Thursday, October 1, 2026
In March, the State Assembly unanimously passed — yes, even in these polarized times, it unanimously passed — a bill sponsored by Assemblyman Tommy John Schiavoni providing for reinstatement and acknowledgement of the Montaukett Indian Nation.
The bill has now gone to the State Senate, which, like the Assembly, has overwhelmingly passed it seven times. Yes, seven times. But Gov. Kathy Hochul has vetoed it four times. And her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, a fellow Democrat, vetoed it three times.
“The people of the Montaukett Indian Nation are a rich part of the Long Island community,” declared a statement issued by Schiavoni’s office. But “After several attempts to advance legislation that would recognize and acknowledge the Montauketts, New York State has continued with the precedent set in 1910 to deny them their right of existence in the eyes of the state. Despite the 1910 Pharaoh v. Benson case when the court declared them to be extinct while their leaders and 75 members of the nation sat in the courtroom, the Montaukett Indian Nation has continued to thrive and govern itself. The wrongful removal of their state recognition remains uncorrected.”
Schiavoni, a Sag Harbor Democrat, joined the Assembly in January 2025. The 2026 Montaukett recognition measure, and earlier bills, were sponsored in the Senate by Anthony Palumbo, a Republican from New Suffolk. One of them passed the Senate, 50 to 1, last year.
In her veto message about that bill in December, Hochul again pointed to the 1910 ruling in Pharaoh v. Benson. In it, State Supreme Court Justice Abel Blackmar sided with the descendants of Arthur Benson, a developer, in awarding them Montaukett tribal lands. Hochul said there were still “outstanding questions and issues concerning the Montauketts’ eligibility for recognition, according to traditional criteria.”
Schiavoni succeeded Fred W. Thiele Jr., a member of the Assembly for nearly 30 years, who sponsored the earlier Montaukett measures in the Assembly.
After Hochul cited Pharoah v. Benson in a veto of the 2023 bill, Thiele, a Sag Harbor Democrat, said he was shocked that the governor would reference that ruling, which he described as “one of the most racist decisions in the history of New York jurisprudence. The prior vetoes were unfortunate but the language in this one was stunning. To take the Benson case, which has language in it that would embarrass the Proud Boys, and hold that up as the justification for this veto is just crazy. Instead of rejecting the noxious rationale of Benson, [Hochul’s] veto affirmed it. I am ashamed of our state government.”
The case focused on an effort by the Montaukett chief, Wyandank Pharoah, to undo the taking of Montauk lands by Benson. As Newsday’s Mark Harrington noted in his coverage of the 2025 Hochul veto: “Newsday in a 1998 investigation found that the process by which developers and the Long Island Rail Road annexed Montaukett and Shinnecock Indian Nation lands over the past 200 years was rife with ‘deceit, lies and possible forgery.’”
There is a passage in the vetoed 2025 bill — and in the current and prior measures — stating that Blackmar’s “arbitrary ruling ignored earlier U.S. Supreme Court decisions defining Indian Nations according to criteria under which the Montaukett Indian Nation qualified as an existing sovereign tribe and giving Congress, rather than the courts, power to decide [its] status.”
The Montaukett situation has attracted attention beyond Long Island. A New York Post article on Hochul’s December veto quoted Sandra Brewer-Walker, executive director of the Montaukett Indian Nation, saying, “The governor just doesn’t get it — she lacks an understanding of Native American history and is upholding an illegal, racist ruling.”
On the floor of the Senate, Palumbo has decried the ruling in the Pharoah v. Benson case, which he termed “likely racist” and spoke of how the tribe “was recognized for years prior” to the case. He declared, “Now is the time to correct this injustice and provide the Montaukett Indian Nation with the status they deserve.”
The Montauketts were one of the original great tribes of Long Island — and they’re still here. Peter Pharaoh, a proud Montaukett, was a journalism student of mine. They thoroughly deserve the restoration of their recognition.
Karl Grossman has been an investigative reporter in a variety of media for more than 50 years. He is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York at Old Westbury.
