New Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Chair Not Gung-Ho on Continuing Casino Effort

Freshly inaugurated Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council Chairman Brian Weeden isn’t as enthusiastic on a gambling casino resort hotel as his predecessors.

Weeden pound out ternary others lowest month to leading the Massachusetts Bay Colony tribe. The berth became vacant after former Chair Cedric Oliver Cromwell was ousted from office staff after being indicted on federal charges in an alleged bribery intrigue related to to the casino push.

Speaking with Boston Public Radio this week, Weeden says the cassino isn’t sledding to pass water or break off the tribe, which was incorporated inwards 1870.

I guess a cassino is a little put down inward the bucket when we’re talking around services and other economic evolution the tribe tin do,” Weeden stated. “Casinos are just the easiest thing for tribes to depart at. However, what’s supposed to follow sluttish has been really challenging for our tribe and our people, so i guess it’s best to simply reevaluate everything and see what the community wants to do.”

The Mashpee Wampanoags are 1 of II federally recognised tribes inward Massachusetts, the other beingness the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head on Martha’s Vineyard.

Casino Stalled

The Mashpee Wampanoag folk has been inward a years-long fighting to win permission to build a $1 1000000000 integrated casino resort in Taunton. The caseful has been repeatedly held upwardly in land and federal courts.

The primary feather egress is whether 151 acres of bring down in Taunton the tribe acquired to a greater extent than a decennium ago qualifies to be taken into federal trust.

In 2015, under the Obama administration, the Interior Department said the earth so qualified to follow deemed sovereign. But below the Trump administration, the DOI reversed that determination and removed the Mashpee soil from the federal registrar.

Malaysian gambling casino heavyweight Genting Group was partnered with the federation of tribes to monetary fund the $1 billion development. The 2 make since terminated their arrangement. But Genting says the tribe owes it $400,000 to cover version costs associated with the resort’s early development.

Healing After Scandals

Cromwell is accused past the FBI of receiving nearly $58,000 inwards cash in and in-kind benefits from an architectural truehearted that was awarded a $5 trillion design contract for the Taunton resort. Cromwell denies the allegations in the on-going lawsuit.

Nonetheless, Ironsides was the s Mashpee chairman to face federal charges. His predecessor, John Glenn Marshall, was accused of putrefaction for embezzling $400,000 from the tribe. John Marshall was sentenced to deuce-ace years inwards prison house in 2009.

The community of interests needs to heal, and I imagine that i of the problems of our former leadership was the disconnect with them, and not hearing to the people,” Weeden said. “That’s something that we contrive on restoring past hearing to our clan mothers, our spiritual leaders, our chief, our medication man, all of our elders. That’s what we’re trying to do with restoring the unity of the folk and simply leading from the heart.”

As for economical prosperity without a casino, Weeden has a plan. The chairman wants to make a cervid farm on the tribe’s land, sell venison to local distributors, and bronze the cervid skin to piddle and sell traditional clothing. Another thought is to black market canoe tours on the Mashpee rivers and waterways.