U.S. Geological Survey Scientist Emeritus William Kappel’s interest in the combination of human and nature-related effects at play. Kappel, the principal investigator for USGS’s research on the hydrogeology of the Tully Valley, told The Daily Orange that while some changes in things like bedrock and unconsolidated material were human-caused, he’s also found natural causes for problems in the Tully Valley in his research. He said that after the landslide, he found there were three other landslides which occurred thousands of years ago just north of the area.

The easement has meant continued negotiations between the DEC and the Nation over stewardship of the land. Heath said that now, it’s come to a conceptual lack of agreement on whether the consent decree is necessary in the first place.

“There’s a lot of back and forth involved in helping them understand that the Nation can take care of this land and water very well without the state telling it what to do,” Heath said. “That’s a cultural disconnect. It’s simply a lack of respect for certain points in it.”

The Nation is currently in the process of pushing for a more respectful stewardship agreement rather than the conservation easement, which removes agency over the land from the people it was stolen from, he said.

“Part of the problem here is the state still doesn’t accept the wisdom of traditional ecological knowledge,” Heath said. “That’s the concept of, Indigenous people who live on the land, close to the land, close to the water, have a much better basis for preserving and living in a positive relationship to them.”

Jeanne Shenandoah, an Onondaga Nation member who is Eel Clan, has been involved in the Nation’s landback efforts and environmental work for years. She said the Nation went into the land return with optimism, but referred to the way dealings have gone with state officials as typical.

“It’s been the opinion for a long time that we don’t know what we’re doing over here,” Shenandoah said. “It’s been very difficult to deal with them because they do not realize or appreciate our presence and the teaching.”

In a statement to The D.O., the DEC said it is committed to building out knowledge and guidance on implementing Traditional Ecological Knowledge-based approaches through its work, including with the land being transferred to the Onondaga Nation.

The DEC also said in its statement that it created an Office of Indian Nation Affairs to consult with Indigenous Nations that have cultural ties to lands or waters, which aims to include the Nations’ ideas of stewardship to protect the environment in accordance with their traditional teachings and knowledge. DEC remains committed to the transfer of the Tully parcel as part of the Natural Resources Damages process under CERCLA, the statement said.

Stephanie Zaso | Digital Design Director

The Nation is pushing back against the state’s request for an extension for the transfer, Heath said, as well as that it’s working to get the transfer done as soon as possible so it can have autonomy over the land.

The priority now is to bring as many Onondaga Nation citizens there as possible, Heath said. He added that people surveying the land learned more with Nation members present because they recognize details and information about the land that others don’t, like medicinal plants.

“(When the Nation members come) We’re able to talk on a much better informed basis about how we’re going to restore and what needs to be done. ‘What are the challenges, what are the positive things?’ That will go on for quite a while,” Heath said. “It would just be easier if I didn’t have to get permission from Honeywell to do that.”

Ethan Tyo, who is Akwesasne and a member of the Mohawk Nation of the Haudenosaunee, centers his work as a masters student in food studies at SU in reconnecting with Indigenous land to promote food sovereignty. His graduate practicum project, Pete’s Giving Garden, grows foods and plants on the Indigenous land that makes up Syracuse University’s campus. Tyo said he uses his academic focus on food as a way to bridge the gap between people and land.

“We got seeds back to our ancestral lands on the university for the first time in history, and that was our reciprocity,” Tyo said. “That kind of relationship was started in that true land acknowledgement. We have the written one and a verbal one that we give. But for the first time, this was an actual land acknowledgment.”

He said beyond the receipt of the land itself, landback means the opportunity for Indigenous people to take care of the land and sustain themselves after decades of environmental mistreatment. Shenandoah reflected on a time when the sacred creek water that runs through Haudenosaunee territory still flowed quickly and hosted native coldwater fisheries.

Growing up, Tyo said, he always knew he couldn’t have the fish in the creeks or hunt at all. He said he was always told that his people couldn’t grow food on the land because it was toxic.

“It’s stuff like having access to these local medicines, having access to those practices to restore them, and projects like returning these seeds back to their land that’s huge,” Tyo said. “I can’t wait till we start returning our plans and seeds back to the land.”

Heath emphasized that for Indigenous people, after enduring centuries of trauma and theft, the only way reparations can be made is in the form of land. Ultimately, the Onondaga Nation’s 1,000-acre land return, Heath said, is historic and precedent-setting.

For Tyo, the change in stewardship means a shift toward collective action and willingness to put Indigenous voices at the forefront of the conversation when it comes to land and how it’s managed.

“A lot of people are trying to figure out, ‘well, what is sustainability?’” Tyo said. “Sustainability isn’t switching out your plastic to glass. It’s not switching out the food that you eat or getting organic stuff. It’s creating a system and creating that monumental change that allows future generations to build from.”

Published on February 23, 2023 at 1:46 am

Contact Jana: jlseal@syr.edu | @JanaLoSeal