Fisher says the deeded lands encompass all of what is today Taunton, Middleborough and Bridgewater, as well as parts of Duxbury.Ĭomplaints that the Mashpees are inflating their ancestral territory at the expense of other Native Americans aren’t new. Cedric Cromwell has denied the allegations, but has been ousted as chairman by tribe leaders.įisher, a 33-year-old Boston-area substance abuse counselor, said his tribe has no quarrel with the half of the tribe’s roughly 300-acre reservation that’s located in the town of Mashpee on Cape Cod, where the tribe has operated a government center and other tribe services for years.īut he contends the Taunton-area half, located some 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Mashpee, was never part of the rival tribe’s historic territory.įisher points to a book published last month by Jeremy Bangs, founder of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum in the Netherlands, which argues that a 1664 deed designated the lands as the “Titicut Reserve” and specifically set it aside for the Mattakeesets in perpetuity.

Meanwhile, the tribe’s prominent, longtime chairman was arrested last month on federal bribery charges in connection with the casino project.

A federal judge in June halted the move the Interior Department has appealed. The Cape Cod-based tribe was granted a more than 300-acre reservation in the waning months of the Obama administration in 2016, but the Trump administration moved to revoke the reservation in what the tribe and its supporters complained was a dangerous precedent.

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