By Katie Mulvaney
An appeals court ruled yesterday that the federal government could take 31 acres into trust for the Narragansett Indian Tribe in a case at the crux of a struggle between the state and the tribe over control of tribal lands.
A divided 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the U.S. Department of Interior could hold the land for the Narragansetts, freeing it from state and local laws and placing it solely under tribal and federal authority.
The property sits across Kings Factory Road from the tribe’s other 1,800 acres in Charlestown. Set on a hillside just north of Route 1, it is the site of a troubled housing project for the tribe’s poor elders.
While Narragansett leaders celebrated the decision as an affirmation of the tribe’s rights, state and local officials declared it “devastating” for Rhode Island. They promised to appeal.
“Attorney General [Patrick] Lynch thinks that these issues are so important and have such far-reaching impacts on Indian law both locally and nationally that he plans to appeal to the [U.S.] Supreme Court,” his spokesman Michael J. Healey said of the closely watched case.
Read the full article: http://www.projo.com/news/content/TRUST_LAND_07-21-07_NP6F0I7.31dc049.html
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