This current rift is only the latest in a long history of tribal disputes over land claims, sovereignty, money and tradition--a history hardly unique to the Oneidas. Like all internal battles, it is in part a struggle over power and personality. More important, though, it betrays a fundamental division within the Oneida Nation--as within many Indian nations--over the proper response to the federal government's tempting offer of casino rights.

The dissidents accuse Halbritter of abandoning the Iroquois tradition of government by consensus, substituting instead rule by decree. They complain of a lack of accountability, wondering why Halbritter will not open Oneida finances to public scrutiny. They suggest that Halbritter seeks only personal gain, asking why the Nation doesn't distribute casino profits to its members. "Halbritter and his tactics," says George-Kanentiio, "represent a direct challenge and affront to everything we hold sacred."

George-Kanentiio is perhaps most vehement in denouncing Halbritter's embrace of American capitalism. "We were given a series of warnings about what would happen to us--the Iroquois people--if we adopted European attitudes toward wealth," says George-Kanentiio. "It would lead to chaos and corruption and conflict. This man [Halbritter] is the fulfillment of the worst of those warnings. He represents the great temptation. In Christian terms, you could call him satanic."

Determined to restore their own version of traditional government, the dissidents, with the aid of the Center for Constitutional Rights, have tried several times to remove Halbritter from power, arguing that he has subverted the traditional tribal electoral process. Their actions, thus far, have won them little but punishment, including the loss of their "voice" (essentially, their right to speak at tribal meetings) and their quarterly payments from noncasino businesses. Now, following the Machiavellian logic that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the dissidents have reached out to landowners' groups, including UCE.

Even in the witheringly complicated politics of the land claim, UCE and the Oneida dissidents make for particularly strange bedfellows. Politically, they agree on two--and only two--points: first, that the landowners should never have been part of the claim; and, second, that Ray Halbritter bears a strong resemblance to the devil. While UCE and the dissidents offer a similar diagnosis of central New York's ills, however, they propose radically different cures. Pleading historical precedent, the dissidents seek a restoration of traditional tribal government; if anything, they say, Halbritter sold out Indian sovereignty by agreeing to enforce New York law on Oneida land. UCE, by contrast, seeks one tax policy under God--necessitating, in its view, the abolition of Indian sovereignty.

Halbritter dismisses the dissidents' criticisms as sore-loser syndrome, and he accuses his white neighbors of simply resenting Oneida prosperity. "We have achieved the American Dream of success and economic independence," Halbritter said in a recent speech. "And some of our reward has been a new outburst of hatred." To Halbritter, UCE's appeals to liberty, equality and fraternity are nothing more than craven efforts to destroy what the Oneidas have won after centuries of stark suffering. "Today we retain only a tiny portion of the territory our ancestors occupied," he continued. "How can justice require that we be robbed of the little we have left, and of our few remaining rights?"

In the long view of history, there's no denying Halbritter's lament that the Oneidas, like all Native peoples, have endured profound loss and hardship. They are, as he suggests, the heirs of centuries of displacement and poverty. Today, though, the Turning Stone has disrupted racial and economic hierarchies long taken for granted. The bitter conflicts that have divided central New York represent in part an adjustment to these new equations of power. Racial resentment clearly animates central New York's politics, but the current conflict also goes beyond race: UCE and the dissidents share real concerns that the potent combination of gambling and tax-free sovereignty threatens democratic control in Indian and non-Indian communities alike.

For better or worse, the Oneidas' contemporary efforts to right historic wrongs through land claims are inseparable from the prospect of casino riches and business expansion. In that sense, the Oneidas have already fulfilled UCE's fondest dream: They have become good Americans.

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