Outrage at Trump administration’s spiteful tribal land grab
US Government rescind Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe reservation status
Experts and politicians have commented on the latest outrage by US President Donald Trump’s administration, in terms that range from the basest of punishment in Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy – where the narrative in Inferno places in circles that go from fourth, Greed, to last, Fraud – to playground bully. Still, there might be a new man-made circle awaiting The Donald and his crew.
This time it’s the U.S. Interior Department pulling the trigger in a self-styled Western movie-type administration where a power grab by the sheriff, a former hoodlum, hides behind differing levels of legalese and simple thuggery to dispossess land from famers and local redskins.
In rescinding the reservation status of the Native American Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, whose plan to build a casino on its Massachusetts land was attacked by the same President Donald Trump last year for the Native Americans’ efforts to look for better business alternatives to protect its own people,
Rep. Bill Keating, who represents the district including the tribal land, called the action “one of the most cruel and nonsensical acts I have seen since coming to Congress,” and “Interior Secretary David Bernhardt should be ashamed.” Keating, added: “In a time of national health and economic emergency, the secretary of the Interior should be reaching out to help all Native American tribes,”
US$1 billion casino project competes with Trump’s friends
The planned US$1 billion casino project from the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe would have competed for business with nearby Rhode Island casinos with strong ties to Trump, who once owned, then bankrupted, casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Trump last year attacked the proposed federal Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act, which sought to protect members’ “tribal homeland.” Trump blasted it as a “special interest casino bill” and used the name of a Native American hero as a slur against bill supporter Sen. Elizabeth Warren, slamming her once again as “Pocahontas.”
The tribe’s proposed casino would have been competition for two casinos in Rhode Island owned by Twin River Worldwide Holdings, whose president, George Papanier, was once a finance executive at the Trump Plaza casino hotel in Atlantic City, The Washington Post reported. According to reports, Matt Schlapp, chairman of the Conservative Political Action Committee, is a lobbyist for Twin River casinos, Keating noted. His wife, Mercedes Schlapp, is the White House strategic communications director.
Trump attacked Native American casinos in the past as unfair competition when his operations in Atlantic City were still functioning, at one point calling them the “biggest scandal ever.” At a congressional hearing in 1993, Trump insisted that tribal owners “don’t look like Indians to me. I might have more Indian blood than a lot of the so-called Indians that are trying to open up the reservations” to gambling.
The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe traces its ancestry to 1621
Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Chairman Cedric Cromwell, (Running Bear), said is a statement, last Friday, “On the very day that the United States has reached a record 100,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and our Tribe is desperately struggling with responding to this devastating pandemic — the Bureau of Indian Affairs informed me that the Secretary of the Interior has ordered that our reservation be disestablished and that our land be taken out of trust. Not since the termination era of the mid-twentieth century has a Secretary taken action to disestablish a reservation.
“Today’s action was cruel, and it was unnecessary. The Secretary is under no court order to take our land out of trust. He is fully aware that litigation to uphold our status as a tribe eligible for the benefits of the Indian Reorganization Act is ongoing.”
The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, which traces its ancestry to the Native Americans that shared a fall harvest meal with the Pilgrims in 1621, is losing reservation status for its more than 300 acres in Massachusetts, raising fears among Native American groups that other tribes could face the same fate under the Trump administration.
The Trump administration decision, if allowed to stand, would destroy much of what the tribe has worked to build in recent years on its sovereign lands, including establishing an independent judicial system, police force and Wampanoag-language school, as well as beginning construction on a roughly 50-unit tribal housing development and breaking ground on a US$1bn resort casino
Cromwell said “Talk about being blindsided. It was a sucker punch in the face from the bully you thought was your friend. I thought they were calling to see how we’re doing in all of this. To do it at 4pm on a Friday during a pandemic? That’s sneaky.”
As the Trump administration carries on undoing any kind of work done by President Barack Obama, the court action by the US Department of the Interior, which oversees Native American affairs, has acted upon a recent federal court decision to remove the special land designations bestowed in 2015 during the Obama administration. However, the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe retains its federal recognition which was earned in 2007.
Cromwell promised the tribe would continue its decades-long land fight: “These are the lands of our ancestors, and these will be the lands of our grandchildren. We will not rest until we are treated equally with other federally recognized tribes and the status of our reservation is confirmed.”
