DIGHTON — Chief Gray Wolf Heart stood packing portraits of the all the chiefs who’ve served before him.

“We have a lot of good memories here. We have a lot of emotion involved in this building and the town, but we’ve been asked to leave, so we’ll be leaving with pride and dignity,” said Chief Gray Wolf Heart — whose non-Native name is Leroy Crossman — as he stood in the Grange Hall next door to Town Hall on Somerset Avenue.

In a letter dated Aug. 8, selectmen, who double as the town’s Board of Health, sent the Dighton Intertribal Council a letter telling them they must vacate the Grange Hall by Sept. 12 because the space is needed for town offices.

“It was a difficult decision. They’ve been good neighbors next door for years,” Selectman Nancy Goulart said Thursday.

But the town recently approved the creation of a separate Board of Health from selectmen and hiring of a town administrator, and Town Hall is already cramped, she said.

“We can’t just keep putting more people into Town Hall,” she said.

The Dighton Intertribal Council is a non-profit organization with members from around the area, including Dighton, Taunton, Raynham, Berkley, Fall River, Somerset, New Bedford, Freetown, Lakeville, Middleboro, Attleboro, Falmouth, Warren, Rhode Island, and as far away as Florida, according to Roger Desrosiers, an elder on the Intertribal Council whose Native name is Gray Fox.

Crossman said he has already begun the process of searching for a new meeting hall but does not have anything definite lined up yet, he said. One thing is certain. With or without a meeting hall, the Council will continue.

“They put us out of the building but they won’t put us out of existence. We have signs on our cars that say, ‘We’re still here,’” Crossman said Thursday.

A proud tradition

The Intertribal Council, which has 80 to 90 members, Crossman said, has been the sole occupant of the historic white wooden building at 1111 Somerset Ave. since at least 1991 when the Council signed a five-year lease with the town. The town charges the Council no rent but the Council pays its own utilities and insurance and takes care of routine maintenance on the building.

The Grange is a simple structure, with wide plank floors and high ceilings in its one large open meeting hall, where sun streams in the many windows. Its wooden benches are draped in colorful blankets and portraits of past Council chiefs line the walls.

Within those walls, there has been much laughter, music and conversation, members said. Council members hold monthly socials and plan the Council’s three annual pow wows held in the adjacent field behind Town Hall every spring, summer and fall for decades. And on Sunday afternoons, Chief Gray Wolf Heart teaches Native crafts spread out on the long tables in the meeting room free of charge, he said. All are welcome.

“We are Native. We are proud and servient to the creator and if the creator doesn’t want us to be here then we don’t want to be here. I believe we’ll find a better place,” Crossman, a Dighton resident, said Thursday.

Bursting at the seams

The Aug. 8 letter was a follow-up to a meeting between selectmen and members of the Council on Aug. 3 at which town officials notified the Council of the decision to use the Grange Hall for town office space, Goulart said.

According to the letter, the original lease expired on Dec. 17, 1996 and was never re-newed, rendering the Intertribal Council a “tenant at will.”

“Due to the town’s need for additional office and meeting space as discussed during our meeting, this letter is to officially notify you that the Dighton Intertribal Council must vacate the Grange Hall by September 12, 2016,” the letter states.

Goulart said Town Hall, erected in the 1970s, is bursting at the seams due to population and construction growth and the resulting expansion of town departments.

“We don’t foresee an addition to Town Hall any time soon and that’s the only office space available on the same campus as Town Hall,” Goulart said Thursday.

She said an addition to Town Hall would be costly and selectmen would like to keep all offices in close proximity to each other for the convenience of residents in need of town services. Grange Hall is the only viable option, she said.

When Town Hall was built, a single person served as town clerk, treasurer and collector and that person had one assistant. The town has grown so much it now takes five people to perform those duties, she said.

And that’s just one example of how the town has grown.

Down the corridor, the building inspector and veterans agent are forced to share an office, but that’s a problem when the veterans agent has to hold a confidential meeting with a client, she said.

And then there’s the planned addition of a separate Board of Health and new town administrator, all of whom will need work space, she said.

“With the change in the workload, it’s tight in there,” Goulart said.

No decisions have been made yet as to which departments will move from Town Hall into the Grange Hall, which previously served as Dighton’s town hall many years ago, Goulart said.

End of an era

In addition to the eviction notice, the Aug. 8 letter also rescinded permission for the Council to hold its October pow wow behind Town Hall based on a health code violation found at the July pow wow, Goulart said.

Goulart said the eviction and the pow wows are completely separate issues and the health code violation in no way played a role in the notice to vacate.

Because the July pow wow included a food vendor, the town’s health inspector had to inspect the site, Goulart said. When he did, he found a “slop bucket” with human waste in one of the campers, she said. That is a health code violation, she said. Portable toilets were set up on the grounds for use by anyone involved in the pow wow, she said.

“That is a serious violation,” Goulart said.

A few years ago, the town had also received a report that someone involved in one of the pow wows had dumped raw sewage at the back of the field behind town hall, she said.

In addition, she said, the town had given the Council permission to plug into Town Hall electricity for the PA system in July. But someone in one of the campers also hooked up to the electricity, as well as the building’s outdoor water spigot, without permission, she said.

“We feel that based on health code violations and demands placed on town employees and officials prior to and during your last two events, it would be in the best interests of the town to take this action,” the Aug. 8 letter states regarding withdrawing permission to hold the October pow wow.

Crossman said the Council has held dozens of pow wows over the years and has always made every effort to be considerate and respectful.

He said the incident a few years ago took place at a pow wow that was not hosted by the Council. The hosts did not have their own insurance, so he allowed them to use the Council’s and was held responsible, as a result, for the incident, he said.

As to the incident in July, he said it involved an elderly, disabled member of the Council whose husband was planning to empty the pail into the portable toilet in the morning and the camper was nowhere near the food area. He did not consider it a health hazard but an allowance made for someone’s needs who wanted to participate.

Crossman said one thing is certain. The tradition of Dighton Intertribal pow wows will continue and he’s determined that there will be one in October as scheduled.

“We don’t know where but we will have a pow wow,” Crossman said.

Deep roots

On Thursday, Chief Gray Wolf Heart was carefully taking down photographs and paintings from the walls in the Grange Hall to wrap and pack away. Some are of past chiefs. One is of an eagle landing. And then there’s a framed photograph taken by Nancy Goulart in 1984 of the Council Oak.

The mighty tree, located near the intersection of Main and Milk streets, is hundreds of years old and sits on sacred land, according to Desrosiers, steward of the Council Oak and a Somerset resident.

Metacomet held meetings there and the Dighton town charter was signed under its branches, he said. Massasoit made the decision to let the Pilgrims stay in Plymouth under that very tree, he said. To honor it, one of the Intertribal Council’s annual pow wows is named after the Council Oak, which appears on the Dighton town seal.

The pow wows are not fundraisers for the Council, Crossman said. The vendors who attend make a profit. But the rents the Council charges the vendors do not even cover their costs, Crossman said. They are not meant to. The pow wows are not commercial events. They are cultural gatherings, he said.

“They are an introduction to the traditions and culture of Native life. Every dance is a prayer. Each offering of tobacco is a prayer,” Crossman said.

Desrosiers, who tends the sacred fire at the Council’s pow wows, must stay awake for two straight days to do so.

“If the fire goes out, the pow wow is over. The circle is like our church,” he said.

Desrosiers said intertribal councils play an indispensible role in the lives of Native people. They allow people who may have moved away from the tribe of their ancestors to participate in broader Native culture.

Crossman said he is determined to respond to the town’s decision with grace and dignity – though it stings.

“We are hurt,” Crossman said.

“Hurt, but not revengeful,” Desrosiers added.

Crossman said more than 1,000 Native people have reached out via email and social media in support of the Council as word spread of the eviction. Some urged him to fight the decision legally, but he said that is out of the question.

It takes two to argue and he won’t be one of them. That is not what the Council stands for, he said.

On Sept. 12, the Dighton Intertribal Council’s last day in the Grange Hall after at least 25 years of calling it home, he is hoping all of those supporters will turn out.

They will march out of the Grange Hall for the last time, he’s hoping one thousand Native people strong, in full regalia, in total silence except for the sound of drumming, without a hint of conflict or harshness.

“We will be marching out of here on the 12th of September in peace,” Chief Gray Wolf Heart said.