The effort to repeal a 330-year-old law that bars Native Americans from entering the city of Boston unless accompanied by "musketeers" was a long time in the making, said John Sam Sapiel, a member of the Penobscot Nation.

Sapiel, a Korean War veteran, said the Muhheconneuk National Confederacy has been working for more than a decade to get the law repealed. "We took it to the [state] Indian Affairs first and they didn't want to bother. ... They were afraid of it," he tells The Upper Cape Codder.

But persistence paid off when the mayor of Boston last year started the process to repeal the discriminatory law. When the UNITY minority journalists organization threatened to pass over the city for its 2008 conference, state lawmakers finally acted to take it off the books.

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Native American activist supports Wampanoag cause (The Upper Cape Codder 5/26)

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