The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe of Massachusetts hasn’t exhausted all of the options available to it after the Bureau of Indian Affairs ruled that it could not find a way to legally justify keeping the land it had put into trust for the tribe in Taunton as trust land.
The tribe continues to work with the Genting Group, which is on the hook for $440 million that it advanced to the tribe when it looked as though a $1 billion casino resort was a sure thing.
The group has admitted to such a loss in its third quarter earnings report.
According to the Genting Malaysia filing: “This impairment loss was due to the uncertainty of recovery of the notes following the US Federal Government’s decision in September 2018 concluding that the tribe did not satisfy the conditions under the Indian Reorganization Act that allow the tribe to have the land in trust for an integrated gaming resort development.”
The tribe and Genting have refocused their lobbying on the U.S. Congress, to try to achieve by Congressional fiat what the Department of the Interior was unable to do after a federal judge ruled that putting the land into trust would violate the U.S. Supreme Court’s Carcieri v. Salazar ruling that says that tribes recognized after 1934 can’t put land into trust. The tribe was recognized in 2009.
They are pushing Congress to pass the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act (H.R.5244 | S.2628), which is sponsored or supported by most of the Bay State’s congressional delegation. The bill would put land in Taunton and on Martha’s Vineyard into trust, just as the Department of the Interior originally did.
This is necessary if the tribe is ever to build the First Light Resort and Casino.
Without Genting’s money the tribe is faced with having to announce layoffs and cease offering services to members. Chairman Cedric Cromwell told members last week, “This situation is unsustainable, with or without a developer. The federal government’s inaction has created a dire threat to our ability to meaningfully self-govern. In leaving us in this limbo, the United States turns its back on our people.”
The bill has bipartisan support, and obtained a favorable vote by the House Subcommittee on Indian, Insular and Alaska Native Affairs several months ago. The next step would be for the House Committee on Natural Resources to review the bill.
The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs doesn’t appear to be doing anything with the bill in this current session. If that happens, the bill will have to be reintroduced in each house.
The other leg to the tribe’s strategy is to continue with its appeal of the federal judge’s ruling that the tribe was not qualified to put the land into trust because it wasn’t under federal jurisdiction in 1934. That case is pending before 1st Circuit Court of Appeals.
