These days, the Taunton River rolls through the Southeastern Massachusetts countryside past aging towns and gentrified mills. But 400 years ago, the people who became the Mashpee Wampanoag fished, hunted and plucked bulrushes along its shores.
Then, they were part of the larger Pokanoket tribe settled around the Taunton area, which they called Cohannut.
.What they’re trying to prove
– The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 allows federally recognized tribes to offer casino gambling on reservation lands, provided that type of gambling is legal in the state.
– To offer gambling on reservation lands acquired after 1988, a tribe must meet one of several exemptions. The Mashpee Wampanoag are applying to have 146 acres in Taunton and 170 acres in Mashpee taken into federal trust as an “initial reservation,” which is one of those exemptions.
– In 2008, the requirements were updated so that the tribe must demonstrate “significant historic” and “modern” ties to the land being taken into trust.
– The tribe can also apply to have land taken into trust that is in the “vicinity” of its ancestral lands, though vicinity is not defined in the regulations.
– For modern ties, the tribe must demonstrate one of the following:
1. The land is near where a significant number of tribal members reside.
2. The land is within a 25-mile radius of the tribe’s headquarters or other tribal governmental facilities that have existed at that location for at least two years at the time of the application for land into trust.
3. The tribe can demonstrate other factors that establish the tribe’s current connection to the land.
Source: Federal Register
Tribe’s claims in brief
– The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe is part of the overall Pokanoket tribe that called all of Southeastern Massachusetts from Warren, R.I., east to the Cape and Islands and north to Gloucester its ancestral homeland.
– Cohannut, the Indian name for a region that encompasses modern Taunton, Middleboro, Bridgewater and Lakeville, was an important hub for the Pokanoket transportation by land and water.
– The Taunton River area was “resource-rich” for hunting, fishing and gathering. It’s still used today by the Mashpee tribe to gather bulrush for basket and matt making.
– Two archaeological sites in the Taunton area are associated with the Wampanoag tribe. The 10,000-year-old Wapanucket site is located in Lakeville just six miles from Taunton. The other is the Titicut site in Bridgewater, which is 11 miles from Taunton and dates back 6,000 years.
– Mashpee was the place where many Wampanoag tribe members sought refuge after King Philip’s War.
(Read Part 1 of this two-part series on the Mashpee Wampanoag’s quest for a casino.)
Now in a 158-page report written to establish “significant historic and modern ties” to Taunton, the Mashpee tribe asserts its people are all that remain on the mainland of that larger tribe that once inhabited all of Southeastern Massachusetts. Those ties, they contend, give them federal rights to have 146 acres in Taunton taken into trust for a $500 million Indian casino.
