The Long Island-based Shinnecock Indians scored a big legal victory yesterday after a federal judge ruled they’re an official tribe – removing a legal obstacle in the group’s efforts of getting monetary damages in a land dispute and the chance to open a casino in the Hamptons.
Judge Thomas Platt wrote the Shinnecock Indians are a legitimate tribe dating back to when the “first white settlers arrived in the eastern end of Long Island in 1640.”
Platt wrote that the Shinnecock were deemed a tribe in 1792 when “New York State enacted a law confirming that fact and that they remain an Indian tribe today.”
Recognition as a tribe by the feds is a legally necessary prerequisite for casino ownership.
The 1,300-member tribe is asking for monetary damages – estimated at $1.7 billion – on 3,600 acres of “ancestral land” it claims it was cheated out of in 1859.
That land includes the world-famous Shinnecock Hills Golf Club and Southampton College’s sprawling campus.
In a statement, the Shinnecock Indians called on the state and the Town of Southampton to “stop fighting the Nation and work with us to reach a comprehensive, and just solution to our claims. It is time for justice.”
The land targeted in a lawsuit filed by the tribe last June includes exclusive Ram Island, several $1.5 million-plus luxury-home subdivisions and property belonging to the Long Island Rail Road.