When Danielle Hill heard March 27 that her tribe’s reservation would be taken out of trust, she felt upset and resentful.

She wanted to find someone to blame. Instead, she decided to light a fire and pray.

Hill held a Facebook Live event and invited tribal members to stop by in solidarity while maintaining social distance.

“We had that fire going for 20 days, all day and all night,” Hill said. “And people did come over.”

“This would be a time in any normal circumstance where we would be getting together and talking about it ... going to one another’s houses, or we would host some sort of healing fire,” she said.

Wampanoag people hold sacred prayer fires, often for days at a time. They throw in tobacco, which carries their prayers up into the spirit world, and sage, which cleanses the air and the spirit.

“I felt better,” she said. “There was a lot of release there. It’s out of an individual’s control. I felt a level of healing that happened from our prayer fire.”

Hill initiated the Sacred Fire Prayer Protest, in which tribal members and nonnatives were encouraged to light a fire or candle in support of the tribe and keep it lit for one to four days, just in time for the tribe’s court hearing. Hundreds of people across the country participated in the Sacred Fire Prayer Protest.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia held a hearing last month on the tribe’s motion for a preliminary injunction in a bid to preserve its land in trust status. Paul Friedman indicated that a ruling could be only a few days or weeks away.

The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe asked for the federal court to issue an emergency order that would postpone Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s decision. Both parties, the tribe and the Department of Interior, had agreed to a 45-day pause period.

By Jessica Hill/Cape Cod Times