Hochul vetoes bill to recognize Long Island Indian nation as leaders rail that gov ‘just doesn’t get it’

Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed another bill that would have recognized the sovereignty of a Long Island Native American group — riling tribal leaders who said the Democrat “just doesn’t get it.”

Hochul’s move to block the Montaukett Indian Nation from getting official status is the fourth time in a row she has shot down efforts on behalf of the group, which had its recognition stripped in a controversial court ruling in 1910.

The veto had Democratic legislators and some Montaukett leaders fuming, as they noted it was the seventh time in a decade their efforts have hit a dead end.

“The governor just doesn’t get it — she lacks an understanding of Native American history and is upholding an illegal, racist ruling,” Sandi Brewster-Walker, executive director of the Montaukett Nation, told The Post.

This latest version of the bill had garnered broad bi-partisan support, passing the state Assembly unanimously before passing the state Senate 59-1.

But Hochul blocked the bill saying there were still “outstanding questions and issues concerning the Montaukett’s eligibility for recognition according to traditional criteria.” She cited the controversial 1910 ruling, which some critics have said was discriminatory, in her veto message.

“It is pure stupidity and ignorance — what else can you call it?” Brewster-Walker said of the governor’s cited reasoning.

The veto leaves in place the ruling that declared the Montaukett tribe, which called Montauk home, had “disintegrated” and had no centralized government.

In that decision, Judge Abel Blackmar concluded the Montauketts were so widely dispersed that they no longer existed as a functioning tribe — a finding that directly contradicted an earlier memorandum filed in 1906 by C.F. Larrabee, the then-acting commissioner of Indian Affairs for the U.S. Department of the Interior.

“The governor’s team continues to lack a knowledge of the history, and an understanding of the Long Island Native people,” the Montauketts said of the veto in a statement.

Hochul was called out by several fellow Democrats on the island.

“For years, there has been broad support for a viable solution for reinstating recognition by New York State to the Montauketts — recognition that was wrongfully stripped from them over 100 years ago,” Assemblyman Tommy John Schiavoni wrote in a scathing post on social media.

Schiavoni said he will continue the push to “restore respect and honor to the sovereign people of the Montaukett Nation” in 2026.