Massachusetts Tribe Regains Fed Approval for Land Where $1B Casino Proposed
A Massachusetts folk that has for years been fighting for its federal earth rights in prescribe to to build a $1 billion cassino resort hotel has eventually been dealt the hand it’s so long sought.
The Department of the Interior’s (DOI) Bureau of Indian Affairs this week closed in(p) the books on a legal vitrine that has dragged on for III presidential administrations. The net verdict is that the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe indeed has ancestral ties to the realm where it bought 321 acres more than a decennary ago. Thus, it possesses the rights to have that shore taken into federal trust.
The DOI concluded that the tribal holding inwards Taunton and Mashpee rightly deserves to follow held inward trustfulness past the United States. The identification clears the path for the Native American federation of tribes to build a Class II casino.
Native Americans can operate such bingo-based gaming on their tribal attribute held inwards the trust. But for Class III gaming — expansion slot machines and tabular array games — the federation of tribes must go in into a gaming compact with the state.
The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe is 1 of only deuce federally recognized tribes inward Massachusetts. The other is the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head on Martha’s Vineyard.
Tale of Two Interiors
The DOI in 2015 below the Obama administration took the Wampanoag Tribe’s 321 acres into federal trust. The tribe announced plans for a $1 one million million integrated gambling casino resort development on 151 acres inward Taunton called the First Light Resort and Casino. The cast is backed past Malaysia-based gaming and hospitality empire Genting Group.
Local opponent inwards Taunton, however, stalled the monumental undertaking. And then, inwards Mar of 2020, the DOI under the Trump disposal informed the Mashpees that it was reversing its 2015 conclusion and evicting the 321 acres from the federal trust.
The DOI in 2020 said the set down should not be accepted into the cartel because the Mashpee Tribe was not federally recognised when the Indian Reorganization Act was passed in 1934.
Politics were partly credited for the 2020 Interior move. Trump was, at the time, meshed in a bitterness contravention with Old Colony US Sen. Elizabeth Robert Penn Warren (D), who the prexy referred to as “Pocahontas.”
Warren and other members of Massachusetts’ congressional delegation introduced and backed a measure inward DC that would institute the Mashpee set down as sovereign, irrespective of where the DOI stood.
This week’s DOI ruling below the Biden disposal sides with the 2015 Interior opinion. Great Commoner Newland, help writing table for the Bureau of American Indian Affairs, says this finding of fact is final.
I bump that statutory authorisation for acquiring the Parcels exists below the Amerind Reorganization Act,” Newland wrote in a 55-page conclusion. “The 2015 determination to gain such Parcels inward trustfulness first-class honours degree made by then-Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn should live affirmed.”
Tribe Celebrates Outcome
Newland’s letter, addressed to Mashpee Wampanoag Chair Brian Weeden, “confirms the 2015 decision to gain the Parcels inwards corporate trust as the Tribe’s reservation.” The American Indian Affairs help escritoire said his ratiocination was based on “extensive documents inwards the Tribe’s record” and “numerous historical sources and modern font archeological and donnish sources.”
Weeden says the DOI verdict assures the federation of tribes prosperity for generations to come.
This is a momentous day for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe,” he declared. “While the injustices inflicted upon us cannot live erased, we tin can looking at to the futurity — a futurity of freedom, a future tense of prosperity, and a futurity of peace.”