The Pokanokets claim that their ancestors never gave up sovereignty and never willingly handed over their lands. They say that they are sovereign nations and are demanding that state and federal authorities acknowledge their standing and hand back lands that rightfully belong to the tribes.

Long before the self-proclaimed Pokanoket Nation and its supporters occupied Brown University land in Bristol, members of the tribe held a ceremony on the property overlooking Mount Hope Bay to formally reclaim what they say is their ancestral home.

On March 20, 2016, led by their sagamore, or chief, William Guy, who is known by his tribal name Po Wauipi Neimpaug, they planted the Pokanoket flag in the ground — a star above a seven-crested rainbow — and posted a sign declaring a “Day of Reversion.”

“... to repatriate lands that where [sic] illegally taken and have been environmentally denigrated as a result of being illegally alienated from the rightful ownership and control of the Pokanoket Tribe for the past 340 years,” the sign said.

The property manager for the grounds of Brown’s Haffenreffer Museum collections center took down the sign and flag and put them in storage. What happened next is in dispute. Brown says the manager directed the tribe to the appropriate office at the Ivy League school to discuss the land claim. The Pokanokets say they never heard anything.

Nearly a year and a half later, on Aug. 20, they stepped up their campaign by establishing an encampment on the land and setting up a roadblock to restrict access.

As many as 100 people were in the camp at its height, a mixture of tribe members and supporters from the FANG collective, a group that has its roots in the fight against fossil fuels, and the Federation of Aboriginal Nations of America, or FANA, an alliance of eight tribes that, like the Pokanokets, are not recognized by the federal government.

The occupation came to an end on Sept. 25 after the tribe and Brown reached an agreement to put an undetermined portion of the 375-acre property in trust to ensure its conservation and guarantee use of it by the Pokanokets and other tribes.

It was a victory for the Pokanoket Nation, not only in their struggle for land that they describe as “sacred ground” but also in their larger quest to have the identity of their tribe acknowledged.

Who are the Pokanokets? The tribe’s members number between 200 and 250, according to Raymond “Two Hawks” Watson, director general of FANA, who is not a member himself but is serving as spokesman for the Pokanokets.

Their connection to the Mount Hope lands go back centuries, Watson says. Guy, the sagamore, claims as his “10th great-grandfather” Massasoit, the chief of the Pokanoket Nation when the Pilgrims arrived in 1620, according to a federal lawsuit that he filed last year seeking redress for persecution of the tribe.

The tribe’s territory extended “from the eastern tip of Cape Cod through southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island to the Connecticut River, and north to the Charles River,” according to Guy’s lawsuit.

The heart of their lands was the area known to the tribe as Sowams that is now divided into the towns of Bristol, Barrington and Warren, the lawsuit says. Their name for Mount Hope was Potumtuk.

Under Massasoit, the tribe participated in the first Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims in 1621 and maintained peace with them for years afterward.

But things changed after Massasoit’s son, Metacom, or Metacomet, became chief. Known to the colonists as King Philip, he led an alliance of New England tribes that sought to drive out the Europeans. King Philip’s War ended when he was killed at Mount Hope by a Colonial militia in 1676.

The word Pokanoket was outlawed by the colonists after the war and boys 14 and older were killed if they used the name, according to the tribe. Survivors were forced off their lands — sold into slavery, deported to the West Indies, or scattered among other tribes, the Pokanokets say.

Those that remained in the region fell into a broader group that became known as the Wampanoag people, but representatives of the tribe say that even as generations passed they maintained their own identity as Pokanokets.

In 1994, under the leadership of Paul Weeden — Guy’s cousin, according to Watson — the tribe, calling itself the “Pokanoket Tribe of the Wampanoag Nation,” filed a letter of intent to petition to the Bureau of Indian Affairs for federal recognition.

And around the same time, the Pokanokets reasserted their connection to the Mount Hope lands, which the Haffenreffer family had donated to Brown in parcels starting in the 1950s. King Philip’s Seat, a chair-like formation of rocks that is said to have been a historical meeting place for the tribe, can still be found there. So too can Cold Spring, where Metacom was killed.

At a zoning hearing in Bristol in 1996, Paul Weeden called for stewardship of the land to be handed back to the tribe so that it could be protected in perpetuity.

Nothing came then of the land claim, and, according to the tribe’s lawyer, the application for federal recognition is still pending. But the Pokanokets have not given up on their conviction that they are a distinct tribe. Soon, they stopped using Wampanoag to identify themselves.

“That’s the name they gave us,” Guy told The Providence Journal in 2015, referring to the European colonists.

Two years ago, the Pokanokets joined forces with other tribes that had failed to gain official standing under the federal government.

They formed the FANA, a group that includes the Mashapaug Nahaganset Tribe of Providence, the Usquepaug Nehantick Nahagansets of southern Rhode Island and Connecticut, the Sand Hill Band of Lenape and Cherokee Indians of New Jersey and Pennsylvania and four other tribes.

The federation’s members do not call themselves Native Americans, believing that label has been co-opted by the government, according to Watson, Pomham Sachem of the Mashapaug Nahagansets, a tribe that was re-established in 2009. They accept the term American Indian, he said, but prefer American Aboriginal, saying that it properly reflects their place as the original inhabitants of the land that became the United States.

The Pokanokets and the other tribes are not focused on recognition any longer, Watson said. They now believe that the federal government has no legal right to bestow it.

Instead, they claim that their ancestors never gave up sovereignty and never willingly handed over their lands. They say that they are sovereign nations and are demanding that state and federal authorities acknowledge their standing and hand back lands that rightfully belong to the tribes.

The Mount Hope claim is only the first, said Watson. The Mashapaug Nahagansets are seeking to have a portion of the land around Mashapaug Pond in Providence put in trust and the other tribes have their own land claims.

In the civil case that Guy filed in federal court last year against the State of Rhode Island and the Towns of Bristol, Barrington and Warren that occupy the Pokanokets’ historical heartland, he claimed that as a member of the tribe he is a foreign national. He alleged the “forced assimilation and integration ... of the Pokanoket people into colonial society” and continued “systematic racism.” The case was dismissed on procedural grounds.

(Guy has talked to The Journal in the past but Watson said media inquiries have now been referred to him.)

At a 2014 Bureau of Indian Affairs hearing, Guy expressed views that characterize the FANA position.

“So, what I'm asking you is, why do we have to prove who we are?” he asked, according to a transcript of the hearing that was held in Massachusetts. “Why do we have to come to you?”

“You people know the history,” he continued. “You're keeping it from us. I know who I am because my parents made it perfectly clear to us. I know who the tribes are, and we are the tribes not being recognized here.”

It is not just the U.S. government that doesn’t recognize the Pokanokets. The Narragansett Indian Tribe, the only federally-recognized tribe in Rhode Island, also maintains that the Pokanokets lack any standing under the law.

“Until they are recognized, there is no status,” said John Brown, medicine man for the Narragansetts. “If there were, they would be doing business with the United States government, but they’re not and they can’t.”

By negotiating an agreement with the Pokanokets, Brown University is giving the tribe a measure of legitimacy that is inconsistent with federal law, he said. He questioned the lineage of Guy and other current members of the tribe and alleged that the pact with Brown may be fraudulent and illegal.

Leslie Rich, the lawyer for the Pokanokets, disagrees.

“Just because you’re not a federally-recognized tribe doesn’t take away your legal standing,” he said. “Brown as a private entity can talk to anybody they want. They can give the land to anyone they want.”

The agreement does not represent a final resolution; it only lays out the process for one to be reached.

It requires, for example, that the Pokanokets settle on a governance structure for the preservation trust with other tribes with connections to the Mount Hope lands before any property is transferred. The Narragansetts are not named on the list but the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), both federally-recognized tribes in Massachusetts, are.

Despite the uncertainties, the Pokanoket Nation and its supporters say the pact represents an important step forward. It could also be a model for other tribes that are trying to reclaim ancestral lands, they say.

Before the Pokanokets and Brown reached a resolution, the tribe led a protest march to the university’s campus on College Hill in Providence. As the march prepared to step off on Sept. 5, Guy explained the tribe’s motives.

“We tried to engage the powers that be in the state and they just won’t talk. They’ve actually pushed us to this point,” he said. “There’s no reason why people should not know the history of our people, because this is where it all began.”

—akuffner@providencejournal.com

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