A bipartisan bill that would restore 321 acres owned by the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe in Massachusetts to trust land after a federal judge forced the Department of the Interior to remove them has been reintroduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The bill, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act, was introduced by Rep. William Keating and Rep. Joseph Kennedy, both from the Bay State. It would put back into trust lands in Taunton and on Martha’s Vineyard. This would allow the tribe to go forward with its $1 billion First Light Casino.
The bill is not considered a Republican or Democratic issue and despite being introduced by Democrats has drawn support from several Republicans on the committee that oversees Indian affairs.
Mashpee Tribal Chairman Cedric Cromwell praised the reintroduction of the bill. “With our limited resources dwindling, we have already had to cut back on vital services and programs we had established to serve our Tribal citizens. Should we lose our reservation, our ability to operate as a Tribal government would be crushed,” he said.
The chairman added, “We are extremely grateful that a bipartisan group of Congressional representatives understands the injustice of taking sovereign land away from the first Americans and have moved swiftly to ensure this nation does not return to the dark days of removing indigenous people from their land.”
The town of Mashpee on Martha’s Vineyard is also supporting the bill. Town Manager Rodney Collins told Native News Online: “I am pleased that the bill has been filed again and hopefully the outcome will be different in this session.”
The Department of the Interior previously put more than 300 acres into trust for the tribe in 2015, only to have the action challenged in federal court by residents of Taunton opposed to a casino there. The judge agreed with their complaint that the action violated the 2009 Carcieri v. Salazar decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled that lands cannot be put into trust by tribes that were not under U.S. jurisdiction before 1934. The Mashpee tribe was given federal recognition in 2007.
Cromwell referred to the historical role that his tribe played in greeting the Pilgrims when they landed at Plymouth in 1620. “We are the first indigenous Tribal Nation to sign a peace treaty with the Pilgrims and provide the land for them to establish Plymouth Colony. So, it is fitting that one of the first bills to be introduced in this new Congress, in this New Year, is one that would protect our ancestral homelands from being stripped away from us.”
The bill has garnered support of all of the Bay State’s congressional delegation, many tribal leaders across the nation, and the recent formal endorsement of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.
The tribe is pursuing a legal strategy as well, one which produced a positive result last week when a federal judge denied the Department of the Interior’s motion to suspend the tribe’s lawsuit challenging its September 7 decision to rescind trust status.
Attorneys for the department had on December 28 requested a stay on answering the tribe’s lawsuit due to the partial government shutdown. The attorneys said that federal employees are largely prohibited from working.
Judge Rosemary M. Collyer denied the stay, but gave the department more time to respond to the lawsuit: until January 30.
The tribe’s lawsuit alleges that the department “failed to apply established law” by “contorting relevant facts and ignoring others to engineer a negative decision.”
The lawsuit was actually filed against former Secretary Ryan Zinke, who announced his resignation in December under fire from various ethics violation investigations. He is succeeded, at least temporarily, by Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt.
