The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe of Massachusetts has prevailed in a federal lawsuit where residents of the town of Taunton sued to keep the tribe from building a casino resort in the city.
This is the latest in a series of lawsuit rulings and rulings by the Department of the Interior that have whipsawed the tribe’s hopes for more than a decade.
The Republican reported that the U.S. District Court of Boston granted summary judgment to the department, upholding its placement of 321 acres into trust for the tribe in Taunton and Mashpee.
Brian Weeden, chairman of the 2,600-member tribe, said in a statement: “this reservation is crucial to our ability to exercise our sovereign right to self-governance, to preserve our language and culture, and to provide for our people.”
The plaintiffs filed the latest suit February 2022, arguing that the department’s decision to create the reservation was unlawful because the tribe wasn’t an officially recognized tribe in 1934, the year of the Indian Reorganization Act. The tribe was recognized in 2007.
The judge wrote: the “historical record indicates that the Mashpee have had a robust connection to the designated lands for over four centuries.” Historians consider the Mashpees to have been the tribe that greeted the Pilgrims after they landed in 1620.
Whether the latest decision will reignite the tribe’s longstanding efforts to build the $1 billion First Light casino remains unknown. The tribe broke ground on the casino resort in 2016 but abandoned construction efforts a few months later.
