Although the House of Representatives last week passed the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act, (H.R. 312) significant head winds opposed its passage, and still threaten to jam it up in the Senate.
One of the main opponents is President Donald Trump, who in one of his famous tweets on May 8 advised all members of his party to vote against it. He called it a “special interest casino bill.” Of course, the president could veto the bill if it reaches his desk, but he obviously wants to stop that from ever happening.
The bill would put 321 acres of land in Taunton and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts into trust for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. This would enable the 2,600 member tribe to build a $1 billion casino in Taunton, thus jump-starting the tribe’s economy. And that is the starting point for the opposition to it.
The bill is bipartisan, although as Trump noted in his tweet, one of its main sponsors in Massachusetts is Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren. The House is controlled by Democrats, the Senate by Republicans.
Trump has a decades-long history of opposition to Indian gaming. But so do many other lobbyists and representatives of both commercial casinos and groups that oppose casinos in their back yard.
It was such a group, residents of East Taunton, who successfully filed a federal law suit that stopped the Taunton casino in its tracks. And forced the tribe to look for another method of putting its land into trust besides an action of the Department of the Interior, which a federal judge ruled couldn’t legally do it in this case. But it wasn’t just some Taunton residents who fought the casino. They were funded in part by Rush Street Gaming, whose principal, billionaire Neil Bluhm, wants to build a casino in southeastern Massachusetts, something he can’t do if the tribal casino opens.
The tribe lost out on its “land into trust” status because it wasn’t recognized by the federal government in 2007, and could not prove that it had been under “federal jurisdiction” since 1934, as required by the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.
That, despite the fact that historians generally recognize that the tribe was indigenous to the area for thousands of years, and that its ancestors were the tribe that greeted the Pilgrims when they set foot at Plymouth Rock about 400 years ago.
Open Secrets spoke to Kathryn Rand, dean and professor of law at the University of North Dakota, who observed, “If a federally recognized tribe does not have land over which to exercise its tribal authority, then what good is the government authority you have? You have to have a place to exercise that authority.”
She noted that when the Department of the Interior first granted and then retracted its action putting the land into trust that it was almost a death blow to the tribe. “The tribe started work on its casino, including seeking financing,” she said, “When the (DOI) Secretary changed his mind, the tribe was left with overwhelming debt.” That includes about $400 million the tribe owes to Genting Malaysia, the largest casino developer in the world.
H.R. 312 is not a unprecedented tool for dealing with such a situation. In 2015 Congress passed the Gun Lake Trust Land Reaffirmation Act to help the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians of Michigan.
This approach has its critics because, they say, it “politicizes” sovereignty, which ought to be granted by right.
One of the main opponents of the Mashpee tribe getting the ability to finish its casino is Twin River Worldwide Holdings, which operates two casinos in Rhode Island, which shares a boundary with the Bay State.
It pays lobbyist Matt Schlapp, whose wife, Mercedes, works in the White House as director of strategic communications. The president of Twin River once worked as an executive at a Trump casino in Atlantic City.
The author of H.R. 312, Rep. William Keating has criticized the president for his “well-documented alliance with the Rhode Island casino lobbyist.”
Despite their money situation, the Mashpees spent $400,000 last year on lobbying and have so far spent $150,000 this year.
Several weeks ago Mashpee Wampanoag Vice Chairman Jessie “Little Doe” Baird told lawmakers on the House Subcommittee on Indigenous Peoples “The damage done to our tribe during the years in which the status of our reservation has been thrown into doubt is beginning to reach catastrophic levels.”
The Mashpees are the first tribe since the 1960s to have its reservation status reversed. This is something that has caused Indian country to sound the alarm.
Meanwhile, the tribal chairman on whose watch this catastrophe happened, Cedric Cromwell, is the target of a recall by several members of his tribal council.
The tribe’s Election Committee recently certified 104 signatures on a petition to remove the chairman and will soon schedule a recall election.
Also targeted is Vice Chairman Baird and Treasurer Gordon Harris. They are criticized for an alleged lack of transparency and for their handling of tribal finances.
However, Cromwell has been trying to oust his opponents, as well. A month before the recall effort began he attempted unsuccessfully to expel three critics from the council: Carlton Hendricks Jr., Aaron Tobey Jr. and Rita Gonsalves.
For years Tobey and Hendricks have criticized the chairman for his handling of finances and for the secrecy surrounding funds spent regarding the $1 billion casino; and the fact that the tribe owes so much to Genting.
