It’s official. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe of Massachusetts now has an official federal reservation in Taunton. The federal government last week published the tribe’s new status in the Federal Register.
The federal government put a total of 321 acres in the town of Mashpee on Martha’s Vineyard and in Taunton into trust for the tribe. The tribe purchased the land for $35 million.
Tribal Council Chairman Cedric Cromwell said in a statement: “This cements our right to self-determination now and for future generations. After decades of painstaking work, we are overjoyed the government of the United States has officially issued this reservation proclamation, as we are witnessing the rebirth of our nation.”
To celebrate the transfer tribal officials raised the tribal flag on the land in a ceremony last week.
That means that the tribe has the green light to proceed with its $500 million Project First Light casino in Taunton. It will also build tribal headquarters, burial grounds and a museum. The tribe first achieved federal recognition in 2007.
However the federal action will be challenged in court, although opponents say that it could take them as long as six years to raise the funds to do so. Six years is the legal limit to challenge such an action.
The group is called Preserving Taunton’s Future, whose leader Michelle Littlefield said they will begin fundraising to fund the court challenge. “We’ll do everything humanly possible to raise the money we need and if necessary bring this all the way to the Supreme Court,” she told the Taunton Daily Gazette.
The group’s “Justice Fund” challenge will center on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Carcieri v. Salazar decision that the federal government can’t put land into trust for tribes that were not under federal jurisdiction after 1934. The tribe was recognized in 2007.
“The tribe went reservation-shopping and settled on Taunton after taking serious looks at places in Middleborough and Fall River,” Tracy Marzelli, a leader of the group, told the Boston Globe last week.
But the tribe also has some local Indians up in arms over the federal action. They claim that the tribe never operated in the land that they have turned into reservation land.
Cromwell answers that the land is within the tribe’s “aboriginal footprint,” and adds, “We are getting back only a small piece of what is rightfully ours.”
Edward Page, chief of the Pocasset Pokanoket, disputes that and declares, “It was our land.” He claims the Mashpees stole their history. The political influence of the law firms and lobbyists hired by the tribe carried the day for the Mashpee,” he told the Globe.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs did not accept that argument. It accepted the account that the Wampanoags were once known as the Pokanoket but were driven out of that part of the state during King Philip’s War, which happened in the 1600s.
The 3,000-member tribe is not waiting around for opponents to solidify their plans. It intends to begin work on the project in the spring.
At the same time the Massachusetts Gaming Commission is mulling whether it should award a commercial license for the southeastern part of the state to the only remaining applicant, Massachusetts Gaming & Entertainment, which proposes a $677 million casino resort in Brockton.
It’s a big decision because if the commercial license is granted the tribe won’t have to pay a cent to the state on any of its profits, although the commercial casino will pay 25 percent to the state. If a commercial license were not issued the tribe would pay 17 percent.
