Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe faces opposition to homelands legislation

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

The entire U.S. Congressional delegation from Massachusetts supports a bill to protect the homelands of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe but the situation is looking a lot different across the border.

In neighboring Rhode Island, Gov. Gina Raimondo (D) and the entire Congressional delegation are opposing the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act, The Providence Journal reports. While not all of the politicians would explain why, Raimondo cited the tribe's stalled casino in a letter delivered to President Donald Trump in late August, the paper said.

“If passed,'' Raimondo told the president, "the Act would allow the Mashpee to by-pass the well-settled Indian Reorganization Act and have land taken into trust for purposes of operating a resort casino in Taunton, Massachusetts.''

According to the paper, a study commissioned by Raimondo already warned of the impacts of a tribal casino in Massachusetts. The state could lose out on $26.1 million in the first year of the facility's operation and $6.6 million in the following year, which explains explain the opposition to the Mashpee Wampanoag legislation.

"The entire delegation has made its opposition to this bill well known to their colleagues," a spokesperson for Sen. Jack Reed (D) told the paper.

Rhode Island was behind Carcieri v. Salazar, the disastrous U.S. Supreme Court decision that cast significant doubt on the land-into-trust process. According to the 2009 ruling, only tribes that were "under federal jurisdiction" as of 1934 can seek to have their homelands placed in trust.

The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe did not gain federal recognition until 2007, making it a prime target for a Carcieri challenge despite its long history of dealings with foreign governments.

But the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act (H.R.5244 | S.2628) addresses the situation by ensuring that the tribe's lands -- including the site of the $1 billion First Light Resort & Casino -- remain in trust. It also requires the dismissal of a lawsuit which challenges the tribe's land-into-trust application.

The Supreme Court, in a more recent case known as Patchak v. Zinke, confirmed that Congress can follow that approach when it comes to tribes and their homelands but Rhode Island appears to think otherwise.

"Rhode Island successfully fought a ten-year legal battle with the Department to limit the Secretary's power to take land in trust ... only for those tribes under federal jurisdiction as of 1934," Raimondo wrote in the letter to Trump, The Journal reported.

The tribe's casino is to be located in Taunton. That's only about 20 miles from a new, non-Indian facility that opened in Tiverton, Rhode Island, over the Labor Day weekend.

"We’ve been working tirelessly with local, state and federal legislators to keep the issues important to our people top of mind," Chairman Cedric Cromwell writes in his September 2018 column. "We will not rest until we have secured our tribe, our culture and land for the next seven generations."