The tribe that hopes to build a billion First Light Casino & Resort in Taunton, Massachusetts but has been stymied in federal courts is now facing a mounting debt of 5 million with the threat of cut services.
Members of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe last week were targeted with a robocall urging them to attend a meeting of the tribal council and voice their concerns. The calls claimed that social services were being cut to tribal members.
The tribe has borrowed $347 million from the Genting Group in interest bearing promissory notes to fund the casino. The calls alleged that the money is “primarily used for tribal council salaries.” The tribe has an annual operating budget of $12 million.
The tribe won federal recognition in 2007, and when the 2011 gaming expansion act was approved was fully expected by the legislature to apply for one of the casino licenses, as long as its land was put into trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
That happened, with 170 acres being set aside in Mashpee and 151 acres in Taunton.
But then a challenge by Taunton residents in federal court brought the project to a complete stop a few months after the first shovel of dirt was lifted. The judge agreed that the process the BIA used for putting the land into trust for the tribe was flawed, and ordered it to come up with a different legal justification.
If the casino were ever to be built, Genting would be entitled to 40 percent of the net as a management fee.
Since non-Indians are not allowed to attend tribal meetings, no reporters were present to report the meeting, although at least one tried.
Last month Tribal Chairman Cedric Cromwell published this message on the tribal website: “This latest setback challenging our land in trust has once again stretched our resources out and forced us to make some hard choices. The tribal government has decided to look at ways to trim its budget and become more creative and thoughtful with our operations.”
The BIA is looking at alternate ways of justifying putting the land into trust that would satisfy the objections raised in federal court. Last week was the deadline for the federal agency to accept comments on this process.
The BIA’s new approach is addressing the requirement that for a tribe to put land into trust that it must have been under federal authority since 1934. The agency is exploring whether a state’s authority over a tribe could be construed to be the same thing.
Last week the tribal leaders met with Massachusetts legislators in what was billed as the first “Thanksgiving unity event.” The tribe is generally considered to have been the tribe that greeted the Pilgrims when they landed at Plymouth Rock, and which helped them survive their first winter—leading to the first Thanksgiving.
Cromwell told the gathering, “We’re just excited that today happened from a unification perspective. We’re really focused on getting our trust lands and homeland rights intact for our people and we look to continue unifying and as we have differences we’ll work through those differences.”
