Eastern Pequot chairman wary of BIA proposal

North Stonington ― Lawrence E. Wilson III, newly returned to a leadership role with the Eastern Pequot Tribe, is not doing cartwheels over the possibility his tribe could get a second bite of the apple.

“I hold out optimism, but I am skeptical,” Wilson said in an interview. “Who wouldn’t be, having gone through what this tribe has gone through.”

Much of what the Easterns have endured since 2005 stems from their lack of acknowledgment by the federal government, a status they’d been granted some three years earlier. On June 24, 2002, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs issued “final determinations” recognizing two tribal factions, the Eastern Pequots and the Paucatuck Eastern Pequots, as a single tribe.

On Oct. 12, 2005, the department reversed its decision, effectively canceling the tribe’s recognition.

Now the department is considering giving “denied petitioners” ― tribes whose applications for acknowledgment have been rejected in the past ― another chance to seek the recognition that would entitle them to federal grants and services. The proposal would afford such tribes, including, in Connecticut, the Easterns, the Schaghticokes of Kent and the Golden Hill Paugussetts of Colchester and Trumbull, “a conditional, time-limited opportunity” to re-apply.

It’s a marked departure for the department, which since 1994 had expressly prohibited tribes from re-petitioning. The department kept the ban in place amid a 2015 revision of its regulations, a move two federal district courts found “arbitrary and capricious” and ordered be reconsidered.

Wilson, elected chairman of the Eastern Pequot Tribal Council in July, said he was only speaking for himself because the tribe had not yet taken an official position on the Department of the Interior’s proposal. He served as the tribe’s chief executive officer in the late 1990s.

“I’m glad they’re doing it,” he said of the proposal.

Wilson, who lives in Providence, where he founded The Wilson Organization, a human resources consultancy specializing in leadership coaching, diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice, recalled how the reversal of the Easterns’ recognition affected the tribe.

“I’m very aware how the tribe suffered,” he said. “But I’m not bitter. I’m optimistic, hopeful.”

He said the tribe was the healthiest it had ever been during the three-plus years it was federally recognized, a period during which its members were eligible for Indian Health Service benefits. During the period, he said, rates of diabetes and hypertension, which disproportionately afflict Native American populations, improved significantly.

After the loss of federal recognition, a survey of tribal members from 2005 to 2012 found 50% of adults were without health insurance, according to Wilson.

Assistance for education, employment and affordable housing programs also provided an enormous boon to tribal members.

“We were moving our tribal members up the ladder,” he said.

Wilson said he’s also skeptical about the proposal and the Easterns’ prospects for regaining federal recognition because of what he believes might be enduring opposition to it. He recalled that U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, then Connecticut’s attorney general, and officials in the towns of Ledyard, North Stonington and Preston were behind the effort that led to reversal of the tribe’s recognition.

“Honestly, some who were opposed then might be again,” Wilson said.

He admitted, though, that much of the earlier opposition was related to federal recognition’s link to casino development. The two Connecticut tribes that had gained recognition, the Mashantucket Pequots and the Mohegans, had parlayed their status into Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun, respectively, and many in the state and region feared a third casino.

For the Easterns, casino development was very much on the table in the late 1990s, but that’s no longer the case.

Wilson said he has another reason for being skeptical about the Department of the Interior’s proposal.

“Given my experience in DEIJ (diversity, equity, inclusion and justice), I find that sometimes people in leadership positions don’t take it as seriously as they should,” he wrote in a follow-up email. “That’s why the country is evenly divided at 47% to 47%. Here’s hoping that leaders at the BIA are among the exceptions.”

b.hallenbeck@theday.com