METRO – 04/09/2020: Donald Trump knows how to pull a tasteless move. Mr. President and his administration plan to take a land that belonged to Native Americans for more than 12,000 years. POTUS revoked their reservation status to enable this.
US Interior Department disestablished the reservation after the 321 acres of land were taken out of the federal trust. The land belongs to Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. The order imposed by Donald Trump no longer allows the tribe to govern their territory. Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe lived on these lands long before the United States of America was a thing.
This decision didn’t sit well with the US Congress. Eighteen members of the house sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Charles Schumer. Their goal is to pass a bill that will allow Native Americans to continue using their lands as they please and to restore the status of reservation they previously held.
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The letter states: “It would simply ensure the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe is no longer vulnerable to having its land taken out of trust. And the tribe is treated equally alongside other Native American tribes so it can care for its members and protect its legacy.”
In days after the order was passed, the US Interior Department and Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe agreed on a 45-day period that will see things settled before the land is taken out of the trust.
If the order isn’t revoked in the 45t-day period, Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe has a lot to lose. The tribe would lose their Wampanoag-language school, their police force, and their independent judicial system.
From a financial standpoint, they would lose rights to a $1 billion casino that the tribe was planning to build, and also the work on tribal house development would be halted.
The action was further condemned in the latter part of the same letter: “The circumstances in which the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe now find themselves only serves as a reminder of the history of unfair treatment by the federal government…the current situation further demonstrates the systemic way the Mashpee Wampanoag people have suffered unnecessary and indescribable cruelty.”
Source: metro.co.uk
Nina Smith 