@Falsedawn @Dirt Road Soldier
So, let me first preface any discussion of what's happening with the Wampanoag by making it clear that i'm not a legal historian; my expertise is in education history. Native legal history is incredibly fucking complicated, but it's definitely a part of everything I do so i'll step in here and try to give some insight into what's happening with the Wampanoag, and what might happen to other tribes as a result.
The initial thing to wrangle with here is the concept of having land/resources "held in federal trust", and what it means to be a "recognized tribe".
Native nations- those that the government legally acknowledges as existing (recognizes), are held in trust by the federal government. Here is a solid link that breaks it down in laymans terms
https://www.1tribal.com/native-american-trust-lands/ This part in particular is highly relevant to what is happening with the Wampanoag: "The responsibility of the trust is recognized in the Snyder Act of 1921, which requires the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to use money given by Congress for the benefit, care, and assistance of Indians from the United States. This includes providing health care and education to the federally recognized tribes which are not welfare,
but are the present day manifestation of their treaty rights." There are a very great many tribes out there that do not "qualify" to be recognized, which means that, as far as the federal government is concerned, they are not Native at all. There is no relationship between them and the government, legal or otherwise. You cannot have reservations, you cannot receive anything and treaty rights cease to exist. You see, having land held in trust, which is a function of treaty rights, means that the government has to uphold their end of whatever the deal is. Reservation land comes with reservation money to run a government, have police, build housing, fund schools, and do many of the functions essential to any kind of functional community. By losing their trust status, the Wampanoag have basically had their entire tribal government completely bankrupted. Furthermore, and perhaps more deeply problematic, is that dire situation of having every tribal member suddenly thrown into the state tax and resource system. Much of tribal land is a mix of communally-yet-kind-of-privately-owned, with complicated ownership titles resulting from generations of dealing with allotment parceling. It is also typically very heavily mandated for actual public use, and economic development has a lot of requirements that it support all tribal families (although there can be a shit lot of corruption here, but that's a separate rant). The entire reason for the lawsuit to remove their trust status is because they were building a casino which would have contributed greatly to supporting tribal housing development in particular, and reduce the need for federal funding for tribal land and government functions. The average person that owns land will not, i'm assuming, be able to pay their very suddenly and probably high taxes on it, and much will have to be sold off to people outside the community. And even if that isn't so much the case with the Wampanoag, it most certainly is in other parts of the country where, historically, a process called "termination" resulted in exactly that and drastically reduced tribal land holdings and was an abject, enormous, colossal blow to indigenous quality of life.
So what was/is termination? How can someone be an Indian, and then not be an Indian? Well, the answer to that question is, as a Native person, your ethnic identity is legally determined by whether the federal government deems it so. For example, i'm Native, but not a registered tribal member. I have never submitted documentation to the government proving my ancestry, and as such receive no benefits from either of my tribes, or the gov. But, if you are a registered tribal member, it means that the government-and your tribe- have accepted that you meet the requirements to qualify as a Native person legally. This works on the individual scale, and also the tribal scale.
During the 1950's, following generation after generation of Native people on reservations living in squalor, "refusing to integrate", and the overall failures of past laws to actually raise the quality of life for Native people, the idea emerged that the best thing to do for many (but not all) tribes was to separate them permanently from having a protected legal relationship with the government. This meant that the government would no longer fulfill their treaty obligations at all, all tribal lands for terminated tribes would cease to be held in federal trust, and that, functionally, your tribe would no longer exist. Specifically, many cited the failures of the Dawes Act, which I won't get bogged down with here (it really fucking sucked, and created the allotment system that functionally reduced the size of Native lands with each successive generation).
With termination came enormous loss of land and resources, coupled with the absence of essentially all federal recognition. Tribes that had treaty rights to land, water, timber, fish, etc. suddenly found that those rights no longer existed. State and federal entities stepped in and took/bought/coerced/stole large tracts of land and resources from terminated tribes, some of which were partially compensated and all of which lost their protected legal status. Sure, some of this was done under the guise of "improving" tribal life by making them self sufficient, but in reality it was an enormous land and resource grab. And, while many tribes were terminated, the actual legal language of termination changed from tribe to tribe, as there were a number of separate termination bills to deal with individual or groups of tribes, and some were exempt from this process altogether.
Did tribes try to fight this? Many did. Some supported it, but ultimately most terminated tribes turned around immediately and began demanding that the government restore their federal recognition, and give back their trust land and treaty rights. This process became known as "restoration". A terminated tribe could be restored by act of congress, if congress could be convinced to do so. Ever since then, tribes have been fighting for restoration, with many success but also many communities simply ceasing to exist in the eyes of the government. I personally know people from terminated tribes, and yes they are still here lol. There were, however, many.. catches to being restored. Something common here in Oregon is for tribes to be "confederated"; this means that, when restored, a group of tribes were returned to protected legal status as a group instead of individual nations, and given a new group name. The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, for example, did not actually exist as such prior to restoration. And that bring me to, personally, my biggest fear with the Wampanoag situation.
So, the Wampanoag have always, uh, existed. But, since "existence" is legally determined by whether or not the federal government says so, they are in trouble. In 1934, something passed called the Indian Reorganization Act. It was largely in response to the failures of the Dawes Act, but also was a giant turd as well. It accounted, essentially, for the official tribal groups that the government was willing to deal with anymore. Think about it as a list, and the Wampanoag were not on the list. They certainly existed, but didn't make the list. And, since they weren't on that list, they were never actually formally terminated like most other tribes. Again, I have to stress that the legal relationships at work here are always highly complicated on the individual tribal level, but I have to speak in broad terms. Nonetheless, they fought for ages to be restored just like any other tribe and actually have their treaty rights and tribal land put into the trust status that it should be. It wasn't until very recently that they succeeded, and finally got tribal land put into trust. They immediately went to work building tribal housing using federal trust dollars, as well as putting those resources to work supporting the community in all manner of ways. And they wanted to build a casino to actually have something to support themselves with. Unfortunately, as any Native person knows, the law is an arbitrary thing that changes depending on the needs of those that write it. Long story short, a rival casino interest from elsewhere in the state (not Native) got people to sue. At first, everyone was like "uh, they can't stop us from building a casino on tribal land". But then it took a sinistere turn; in order to stop them from building a casino, the lawsuit argued that they couldn't build one because they had no right to have land held in federal trust at all. It was revolting, and totally fucked, and of course it worked. The Mashpee are in a critical financial crisis now as a result, with unfinished tribal housing projects sitting fallow and government services crippled. Like, it bankrupted them. Furthermore, losing trust status means losing everything that comes with it, so now god knows what the fuck they are going to do. The shit keeping me up at night, though, is that
the lawsuit successfully argued that they could not have land held in trust because they weren't a recognized tribe during the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, which has put shudders down the spine of many tribal nations that have even the remotest chance of it being argued similarly against them. I have a dreadfully sinking feeling, and have since this whole shitshow went down, they this administration is going to try and target confederated tribes next. Really, any tribe that was restored after termination is a potential target, with the way the language of the lawsuit was argued. Or even beyond there, who the fuck knows.
Anyway, this post is like 90000 words long, so i'll call it for now. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough, this is a confusing and maddeningly convoluted topic. And again, somewhat outside my expertise. I do have a whole lot of references and readings if you guys are interested. I can definitely hook you up with some good books and articles on the subject by people that know a lot more about it than I do.
