The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held in March the following year that New York could not dispossess a Native tribe of their land on the grounds that groups such as the Oneida people (a founding nation of the Iroquois Confederacy) were federally recognized and such an action would require federal approval.
The commission was also tasked with investigating Laura Cornelius "Minnie" Kellogg, a member of the Oneida tribe who advocated for the rights of the Iroquois to possess their own land.
Everett sought to visit the reservations another time, but his request was denied by the legislature, which similarly did not offer funding for Natives to travel to Albany and attend conferences.
[5] On February 24, Everett previewed his report in the New York State Capitol, to a group of at least thirty-one people, including both natives and whites.
[6] It concluded that:[5] the Indians of the State of New York are entitled to all of the territory ceded to them by the treaty made with the Colonial Government prior to the Revolutionary War, relative to the territory that should be ceded to the Indians for their loyalty to said colonies and by the treaty of 1784 by which said promise by the colonists was consummated by the new Republic known as the United States of America and in a speech by General [George] Washington to the conference of Indians comprising the Six Nations and recognizing the Indians as a Nation.The report concluded that the Iroquois had a legal right to 6,000,000 acres (2,400,000 ha) of land in New York as a result of treaties signed in the late 18th century, specifically the 1784 Treaty of Fort Stanwix.
[10] In 1927 a class action lawsuit was filed by a Mohawk named James Deere against the Saint Lawrence Power Company and several others that occupied a 1 square mile (2.6 km2) portion of land.