(CN) — More than 300 acres of Massachusetts land will go into a trust for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, after a First Circuit panel on Tuesday upheld a federal judge's ruling albeit on “somewhat different reasoning.”
In the 35-page decision penned by U.S. Circuit Judge Sandra Lynch, a Bill Clinton appointee, the court found that the federal government was entitled to give the land to the tribe under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. U.S. Circuit Judges Julie Rikelman and Lara Montecalvo, both Joe Biden appointees, joined the opinion.
“The Secretary of the Interior may, under the IRA, ‘acquire land and hold it in trust “for the purpose of providing land for Indians,”’” Lynch wrote, citing the 2009 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Carcieri v. Salazar.
Tuesday’s ruling stems from a challenge by residents of East Taunton, Massachusetts, who appealed a federal judge's decision to uphold the Interior Department’s 2021 finding that the tribe was under federal jurisdiction in 1934.
Lawyers for the residents argued in front of the First Circuit panel this month that the tribe was actually not under federal jurisdiction at that time, and therefore ineligible to take land into trust per the 89-year-old legislation.
“A federal court jury determined that the Mashpees gave up their tribal organization and became citizens of Massachusetts in 1869, and were not thereafter a tribe in Massachusetts,” the residents argued in their appellate brief.
In their arguments, the residents compared the Mashpees to the Narragansett Tribe, another tribe historically located in southern New England. They also cited Carcieri v. Salazar, which found that the Narragansett Tribe was not under federal jurisdiction in 1934.
Using that ruling, the residents tried to argue that the Mashpees were also not under federal jurisdiction at that time. They claimed the Narragansetts’ historical record is indistinguishable from the Mashpees from the 1600s until now.
But Lynch, who notably called that claim “nonsense” during the Oct. 4 arguments, found the argument rested on many faulty premises and misconstrued Carcieri.
“The appellants point to some surface similarities between the Mashpees and the Narragansetts,” Lynch continued. “But those alleged similarities do not require Interior to conclude that the Narragansetts' history is indistinguishable from the Mashpees' in all relevant respects, and much less that the two tribes' administrative records are identical.”
Placing land into a trust for the benefit of a tribe like the Mashpees is one of the main functions of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a federal agency aimed at assisting tribes around the United States. The agency is listed as a co-defendant in the case, alongside the U.S. Department of the Interior, Secretary of the Interior Debra Haaland, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland and the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.
“Trust acquisitions provide tribes the ability to enhance housing opportunities for their citizens,” the Bureau of Indian Affairs writes on its website.
The goal of these trust acquisitions is to offset the damage done to American tribes after the General Allotment Act of 1887, which allowed the president to break up reservation land.
“Though the General Allotment Act was enacted and then repudiated long ago, tribes continue to feel the devastating effects of the policy that divided tribal lands, allotted parcels to individual tribal members and provided for the public sale of any surplus tribal lands remaining after allotment,” the Bureau of Indian Affairs writes.
The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday’s ruling.
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