Native News Online is an independent, Indigenous-led newsroom with a crucial mission:  We want to change the narrative about Indian Country. Levi Rickert (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) is the founder, publisher and editor of Native News Online. As newsrooms across the country continue to shrink, coverage of Indian Country is more important than ever, and we are committed to filling this ever-present hole in journalism.Because we believe everyone in Indian Country deserves equal access to news and commentary pertaining to them, their relatives and their communities, the story you’ve just finished was free — and we want to keep it that way, for all readers. The federal government had also sought records from the tribe as part of its 2007 investigation into Abramoff and his colleagues. Independent presidential candidate Mark Charles (Navajo) said about he order on Saturday evening: "When one President (Obama) grants a Native nation rights to lands and the next President (Trump) "disestablishes" those same rights, that is the Doctrine of Discovery at play. Rule by the overseers resulted in the loss of additional Wampanoag lands. They were challenged by the Pocasset Wampanoag, which was also seeking an agreement for a casino. Since the September 2018 Interior ruling, the tribe has been involved in two separate lawsuits to resolve the issue. It had become landless because of colonial and local Massachusetts town actions against it. [24][25] Marshall was later implicated in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. 312) to Congress to provide the Tribe with federal recognition, announced that he was disappointed with the news. In September 2015, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, an agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior, approved the tribe's application to take 321 acres of land into federal trust to create the Mashpee Wampanoag reservation; this included 170 acres of land the tribe already controlled in Mashpee and also gave the tribe jurisdiction over 150 newly acquired acres in Taunton. [26], In February 2016, a group of Taunton property owners filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the Mashpee Wampanoag's plans to build a gaming casino on the tribe's land in Taunton. In 1976 the tribe filed a landmark land claim lawsuit, suing the Town of Mashpee for the return of ancestral homelands. Native News Online is an independent, Indigenous-led newsroom with a crucial mission: Trump is Wrong About Columbus and Those Who Seek to Celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Biden’s Promise to Reinstate the White House Tribal Nations Conferences is Good for Indian Country, Trump Calls Those Who Seek to Replace Columbus Day 'Extremists' in Columbus Day Proclamation, Native News Online Wants to Know Your Views on the 2020 Presidential Election, Pence Denies Systemic Racism During VP Debate, Native Women Show Resilience as Frontline Workers Combat Wage Gaps, Indigenous Peoples’ Day: A Call to Higher Consciousness. For eight straight years the Obama administration hosted an annual White House tribal nations conference. Cedric Cromwell, the tribal chair, said this action is "unnecessary" and "cruel. 1870-present time: Mashpee Tribe maintains continuous title to and possession of key tracts of land within the historic Mashpee reservation. This decision by the Secretary of Interior could also have been influenced by the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit’s ruling in a suit by residents of the Mashpee area against the tribe, that the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe did not meet the definition of an Indian tribe under the IRA and that the Department of Interior lacked the authority to hold the tribe’s land in trust when it it did so in 2015. In 1629 the Mashpee Wampanoag, along with eight other Wampanoag tribes granted “Indian Title” to the King of England to a tract of land that would become Plymouth Colony.