PROVIDENCE ― The leader of the Narragansett Indian Tribe is objecting to the transfer of 255 acres in Bristol to a Pokanoket tribal trust and to the purchase of nearly 40 acres in Tiverton by the Pocasset Pokanoket Land Trust.
Chief Sachem Anthony Dean “Crawling Wolf” Stanton emphasized that the Narragansett are the only federally recognized tribe in Rhode Island, and he said they should have been considered for the land and conferred with before any such deals were made.
“There should be a process,” Stanton told the Globe. “These social clubs and splinter groups can’t come out of nowhere and claim to be tribes.”
In November, Brown University announced it was transferring 255 acres on Mount Hope Bay to the Pokanoket preservation trust, marking one of the nation’s most successful attempts by Indigenous people to reclaim ancestral lands.
The transfer represented the culmination of an agreement reached in 2017 when Pokanoket tribal members and their supporters occupied the property for more than a month. The land is part of a 375-acre site that the Haffenreffer family donated to Brown University in 1955, and it includes the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology research center, which will move to Providence.
Stanton said the Narragansett were “detribalized” in the 1800s, and it took almost 100 years to get the recognition back in 1983. To secure federal recognition, the Narragansett had to submit 27 volumes of data “to prove our existence,” he said.
But now, Stanton said, the Pokanoket “are getting land and benefits we have never even dreamed of” without going through that process and determining who is a member of the tribe. “It just doesn’t make any kind of sense,” he said. “They walk in off the street and get everything.”
Stanton said the Pokanoket have neither federal nor state recognition as a tribe.
“We are not social clubs. We are tribes,” he said. “We have a history, a culture, and tradition. And we have had it since time immemorial.”
Stanton said Brown University officials told him the Narragansett Indian Tribe was never considered for the land. But he said the Narragansett long occupied the land that is now Rhode Island, as well as land in six other states.
“We are the Indigenous people of this land,” he said. “History will show this is Narragansett land.”
Brown University could not be reached for comment Monday.
Raymond L. “Two Hawks” Watson, who helped organize the 2017 occupation of the Bristol land as director general of the Federation of Aboriginal Nations of the Americas, said he honors and respects Stanton.
But Watson, who is the executive director of the Center for Indigenous Peoples Rights, disagreed with the claim that the site is Narragansett land. “Culturally and historically, they are Pokanoket lands,” he said.
Watson, who is Narragansett but not enrolled with the tribe, also disagreed with the idea that the Pokanoket just walked in “off the street.”
“All of us have done our best to maintain our identity as the individual tribal nations that we are,” he said. “The Narragansetts were blessed enough to be acknowledged by the state and federal government.” But, he said, “Federal recognition isn’t the only means by which a tribe can advance its sovereign rights.”
Also, Watson said, “Regardless of how a tribe gets its land back, we should be celebrating and honoring a tribe getting its land back.”
Stanton also objected to the purchase of 38.27 acres in Tiverton by the Pocasset Pokanoket Land Trust, which received $40,000 from the state Department of Environmental Management’s Local Open Space Grant Program to put toward the $60,000 purchase. The remaining money was provided by Bally’s Tiverton Hotel and Casino.
Stanton said the Narragansett have had a long relationship with the Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe based in Fall River, Mass., but he said the land trust purchase involved a “splinter group” that the Narragansett do not recognize.
The Department of Environmental Management declined to comment, spokesperson Kimberly Keough said.
Donna Page, chairwoman and medicine woman of the Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe, said her tribe received recognition from Massachusetts in 1994, and she agreed that the land trust involves a “splinter group” that lacks state recognition.
The purchase of the Tiverton land represents a “wrongdoing,” Page said. “It’s an injustice on my ancestors and my tribal history. People keep stepping on us like we are the stones. We have documentation that goes back since the early contact (with the Colonists) period.”
But Chief George Spring Buffalo, chairman of the Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe of the Pokanoket Nation, rejected the “splinter group” label and said his first reaction to Stanton and Page is “to laugh at both of them.”
“If you are a chief, you should know your history,” Spring Buffalo said of Stanton, “and if you know your history, you know all of that land was called Pocasset before it was ever Rhode Island or Massachusetts.”
Spring Buffalo has called the Tiverton land “the ancestral heartbeat of the Pocasset Pokanoket people.” He said the forest was the site of The Battle of Pocasset Swamp during King Philip’s War, in which both Sachem Weetamoo and Metacomet, the leader of the Pokanoket Wampanoag people who was also known as King Philip, fought.
He said that in 1709 the tribe traded the forest for the land that makes up its Watuppa Pond Reservation in Fall River, Mass. “Our reservation goes back to the king and queen,” he said. “We are a Colonial-era tribe.”
Spring Buffalo said Donna Page represents a clan, not a whole tribe, and he said Massachusetts didn’t just recognize the Page clan, it recognized a much larger group of Pocasset descendants.
“You are going to have these haters come against you,” he said. “It’s sad when they see you moving forward and they try to mislead people with misinformation and set up controversy.”
Spring Buffalo said he is happy the Pokanoket Indian Tribe has secured the 255 acres in Bristol, and he is willing to work with them. But he agreed that the Narragansett Indian Tribe should have been included among the groups that will have access to that land.
The deed of conveyance states that the Pokanoket “shall at all times and in perpetuity provide and maintain access to the lands and waters of the property to all members of all tribes historically part of the Pokanoket Nation/Confederacy, and to all members of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the Assonet Band of the Wampanoag Nation, the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe, and the Pocasset Tribe of the Pokanoket Nation.”
Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at edward.fitzpatrick@globe.com. Follow him @FitzProv.