The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe of Massachusetts has returned to court to fight for its right to build a $1 billion casino in Taunton.
The tribe is appearing before U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston to attempt to overturn a lower court ruling that held that the Department of the Interior acted illegally when it put 321 acres in Taunton owned by the tribe into trust. The land was purchased for the First Light casino resort by the Genting Group, which partnered with the Mashpees to build and manage the casino.
Some residents of Taunton who opposed a casino sued in Littlefield et al. v. U.S. Department of the Interior. They won in 2016 citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s Carcieri v. Salazar ruling that land can’t be placed into trust by a tribe that was officially recognized in 1934, the year of the Indian Reorganization Act.
The tribe, based on Cape Cod may not have had officially federal recognition until 2007, but most historians say that it was the tribe that greeted the Pilgrims when they landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620.
The judge told the Department to look at the case and find another route for putting the land into trust, but it wasn’t able to find one and it officially reversed its action. This was the first time since the 1960s that the federal government had taken away a tribe’s recognition.
The tribe had broken ground for the Taunton casino but the work stopped upon the judge’s ruling. The appeal this week seeks to give the tribe the right to start again.
A bill in Congress that would have gone around the Department to put the land into trust passed the House but is dead in the water in the Senate.
Recently Tribal Chairman Cedric Cromwell commented, “Through this appeal, the Tribe hopes to uphold the original Record of Decision accepting the tribe’s land into trust. This appeal concerns the question of whether the Department of the Interior was authorized to take the tribe’s land into trust.”
The appeals court is expected to issue a ruling sometime in the next few months, according to Cromwell.
The tribe has also sued the Department of the Interior in Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe v. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to try to force the department to reconsider the tribe’s case. The tribe argues that Bernhardt failed to consider all of the evidence that the tribe was eligible to put land into trust.
