Tribe Wins Historic Land Suit

Judge Angel Kelley has ruled against the Littlefield’s of Taunton who sued the federal government in an effort to prevent the tribe from building a casino in Taunton. The judge’s decision in U.S. District on Friday, February 10th granted summary judgment to the U.S. Department of the Interior, which had placed 321 acres of land in Mashpee and Taunton into trust.

 Although establishment of the reservation returned only a small fraction of our ancestral territory, Chairman Brian Weeden said in a statement that “this reservation is crucial to our ability to exercise our sovereign right to self-governance, to preserve our language and culture, and to provide for our people.”

 The anti-casino plaintiffs argued in the suit filed in February 2022 that the Biden administration’s decision affirming the tribe’s reservation was arbitrary, capricious, and unlawful because 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.

 They also said that Taunton was not part of Mashpee Wampanoag historical domain.

 The judge’s decision, however, said that the “historical record indicates that the Mashpee have had a robust connection to the designated lands for over four centuries,” and have called the area of southeastern Massachusetts home for thousands of years long before their first contact with Europeans, including the Pilgrims in 1620.

 The decision was the latest in a yearslong legal battle spanning three presidential administrations over tribal land.

 Associated Press