MASHPEE, Mass. — On Massachusetts’ Cape Cod, a region where beachfront
homes sell for upwards of $400,000, the Mashpee Wampanoag run their tribal
housing program on an annual budget of $70,000 comprised of grants from
private foundations and innumerable fund-raisers, according to Program
Director Alice Lopez.

Despite limited funds, the Wampanoag Housing Program in the last year
helped five first-time tribal homebuyers learn the financial skills
necessary to qualify for affordable housing; provided services to homeless
tribal members, some of whom have been camped outside the program’s office
for the summer; and won a grant from the Haymarket Foundation to operate a
cultural education program to assist non-tribal social service agencies
develop and provide appropriate services to Indians.

“We are connected to this land,” said Lopez. “Our ancestors are buried
here; our children were born here. We are the caretakers of this land and
we need to stay in Mashpee. We are part of the ecosystem. But if we can’t
stay housed, we can’t stay.”

About one-quarter of the 1,500-member tribe still live in Mashpee, a small
town (population 14,347) that is just a tiny part of the tribe’s original
homeland, which included three-quarters of what is now Massachusetts and
part of southern Rhode Island. Many other tribal members live in New
Bedford just across the Bourne and Sagamore bridges, where rent is somewhat
cheaper.

The first legal agreement between the Wampanoags and whites was signed in
1621, when Massasoit negotiated a treaty with the Plymouth Colony. The
tribe fought on the side of the American Revolutionaries; in 1789, the
Mashpee Tribe came under U.S. federal jurisdiction. The tribe was assured
that it would “always and forever be able to call Mashpee our home.” But in
1849, when responsibility for tribes was transferred from the War
Department to the BIA in the newly-formed Department of Interior, the
Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe was inadvertently left off the list.

As a result, in 1870 the government took the tribe’s land, allotted some of
it to individual families, and made the rest available for purchase. Often
tribal members could not pay their property taxes, and so forfeited their
land. Nonetheless, until the 1970s, all town offices in Mashpee were held
by tribal members.

Then, in the mid-’70s, Cape Cod real estate started to skyrocket. As prices
went up, so did property taxes, forcing more tribal members to sell their
homes or part of their land.

As more non-Indians moved in, the tribe lost control of the town
government. In response, they formed the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Tribal
Council in 1974 and requested federal recognition as an American Indian
tribe.

Nearly three decades later, they are still waiting: but a federal judge
ruled in July that the BIA must put the tribe’s application on the active
consideration list by October 2005 and must make a final decision by March
2007.

Lopez said that the tribe has worked closely with the BIA to make sure it
meets all seven criteria for federal recognition, and she is confident that
the final decision will be positive.

Once the tribe has federal status, it will become eligible for federal
housing funds, which are now denied.

In addition to the remaining individual allotments, the tribe has 55 acres
of land restored to it by the town of Mashpee in the 1970s. The tribe also
has 62 acres donated by Willowbend Corp. Inc., a golf course developer with
which the tribe has often been in conflict. When the tribe is granted
federal recognition, it plans to request that those lands be put into
trust.

Once the zoning is changed, the tribe will be able to build badly needed
houses on the Willowbend land but not on the 55-acre town-donated site,
which is deed-restricted to prevent any development.

Lopez estimated that the tribe needs at least 60 new houses right now, and
many existing homes are both overcrowded and in need of major repairs.

She is more than optimistic that her tribe will receive federal
recognition, restore its language, defend its children in a
sometimes-hostile public school system, take care of its elders, continue
to exercise its customs and express its values on its ancestral lands.

Robert Peters, a Mashpee Wampanoag poet who appeared on stage with Lopez at
an Aug. 22 poetry reading at Club Passim in Cambridge to benefit the
Wampanoag Housing Program, perhaps said it best: “It is not enough to have
a place here when we die … We need a place in the world so we can live.”