PROVIDENCE – After 37 days of encampment on Brown University land in Bristol, the Pokanoket Native American group and Ivy League university have agreed to place the contested property in a preservation trust, according to a Monday statement from Brown.
The agreement, which was signed on Sept. 21, requires the Pokanoket to cease their encampment of the land, which is also home to the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. According to the statement this occurred Monday.
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Under its terms Brown will transfer some of the land in question to a preservation trust which will “ensure the conservation of the land and sustainable access by native tribes in the region,” according to the statement.
The amount of land to be transferred has yet to be determined, according to the statement, but in the agreement the school said it committing to transferring “an amount of land that is substantial, sufficient and appropriate” to meet its own goals of conservation, preservation and sustainable access.
It also endeavors to complete the transfer “as expeditiously as possible,” according to the agreement language.
The document is signed by both the Pokanoket leader, Sagamore Po Wauipi Neimpaug, and Russell C. Carey, Brown’s executive vice president for planning and policy, and calls for a cultural resources survey, a survey of the land, the creation a managerial team to run the trust. It dictates the Pokanoket not re-establish the encampment while this research and group are put together. It also requires the Pokanoket who participated in the encampment to work with other native groups who claim the land as culturally significant.
“Reasonable cultural access … to all parties with a historical interest in the land” is how the agreement worded the compromise it hopes will occur among neighboring Native American groups, including other Pokanoket peoples such as the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the Assonet Band of the Wampanoag Nation, the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe, the Pocasset Tribe of the Pokanoket Nation.
In a statement Carey said the university had worked with the Pokanoket “in good faith to address their concerns in ways responsive to the concerns of other tribes as well.”
It went on to read: “We’re very pleased that the Pokanoket have agreed to engage other native tribes to establish a trust that will both preserve this land and ensure sustainable access to its sacred sites in a way that is inclusive of other native peoples. This was Brown’s goal.”
Ten days into the encampment Brown submitted an initial proposal that was revised and led to this approved version.
On Aug. 20 the Pokanoket began the month-plus long encampment of the land in protest of Brown’s longtime use and ownership of what they consider their ancestral home, once inhabited by Metacom, or King Philip, during the 17th century war named after him.
Beginning in the 1950s the land in question was donated to Brown by the Haffenreffer family in multiple parcels.
Emily Gowdey-Backus is a staff writer for PBN. You can follow her on Twitter @FlashGowdey or contact her via email, gowdey-backus@pbn.com.
