The Department of the Interior responded strongly to a decision by a federal judge to halt the land-into-trust decision by the department that would allow the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe of Massachusetts. The judge had decided that because the ruling violated the Carcieri Supreme Court decision that said no land could be taken into trust for a tribe that was not recognized prior to 1934, the land could not be taken into trust.
Interior said that was not the basis of the case, so the judge’s ruling was in error.
“The court erred… in deciding whether the tribe was ‘under federal jurisdiction’ in 1934. Such determination is a complex, Indian tribe-specific inquiry, involving a mixed question of a law and fact which Interior specifically reserved,” the Department of the Interior stated in a motion for partial reconsideration or clarification filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts
The tribe welcomed Interior’s objections.
“We applaud the Justice Department’s decision. We’ve been on our land for thousands of years and all we seek is the right to exist here as a sovereign people. It was promised to us soon after the first Pilgrims arrived and it’s a promise we hope the courts will honor,” Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council Chairman Cedric Cromwell said in a press release.
Meahwil has been added as a party to a lawsuit where the status of the land that it owns on Martha’s Vineyard and in Taunton will be decided by a federal appeals court.
After that federal Interior action the tribe began work on its $1 billion casino resort, Project First Light and broke ground in April. But a group of residents in neighboring East Taunton brought suit. Their lawsuit was partially funded by developer Neil Bluhm, who had proposed a commercial lawsuit on the Brockton fairgrounds—a project that has since then been abandoned.
Judge William Young agreed with the plaintiffs’ argument that the federal action violated the U.S. Supreme Court’s Carcieri v. Salazar ruling of 2009, which says that tribes recognized after 1934 couldn’t put land into trust.
To defend its rights, uncertain that the Department of the Interior planned to challenge the ruling, the 3,000-member tribe petitioned to become party to the lawsuit. The tribe argues that its interests and those of the department may not necessarily coincide.
The tribe’s lawyers wrote, “The department’s interest is in the administration of federal lands of the United States for the public interest broadly and the implementation of federal Indian policy, not in the particular sovereign, economic and personal interest of the tribe.”
They added, “Given the court’s order, it is now essential that the tribe intervene to defend the decision … to vindicate the tribe’s history and to protect the vital importance of all its sovereign territory as only the tribe can do.”
Tribal Chairman Cedric Cromwell explained why the tribe needed to intervene in the case. “We asked our legal team to file a motion to intervene not because we do not have confidence in the process. But to allow us to be more directly involved in defending our rights.”
Cromwell noted that the work on the site has mainly stopped. “The on-site work now is only to render it safe and to secure tribal assets.”
Tribal members were stunned a few weeks ago when the court overturned the federal action that they had sought for so many years.
Soon after the tribe issued this statement: “The importance of our newly declared reservation cannot be overstated: These very lands are the lands of our ancestors, literally hold the bones of our ancestors.” Even if the court’s ruling is upheld the tribe would still own the land, but it wouldn’t be sovereign territory.
One tribal member, Kitty Hendricks, told the Boston Globe, “We want to save some small portion of what’s been lost. This is our homeland; this is where my blood came from. It’s just nice to be able to take care of it as reservation land. We want to pass it down.”
The plaintiffs’ attorney Adam Bond said it’s not the group’s purpose to make the tribe landless, but to take away their ability to build a casino.
In its motion, the Department of Interior points out that tribal recognition prior to 1934 isn’t necessary for land into trust. The tribe just needed to be under federal jurisdiction by then, which it was. And the DOI motion was not an appeal to a higher court, just a request that Judge Young reconsider his decision.
