Mashpee Wampanoag land allowed to remain in trust
Supreme Court refuses appeal
‘We can now rest easy that we can exercise our sovereignty and preserve our culture and traditions on our tribal lands for generations to come!’ STATEMENT FROM BRIAN WEEDEN
Mashpee Wampanoag tribe chairman
The US Supreme Court on Monday handed the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe a crucial victory in the fight for its Massachusetts ancestral land to be kept in trust, protecting the tribe’s rights and keeping open the possibility of a casino one day opening on its acreage in Taunton.
The high court declined to hear an appeal from a group of Taunton residents whose lawsuit, aimed at preventing the tribe from building a casino in the city, had been dismissed by a federal judge in Boston last year.
The Taunton plaintiffs had lost their appeal in October before US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, records show, and on Monday, the Supreme Court entered an order denying their petition for the panel to review the matter.
A request for comment was sent to the plaintiffs’ attorneys Thursday morning.
“Today we can celebrate a legal victory that has been long overdue,” said Brian Weeden, the tribe chairman, in a statement Monday, calling the lawsuit an effort “to deny us our right to our ancestral homelands.”
The tribe, Weeden said, has fought “for too long to win back what was stolen from us generations ago. Now the Supreme Court has affirmed our rights in a way that cannot be further challenged or questioned. We can now rest easy that we can exercise our sovereignty and preserve our culture and traditions on our tribal lands for generations to come!”
The February 2023 decision in US District Court in Boston had granted summary judgment to the US Department of the Interior, which had placed 321 acres of land in Mashpee and Taunton into trust for the tribe. The tribe, which has about 2,600 enrolled citizens, was an intervenor-defendant in the Taunton residents’ suit against the Interior Department.
The anti-casino plaintiffs had argued the Biden administration’s decision affirming the tribe’s reservation was arbitrary, capricious, and unlawful, asserting the tribe isn’t eligible for a reservation since it wasn’t an officially recognized tribe in 1934, the year the federal Indian Reorganization Act became law. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe was not federally recognized until 2007.
Plans to build a $1 billion resort casino, meanwhile, remain on hold. The tribe in 2016 broke ground on what was to be called the First Light casino, which was to include a hotel and shopping, dining, and other entertainment options.
The Interior Department in December 2021 had restored the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s legal status for its reservation land, opening the door for the tribe to continue exploring a possible gaming facility. That ruling also allowed the tribe to move forward with crucial needs such as fighting water pollution on the land and improving housing for its citizens, the Globe reported at the time.
Massachusetts Senators Edward J. Markey and Elizabeth Warren released a joint statement Monday welcoming the high court’s refusal to hear the Taunton residents’ appeal.
“For too long the leadership and people of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe have suffered uncertainty and costly legal battles at the hands of the Trump administration’s unjust attempt to strip them of their ancestral homelands and land rights,” said the Democratic lawmakers. “We have been proud to join them in this fight, and we applaud today’s decision by the US Supreme Court to deny the petition for certiorari, affirming the status of their reservation once and for all.”
The reservation’s legal status had been in limbo since March 2020 when the Interior Department, then under Donald Trump’s administration, ordered the land to be taken out of trust.
The Mashpee Wampanoag — which means People of the First Light — were annihilated by English settlers in the 17 th century, when the tribe had as many as 40,000 people across 67 villages, and their land covered all of what is now Cape Cod and stretched from Weymouth to parts of Rhode Island, according to the Plimoth-Patuxet Museum in Plymouth. The tribe was forced onto land that later became the town of Mashpee. Centuries passed before the tribe finally gained federal recognition in 2007.
“The casino is kind of on the backburner,” Weeden told the Globe in 2021. “We need to work on the environment, cleaning up our waterways, and acquiring more land and housing. Those are the top priorities of our administration.”
A spokesperson for the tribe had no comment on the status of the casino project when reached by phone Thursday.
In June 2021, Weeden told the Globe that, from his perspective, the casino project was “pushed down everyone’s throats” by previous leaders.
Weeden said then he was leaving the decision on the casino’s future to the tribe’s citizens.