About

Welcome to the website of the campaign to Return Maple Bay ~ Restore Our Sacred Onondaga Lake. This campaign aims to return Maple Bay to the Onondaga Nation and heal the reciprocal relationship between the Lake and Onondaga Nation. We are calling for #Lakeback.

The Onondaga County Legislature passed two resolutions committing to this shared goal of land return on the shores of Onondaga Lake, first in 2011 and then again in 2016. We’re calling on the County Legislature to fulfill this commitment.

Onondaga Lake is the birthplace of democracy, lacrosse, the women's movement, and more. This lake is the ancestral home of the Onondaga Nation and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The United States agreed that the lake would always belong to the Onondaga Nation and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy with the 1794 Canandaigua treaty.

This website is maintained by the American Indian Law Alliance (AILA). AILA is a 34-year-old Indigenous-led organization founded and operated according to the original instructions provided to the Haudenosaunee people, including the full support of the Onondaga Council of Chiefs and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. These instructions guide us to acknowledge and honor our interdependence with all beings, to be mindful of the seven generations ahead of us, and to share the abundance Mother Earth provides with each other and the beings who share our ecosystems. AILA is also grounded in the wisdom of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and Onondaga ancestors who have fought to protect our people's sovereignty for thousands of years, and which AILA continues today through diplomacy and advocacy from the county government to the highest levels of international governance. These ancestors understood that culture, place, and well-being are inextricably bound together and found wisdom in actions that honored those intersections. AILA upholds this tradition today in our work to honor our heritage by reclaiming and restoring our sacred Onondaga Lake and inviting all who reside on our territory to live by the literal law of the land.

Over 1,000 years ago, on the shores of the pristine Onondaga Lake, our Peacemaker brought the democratic ideals and practices that created a peaceful Haudenosaunee Confederacy from what was once five warring Nations. Our system for governance and shared abundance is the longest-running democracy on Turtle Island and inspired the US government's bicameral structure and the U.S. women's movement for equal rights. The lake is also the birthplace of lacrosse, the Creator's Game, which began among our people. It is a deeply sacred place to the Haudenosaunee and is of historical importance to U.S. history. The lake is also critically important to eagles and wildlife on our territory, whose needs have long been overlooked by colonial powers who refuse to recognize and honor interdependence.

The Onondaga were made the central fire, the capital of the Confederacy, by the Peacemaker. Today the Onondaga is the only Indigenous Nation in the United States with sovereignty --- our land is not part of the United States or in a trust held by the government, but is entirely under our control. We travel on our own Haudenosaunee passports, the only Indigenous Nation in all the US to do so. Our status and intact matrilineal governance has provided us a unique leadership role among Indigenous Peoples on Turtle Island. We've been at the forefront of the global struggle for Indigenous sovereignty. AILA was formed by Onondaga leaders as an independent NGO to navigate colonial legal systems in our ongoing struggle for sovereignty. AILA is independent of the Nation's governance and maintains a Board who can support the mission to advance Indigenous sovereignty for all, not just the Onondaga.

Our history is rarely told, let alone honored. Instead, colonial powers have sought to minimize and diminish these truths to justify their violence and greed. Industry polluted the lake without consequence throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and today the sacred and essential waters of Onondaga Lake are a superfund site. Our plan is to protect the lake from further pollution and development by building a strong collaborative of institutions dedicated to  preserving and protecting the lake, with an emphasis on Maple Bay, a portion of the lake on the Northwest shore.