Here. An excerpt:

To the Editor:
In the beginning of the fall semester, you can usually spot the first-year law students in the hallway — bright and optimistic, true believers in the U.S. legal system. If you look closely, it is often just as easy to identify the American Indian students. Not by the stereotypical images portrayed by popular culture, but by looking into their eyes. They know the truth about the U.S. legal system — that the doors of justice are closed to Indian nations.

The recent U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of the Oneida Indian Nation land claims appeal is a case in point. The federal courts acknowledged that New York took Indian land in violation of federal law. But rather than dispensing justice, the courts focus on the “disruptive nature” of Indian land claims. The jurists cringe, contemplating an imagined disruption that towns and counties might suffer if Indian nations were to win their case — despite the fact that the only remedy considered was financial damages from the state and federal government to compensate for the illegal taking of land.

Why is there no weighing of the disruption to the Indian nations, such as the loss of millions of acres? What about the disruption caused by the Thomas Indian Boarding School, run by the state from 1875 to 1957, where Indian children, sometimes forcibly removed from their homes and separated from their siblings and parents, suffered abuse and a regimented, military-type lifestyle?

What about the disruption caused by New York state demanding the federal government give it criminal jurisdiction over the Indian territories within its borders? Isn’t it a good thing to protect crime victims? Maybe, but that’s not happening in Indian Country, as national statistics indicate American Indians are twice as likely as other races to experience rape and sexual assault.

And it’s not Indians committing these crimes. Sex crimes against Native women are disproportionately committed by non-Native men — a staggering 86 percent. Native women are often silent victims, because not only are they scared to report crimes to a state that has a history of stealing their children, they also do not vote or pay property taxes. But let’s not consider the disruption these Indian women feel as they fall victim to violent crimes.

Volumes have been and will be written about the disruption felt by the Indian Nations due to the laws and policies of New York. It is not a surprise that what most concerns the federal courts is any potential disruption that a town or county might suffer. As the late New York State Assemblyman Frank A. Walkley noted in 1970 at a public hearing discussing a potential Indian land claim settlement, “If (the Oneida Indian Nation) claim is a valid one and settlement is made, what I am trying to avoid is another wrong on a town or village.”

Walkley would have been pleased to see that the federal courts did step up to protect the towns and villages built upon land taken illegally by the state. This is no surprise to the Native students at the College of Law — it is just another chapter in 234 years of dealings between the Indian nations and New York.

In the courts of the colonizer, justice is never on our side. But after 234 years of broken treaties and confiscated property, the Nations are still here. The battle is not over.

Carrie E. Garrow is adjunct professor at Syracuse University’s College of Law, where she is executive director of the Center for Indigenous Law, Governance and Citizenship. The eighth annual Haudenosaunee Conference will be held Friday and Saturday at Syracuse University.