Country
St. Regis Reservation
Tribal Council
Beverly Kiohawiton Cook (2022)
Michael Karoniatens Conners (2023)
Ronald LaFrance Jr. (2024)
Tribal court, court of appeals, peacemaker court[1]
St. Regis Mohawk Reservation[2] (French: Réserve Mohawk Saint-Régis; Mohawk: Ahkwesáhsne) is a Mohawk Indian reservation of the federally recognized tribe the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe, located in Franklin County, New York, United States. It is also known by its Mohawk name, Akwesasne. The population was 3,288 at the 2010 census.[3] The reservation is adjacent to the Akwesasne reserve in Ontario (Akwesasne 59) and Quebec (Akwesasne 15) across the St. Lawrence River. The Mohawk consider the entire community to be one unit and have the right to travel freely across the international border.
Location[edit]
The reservation contains the community of St. Regis and borders the community of Hogansburg in the Town of Bombay.[4] The Mohawk people dispute the Town of Bombay's claim to jurisdiction within the "Bombay Triangle", as these lands are part of the 1796 Treaty with the United States and have never been diminished by the US Congress.
Under the terms of the Jay Treaty (1794), the Mohawk people may pass freely across the Canada–United States border. The two parts of the reservation are separated by the St. Lawrence River and the 45th parallel.
The Mohawk are one of the original Five Nations of the Iroquois League, historically based south of the Great Lakes and in present-day New York and Pennsylvania. This nation was located primarily in the Mohawk Valley and were known as the "Keepers of the Eastern Door", prepared to defend the Iroquoian territory against other tribes located to the east of the Hudson River.
The St. Regis Reservation, and the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribal government, adopted gambling in the 1980s. It has generated deep controversy. Broadly speaking, the elected chiefs and the Mohawk Warrior Society have supported gambling, while some traditional leaders have opposed it. Today, the reservation is home to the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino, which has generated revenues for tribal welfare.
The elected tribal governments on the New York and Canadian sides and the traditional chiefs of Akwesasne often work together as a "Tri-Council" concerning areas of shared interest, for example to negotiate land claims settlements with their respective national governments.
The Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe and the Mohawk people view the reservation as a sovereign nation. Under US treaty law, the federal government has jurisdiction over certain crimes on the reservation, but the Mohawk have their own police force for other cases.
Controversies[edit]
Drug and human smuggling[edit]
Because of the latitude of this area, rivers freeze in winter, providing shortcuts for the Mohawk crossing the international border. These conditions also make the border more porous for smugglers of many items, including liquor, cigarettes, drugs, and people, including human trafficking.[13] The New York Times covered this issue in February 2006 in an article headlined "Drug Traffickers Find Haven in Shadows of Indian Country".[14]
The Akwesasne police and government spokespersons have defended their work, saying they have had to take on an unfair federal burden of border enforcement while not receiving additional funding. Due to a quirk in the law, they were not eligible to receive grants from the federal Department of Homeland Security that were available to local jurisdictions to support the extra work at the border. The chief of the Akwesasne Mohawk police noted that drug smuggling was a problem that extended along the Canada–US border and was not limited to Akwesasne. In March 2006, the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation was awarded a $263,000 grant from the US Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Legal Services, in order to "fight drug use, violent crime, and drug and human smuggling."[13]
The FBI said that 300 people were caught illegally passing through the reservation from September 1995 to September 1996.[15]
Collection of state sales tax[edit]
For decades New York state has threatened to collect sales tax from sales of gasoline and cigarettes on Native American reservations but has not done so. The legislature often passes such a resolution[16] but the federally recognized tribe says that it has sovereign authority on its reservation and does not need to collect the state tax. New York citizens fail to report their applicable use taxes; this has become a problem both here and at areas surrounding other Indian reservations across New York. Merchants near the reservations complain that the tax-free sales constitute an unfair advantage for Native American-owned businesses. The Mohawk frequently respond that this is their only advantage, as they have suffered from centuries of discrimination and being dispossessed of their land.[17]
While the government officials argue, a Zogby poll commissioned in 2006 by the Seneca Nation of New York, also Iroquois and allies of the Mohawk, showed that 79% of New York residents did not think sales taxes should be collected from reservation sales.[18]