SUTTON, Mass. — Nipmuc Nation applications for federal recognition will have to wait another seven months while the BIA’s Office of Federal Acknowledgement (OFA) focuses on the petition of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, federal officers told the Nipmucs in a letter released by the tribe on Sept. 17.
“We have done absolutely everything humanly possible to help the federal government meet its own deadlines throughout this arduous and exacting process,” said a statement from the Nipmuc Nation Tribal Council. “Now our members have been disappointed once again.
“More important, however, is the fact that we remain confident of the positive final determination that will bring our people the sovereign self-sufficiency providing improved quality of life for generations to come.”
Walter Vickers, chairman of the Nipmuc council, learned of the delay in a Sept. 16 letter from R. Lee Fleming, director of OFA, the former Branch of Acknowledgement and Research. A decision on petitions from the Nipmuc Nation and the rival Webster/Dudley Band of Chaubunagungamaug Nipmuck Indians was due Sept. 26 under a previous extension requested by OFA.
In the last days of the Clinton Administration, the BIA had given preliminary recognition to the Nipmuc Nation while turning down the Chaubunagunamaug band. Incoming Bush White House officials suspended the decision, and BIA head Neal McCaleb later reversed it. A voluminous new submission by the Nipmucs raised hopes that the impending decision would be positive. But OFA cited the new material, which it called “by far larger than ordinary” as one reason for the delay.
The Office also complained that since the BIA reorganization memo took effect July 27, it has been “physically moving its offices to the South Interior Building, which was not anticipated when the schedule was established.”
Wrote Fleming, “This physical move of offices and all Federal acknowledgement petitions and documents have absorbed substantial time on the part of team members, one of whom has had the lead in move preparations.”
OFA also invoked a court-approved schedule for its work on the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation petition. Fleming said the office would begin work on the Schaghticoke final determination on Sept. 29, toward a release date of Jan. 29, 2004.
Under this plan, he wrote, the office would continue “work on the Nipmuc(k) as time and resources allow” and issue final determination on their two petition on May 1, 2004.
A Nipmuc spokesman observed that OFA’s BAR predecessor had previously cited its work on the Nipmucs as a reason for delaying the Schaghticoke decision.
Schaghticoke Indians have also submitted rival petitions. Residents of its hillside 480-acre state reservation in Kent, Conn., reject the leadership of Schaghticoke Tribal Nation leader Richard Velky and have even obtained a court injunction effectively barring him from the reservation.
The Nipmuc Nation, according to its official statement, “was one of the original people of the northeast, with aboriginal lands stretching from southern New Hampshire to Springfield, Mass. and into Rhode Island and Connecticut.”
It first filed its recognition petition, numbered 69A, in 1980. The BIA placed it on “active status” in 1996, “meaning a final determination was first due in 1997.”
