Late last year, Brown University transferred some 255 acres of land it owned in Bristol to a trust associated with the Pokanoket Tribe. That came after a separate land trust associated with another Indigenous group, the Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe of the Pokanoket Nation, acquired land in Tiverton with help from a state open space grant.
The Narragansett Indian Tribe is the state’s only federally recognized tribe, and Chief Sachem Anthony Dean Stanton says the Narragansett had to go through a rigorous review to get that recognition. He’s now calling for a process to be put into place to guide land transfers in the future.
An attorney for the Pokanoket Tribe says that the Pokanoket are historically connected to the land and that federal recognition is just a credential.
TPR’s morning host Luis Hernandez spoke about these issues with Narragansett Indian Tribe Chief Sachem Anthony Dean Stanton, as well as Pokanoket Tribe attorney and spokesperson Taino Palermo, in two interviews.
Read and listen to those interviews here.
This interview was conducted by The Public’s Radio. You can read the entire story here.
