Trump despises us yet Cedric was ready to beg him for help. Like Trump, it was all about him. Actually, that’s because they have a lot in common..narcissism, incompetence, vindictiveness, the inability to accept blame, and an affinity for surrounding himself with the biggest losers (in the tribe).
Cedric Cromwell continues to blame Trump for the tribe’s demise and spread misinformation to mainstream media. In the Huffington Post, they basically say that Trump’s Department of Interior is penalizing us because we built the casino that undermined 45’s Atlantic City casinos. Well, we know it was the Pequots and their Foxwood Casino, that crushed Trump not us. And when he said, “They don’t look like Indians to me,” he was talking about the Connecticut Pequots using their federal recognition to build what would be the largest casino in the world. It was not us.
So Cromwell has engaged the Trump strategy of garnering sympathy and distraction as his final act of desperation. He blames a racist unpopular president for his failures. It is easy to do. But transposing the Pequots brand of ” not looking Indian” to the Mashpee Wampanoags is another disgraceful tactic that undermines everything our families achieved. And it goes unchecked by the so called chairman.
How soon we forget that we received recognition under the Bush administration and were labeled the most
Members of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe when recognition came. Clearly not the Pequot. What a proud day for us after a 35-year struggle. Within 2 years, the Cromwell administration would undo everything the previous administration had done to establish a credible functioning tribal government. Just like Trump destroying everything Obama. Ceddie allowed incompetence and cronyism to rule the day instead of serving the people. It puts us in a bad place.
credentialed tribe in the country. We proved that we were a tribal community surviving and practicing tradition for centuries. We also had documentation that proved it. Western tribes had nothing like that, but we did because we were one of the first contact tribes. The British, colonists and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts kept good track of everything they did to us and we were wise enough to buy our own land back and have the deeds
All this reminding is for a reason. We have been through a lot. It has been a fight that comes in different forms for each generation but with common thread—racism, denial of the legitimacy of the tribe and land grabs.
But Cedric hurt us in ways the White people could not. Remember, Cedric, lied about his education, his job description at Fidelity, his family relationship with the tribe and didn’t know what the tribal roll was. And he actually delayed our recognition because he was on the council and was not on the roll. Again for those who don’t know, Patty Oakley and Glenn Marshall had to instruct him on how to get his mother’s birth certificate, (because she was adopted when she was 5 and moved to Boston). Then, unlike the rest of us, he did not know his genealogy or family history, so they had to help him with that too. He was rarely in Mashpee as a child or young adult, just for parties. And then word came that the casino was on the horizon and poof..here he comes with ” Me too, me too, I’m a Mashpee
A rare sight Cedric and Sherry Pocknett at a tribal dance when he was a young dude attending Roxbury Community College. You had to believe that the person who made this crazy outfit was trying to embarrass him. Reel Wamps did the big reveal and we never saw him in it again. The Halloween Pow Wow dancer was canceled thank God.
Wampanoag without the slightest idea of what that meant and didn’t give a damn. It was all about cashing in. Cedric’s mother was a Tobey and he was different from his relatives on the Cape who let’s just say were different from the other Mashpee families. Cedric tried to portray himself as sophisticated and educated…thus the big bodacious lies emerged.
The crooked election brought Cedric and his partner Mark Harding to power and the Tobeys had finally risen to what they thought was a position of power and respect at long last.
But Running Bear (no one knows who gave him that ridiculous name) left the Tobeys behind and chose instead his new wife’s people….the docile Fryes who also had a big hand in throwing the election his way by allowing ineligible pending tribal applicants to vote. The election records disappeared and the Fryes went on to hold every tribal job of consequence regardless of their lack of education or experience making 3 – 4 x’s what they would have made outside the tribe. Only one out of at least 25 of the Frye’s employed had an education, their matriarch Yvonne Frye had a bachelor’s degree.
Oh you forgot all that didn’t you? Or actually you wanted to forget all that…but there’s more you need to remember coming your way.
We have our own pandemic.
