Word: tureen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...transfer of Indian lands can be made without the express approval of the federal government. Gay Head was incoporated in 1870, its status was changed from an Indian district, corresponding to today's reservation, to a town, with the approval of the Massachusetts, but not the federal, legislature. As Tureen notes, "Massachusetts created the town and destroyed the district over the unanimous opposition of the Indians within the district." The change in the district's legal status, Tureen says, divided lands the tribe previously held in common. It permitted land sales and made the property liable for taxation. The Massachusetts...
...Tureen sees the incorporation as a case o white greed cloaked under ostensible white magnaminity. "It was a gimmick--the whites tried to patch it up as a move to help the Indians and then they rip off the Indians' land. It wasn't terrible then, but it set off an inevitable process. Now the Indians don't control the town...
Almost all the Wamponoags agree with Tureen's assessment, because every Indian you talk to mentions the economic motive as the key reason for the suit. In order for the Wamponoags to receive any substantial amount of federal aid for rebuilding the local economy, they must have legal title to a specific area of land that they can claim as their tribal base. Without this property, the Wamponoags argue, their tribe can not receive federal recognition...
Speakers at the conference will include Thomas Tureen, the lawyer for the Passamoquoddy/Penobscot tribes in their successful lawsuit against the state of Maine, and Dr. Helen Redbird Selam, a professor at the Monmouth School of Education in Oregon and a member of the Cherokee tribe...
...choose Cox] was the suggestion by the Maine attorney general that Congress legislate the Indian claims out of existence or alter the rules under which the case would be tried, so we felt Professor Cox would be the best person to avert that kind of attack on the claim," Tureen said...