The Schaghticoke Indian Tribe of Kent, Connecticut last week filed a petition with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, seeking federal recognition, with the hopes that the tribe will be able to open a casino in the Danbury area.
Only two tribes have achieved federal recognition in the state, the Mashantucket Pequots and the Mohegans. Both have operated casinos in the state since the 1990s.
The 130-member tribe has sought federal recognition for 35 years. A consultant for the tribe, William Buchanan, who helped prepare the application, told the Connecticut Mirror, “Some 80,000 pages of history and genealogy are combined in our petition, proving we are still here, as we have been, long before European explorers hit the shores of what they called New England.”
The state government and most of its congressional delegation has long fought federal recognition by the Schaghticokes and two other tribes, the Eastern Pequots and the Golden Hill Paugussetts which all previously applied, but are governed by a new BIA rule that says that tribes that previously were turned down for recognition could not apply again.
The BIA recently sent letters to the tribes, informing them that their only recourse is an Act of Congress granting them recognition. R. Lee Fleming, director of the BIA’s Office of Federal Acknowledgement, said “the only available remedy” was to seek federal legislation.
Tribes seek recognition in order to be eligible for housing, education and health care, and most often, to be able to operate casinos.
Richard Velky, chief of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, told the Stamford Advocate he was surprised at the letter. I was taken aback. Why is this guy sending my attorney a letter like this when we requested nothing from him.” He added that the letter was “another example of an irregular, politically motivated action that has come to characterize this entire process.” He declared that Fleming had his law wrong. He said the tribe is pursuing other remedies for achieving recognition. His tribe has a state-recognized reservation of 400 acres. State recognition is not sufficient to offer gaming.
The nation was granted federal recognition in 2002, but under pressure from state elected officials was reversed.
The Schaghticokes claim this ruling does not apply to them because they were part of a larger group that applied several years ago, and which then split into two tribes. They claim that no ruling was ever made on their petition.
“We and the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation are two separate groups with a shared history, each with its own and distinct petition for recognition,” said Buchanan. Joining Buchanan in fighting for the tribe’s claims is Michael Anderson, a former head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, who now specializes in tribal land recovery.
U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, who as state attorney general originally fought the application in the 1980s, called the tribe’s claim “frivolous.” He told the Mirror, “Based on the history of past, unfounded petitions, lacking any factual or legal merit, this latest attempt seems doomed to failure. They can claim whatever they want; they can submit whatever they like. There’s a history of repeated, unfounded submissions to the BIA.”
The tribe has sought for decades to claim about 2,000 acres along the Housatonic River, including \the site of the Kent School and the Bull’s Bridge hydroelectric plant.
The BIA acknowledged last week that it has received the application and will review it to determine if it is a valid petition.
The other Schaghticoke tribe, the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, is represented by former Connecticut U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman, has sue the state to be allowed to participate in the third satellite casino that the Pequots and Mohegans have been authorized to pursue near the border with Massachusetts. Their ally in this suit is MGM, which is building the MGM Springfield about 20 miles from the border, and which is trying to slow down or stop the process in Connecticut.
