The Bureau of Indian Affairs told the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe on Friday that their reservation will be disestablished and their land taken out of trust, per an order from the secretary of the interior.
In an email to the leadership of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, Jean-Luc Pierite, head of the North American Indian Center of Boston, called the move an existential crisis for all tribes federally recognized after 1934. The move without a court order signals that reservations across the United States could be taken out of trust at the discretion of the secretary of the interior, Pierite said.
Conner Swanson, a spokesperson from the Department of the Interior, said the tribe remains federally recognized, and that there was a court decision mandating the department's action.
"We know that Congress is the only group that has a plenary authority to do that. So the court did not issue a mandate," Cromwell said. "So this is very nefarious activity by the [interior secretary]."
Pierite said the interior secretary's move is based on the 2009 Supreme Court ruling Carcieri v. Salazar, which established that the federal government cannot take land into trust for American Indian tribes recognized after the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.