Ronald A. Roberts of Granville, N.Y., who has called himself Sachem Golden Eagle of the Western Mohegans, awaits sentencing June 17 after pleading guilty to federal charges of perjury and submitting false documents in proceedings asking for recognition as an Indian tribe. Last year Mr. Roberts “sued New York State, seeking millions in rent over the last 200 years on 900,000 acres of public land throughout the Hudson Valley, including land around the Capitol. In another suit, in 1999 he had tried to stop the development of a state park on Schodack Island in the Hudson River near Albany, asserting that it was the ancestral burial grounds of his people. Judges eventually threw out both suits.” According to prosecutors, Roberts advanced his claims to represent a surviving Indian tribe by submitting “an altered death certificate for his grandfather, Arthur E. Smith, on which the cursive ‘W’ for white on the form had been changed to ‘Indian.’ But prosecutors pointed out that it was not much of a forgery, since the clumsy alteration was made with a ballpoint pen, invented after the grandfather’s death.” Roberts “also gave the federal government a doctored version of the 1845 census of Indians in New York, in which someone had conveniently inserted his great-grandfather’s name into a list of Indian household heads.” (James C. McKinley Jr., “Man With Flair for Reinventing Himself Goes a Step Too Far”, New York Times, Jun. 3; Hallie Arnold, “Ex-leader admits lying on tribal application”, Kingston Daily Freeman, Feb. 10). For more on the curious, high-stakes legal world of tribal recognition, casinos and land claims, see May 17, Feb. 9 and links from there.

Filed under: Indian tribes