1、CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress Legal SidebarLegal Sidebari i Mashpee Wampanoag v. Bernhardt: A Tale of Two Definitions of “Indian” August 17, 2020 On June 6, 2020, in Mashpee Wampanoag v. Bernhardt (Mashpee), the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (D.
2、C. District Court) gave the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe (Tribe or Mashpee Tribe) another opportunity to retain reservation status for land in Taunton and Mashpee, Massachusetts, that the Department of the Interior (DOI) had taken into trust and declared eligible for gaming as an “initial reservation” in
3、 2015. The agencys Record of Decision to take the land into trust (2015 ROD) relied on DOIs interpretation that the Mashpee Tribe met the second of alternative definitions of “Indian” in the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA), the principal statute providing DOI authority to take land into trust “for I
4、ndians.” In 2016, the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts (Massachusetts District Court) disagreed with DOI, holding that the Tribe did not satisfy that definition. DOI then reviewed the land-into-trust application under the other IRA definition of “Indian,” and in 2018 released a decision (2018 R
