The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe has finally received US government recognition as a sovereign American Indian nation after 32 years of legal wrangling.
Their ancestors were at Plymouth long before the Pilgrims arrived and they shared a first historic Thanksgiving before their numbers were nearly destroyed by war and disease.
On Thursday, four centuries later, the US Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs made the Cape Cod group the state's second officially recognized tribe, a designation that could help bring casino gambling to Massachusetts.
The tribe's elders and members gathered on Thursday at their tribal seat in anticipation of a Bureau of Indian Affairs phone call to tribal council chairman Glenn Marshall at 5:10pm.
"At one point, I nearly blacked out waiting for Glenn to tell us because I was holding my breath," vice chairman Shawn Hendricks said.
"I thought of the elders who weren't there," added the 39-year-old Hendricks. "I was around a lot of the elders that worked on the federal petition when I was young. It was an honor to know I was part of finishing their dream."
About 400 of the tribe's approximately 1,500 members heard the good news in person in a heated tent erected for a celebration near a stand of trees on tribal land. As they waited for the call, members played ceremonial drums.
In September, Mashpee town officials endorsed the recognition request after the tribe agreed not to build a casino on Cape Cod or try to use the courts to take possession of privately owned land, as it had in an unsuccessful lawsuit in the 1970s.
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