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NOVEMBER 22, 2000

A letter written by the president of an anti-Indian treaty rights and anti-land claims organization says the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation of Connecticut weren't a tribe when they initiated their land claim and aren't one now.

Scott E. Peterman is president of Upstate Citizens for Equality (UCE). He believes that if local landowners in Connecticut had contested the Pequot land claim, they would have won. How accurate is that view?

In a similar case, landowners in Massachusetts fought a land claim brought by the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. The case focused on time periods when they sold land to the state. An all-white jury found they weren't a tribe during those key periods, preventing the Non-Intercourse Act of 1790 from protecting them.

The landowners in the Mashantucket case, however, might have had trouble proving the same. The state of Connecticut originally set aside a 2,000-acre reservation for the tribe in the 1600s.

The state sold most of it over the years, leaving only about 200 acres as of 1973. But since the state kept records on tribal land sales, it would be hard to argue that the Act didn't apply to the Mashantucket, as the state considered them to be a tribe.

The reservation was restored by Congress in 1983 to about 2,000 acres. Local officials, however, don't accept the size and want a Congressional hearing into the issue.

The writer also says the Mashantucket wouldn't have been awarded federal recognition through the guidelines established in 1978. That too, might be difficult to support, since the Mohegan Tribe won recognition under similar circumstances, although they had to overcome a negative finding at first.

UCE has two chapters in New York dedicated to opposing land claims of tribes in the state. They are an offshoot of another anti-Indian treaty rights and anti-soveriegnty group known as the Citizens Equal Rights Alliance (CERA).

Get the Story:
LETTER: The real shame is in the Indian sham (Scott E. Peterman. Letters to the Editor. The New London Day 11/21)

Only on Indianz.Com:
Upstate Citizens for Equality (Tribal Law 5/17)