Tribe secures gov’t backing in Martha’s Vineyard casino bid

The Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe has gained a crucial support in its long-running effort to open a casino on Martha’s Vineyard.

Members of the Aquinnah Wampanoag are currently in the middle of appealing a U.S. District Court judge’s decision to veto the tribe’s right to run a casino on grounds that “it had not truly acted like a sovereign government.”

But the U.S. Department of Justice filed a friend-of-the-court brief last week, in which it pointed out that the federally recognized tribe had already received approvals from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the National Indian Gaming Association to operate a casino.

The tribe has been fighting its rights to open a casino since the 1980s, when the Aquinnah signed a settlement with local landowners to get back hundreds of acres they claimed had been taken from them. Under the settlement, the tribe agreed to follow state and local laws that “prohibit or regulate the conduct of bingo or any other game of chance.”