Reel Wamps

Reel Wamps has been gathering information about the Tribal Housing misappropriations and discrimination for several years. There are many things that have contributed to the complete disintegration of a program that is designed to help fledgling tribes like ours improve the quality of life of their people.  God knows we deserve a break.

Let’s be clear…..the Mashpee are masters of survival and have a nearly 400 year  record to prove it. The benefits of recognition were anticipated as the ultimate reward for years of punishing insult, encroachment and disdain from Cape Codders who resented our right to exist.

But that battle is nothing compared to sustained abuse of the 1001 by the Cromwell Administration that began in 2009 and is ongoing right now today.We’re not going to talk about the $90,000,000 debt that is clearly a money laundering mechanism for the investor Genting.

THE MELTDOWN BEGINS

Let’s just look at Housing. After Alice died,  for almost 5 years, there was never  a permanent  director or honest broker in Housing.  No one to keep the wolves away. No one to stop the pilfering of designated money for tribal members who need help. Leon the Lumbee consultant and countless others were running the office off and on. It is an office staffed by tribal members who have no education nor the experience to run a federally funded housing program. They were  in everyone’s business, blatantly discriminating against all the primary families and partying down.

THE HARDING CHRONICLES

Mark Harding’s  ( former Treasurer ) reign of terror is on the record with letters from the BIA  telling him and the Council that as a tribal council member,  and the treasurer no less, he could not be awarded  contracts paid for with federal money. That would be HUD. Harding continued to openly accept contract rehab work that should have gone to tribal contractors who were struggling during the depression that was crushing us. He was a sub contractor to White companies grabbing up everything, again shutting out certified  tribal members who would have done the jobs right the first time. And to top it off, Leon was telling tribal members that they had to use Harding for the work on their homes.  It was disgusting and illegal.  Those are just a few of his  violations of federal law.

THE MOST AWESOME AUDIT

The internal audit  recently showed what everyone knew.  The Housing program, like the Tribe was the victim of years of gross mismanagement and misappropriation.  The trouble for all those mishandlers is that they were tinkering with federal dollars, and the federal government don’t look too kindly on that sort of thing.  Just ask the Narragansett and the Pequot.

So the audit was only a year of bad news and it showed that Valerie, primarily, was handing out thousands of dollars in HUD money to people who did not qualify, she had no record of anything, (applications etc) to justify doling out really huge amounts of money.  Relatives and friends got rehab contracts without insurance or licenses and of course the work was shoddy at best. Nelly has waited for years to get her storm door fixed properly.  Elders can’t get a break from these awful people.

THE 184 DEBACLE

The 184 program was the poster child for discriminatory practices that were the only consistent thing that occurred around there. A few Tobes slipped in but for the other 80%, you know the saying ” If you’re not a Frye you need not apply. “ HUD has form 903 for housing discrimination. It has NO tolerance for discrimination when its money is being spent.   Leon with his ” worst practices” busied himself in getting his friends paid and concocting strange deals.  He covered up long as he could, but when it really got hot he was fired ( he worked for the Tribe at least 4 different times, screwing things up).

Valerie was officially fired after the Costume Circus, (formally know as the Mashpee Wampanoag Pow Wow). Well she emptied the hard copy files….brilliant.  We all know you can’t erase a hard drive.  Or better yet.   Marge and Robbie have to have a record of the draw downs.  So the trail will be tracked easily. In July the 184 was shut down by HUD.  Course it didn’t show up on the website until last week.. In a letter HUD Demanded that the Tribe answer a bunch of questions.

“DON’T GIVE ‘EM NOTHING“

According to our sources, Francie (Frye) and Robbie Hendricks said ” don’t give ’em nothing.”  Even if we had sovereignty,the federal government could come in and take everything out of that basement and serve everyone one with warrants etc. They can’t hide anything from them.

Anyway Robbie won’t do whats right for the Tribal members but  he wants to take on the real government?

STUNNEDED  ain’t ya boy? You should have gotten in witness protection when you could.

It gets worse.The so called Housing Commission is just as guilty of wrong doing because they are supposed to monitor the department, who was hired  and basically keep them in check. The Commission itself was corrupt with the mother and daughter team of Carole Lopez and Tah Tah whose erratic behavior and mental health issues are known Cape wide.  As the tribal secretary, she should have nothing to do with that entity.  Se has reportedly taken HUD money allocated for tribal members in need while making over $80K. More troubling is what tribal members witnessed Tah Tah doing.  Very very troubling. She needs help not a cover up. She should not be on the council.

The Chair of the Commission has been the chair for over 5 years and never did a damned thing.  She whispered and whined but she did not lift a finger to stop the misappropriation to council members, their kids and other family members or tribal members who did not need the help and would not qualify.

What happens next should not be a surprise, but we guarantee Francie or Robbie won’t be denying the federal government  anything they ask for.

The BIA continues to ignore the abuse of Native people by their own governments.

The BIA folks are at the Echo Chamber to hear testimony on the changes planned to the tribal recognition process.  That’s all it is.  It’s certainly no endorsement of this administration as Shovel Ready Ceddie has tried to spin.

The irony of the whole thing is the fact that the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe is responsible for setting the standards so high that most tribes could not meet the  criteria. More ironic is the fact that Shovel Ready Ceddie wasn’t on the roll at the time, didn’t know what the roll was and had to be schooled on the importance of heritage and getting his paperwork done.  

By the way…the real Indians of the tribe have left the building. That’s well known.

And this new process makes it harder to get recognition because you have one shot and that’s it.Most tribes have no backers and cannot participate because they have no money.

The people who are responsible for our remarkable trek, many have passed on and those alive are appalled at our status. None of them are going to be there today, so expect Jessie to start making up stuff when no one can answer.  Maybe Navajo Joe will say something.

You have to figure that other than a free trip to Cape Cod, the BIA bureaucrats have to be a little curious bout all the crap heaped upon us by Shovel Ready Ceddie and his band of criminals .

 The money laundering is intriguing.

The debt screams investigation.  

Will they talk about how the BIA can’t take the land into trust?

The inability to get  land into trust defies the legal  validation of government sovereignty.

The whistle-blowers should be lining up.

The BIA will blow off questions saying this is about recognition….but you better believe this afternoon, the BIA folks will all be lined up to get on the boat to the Vineyard with Navajo Joe.

They just can’t get enough.  Shovel Ready Ceddie, his sophisticated wife The First lady, Melissa Hill, Yvonne Frye Avant, Trish Keliinui, the brand new Indian named Green who was the foreman on the Echo Chamber ( that had to be rebuilt)….all jumped on a Genting private jet for another lavish trip….

To view the $900,000 a month redo of the architectural plan for the casino that will never be built.It’s so outrageous it’s not worth talking about…our people need jobs, training, our kids need scholarships and tutoring and these people are cheap tricks for Genting.

Money laundering.

Fear and loathing people….fear and loathing.

Tonight’s council meeting is going to be a doozie.  It is the only thing Shovel Ready Ceddie has ever done that has the slightest semblance of  transparency. His paranoia is oozing through the pathetic double talk revealing an agenda loaded with items designed to end tribal members free speech. Exactly, and if they don’t like what you’re saying, you’re shunned, for a length of time befitting your outburst. All decided by the Council. And they don’t give a care if you like it or not. They work for Genting not you.

You may recall that the original shunning idea was the brain child of Vice Chair Jessie Baird,  that bastion of fantasy reasoning and famous self aggrandizement This latest shunning effort is likely hers. Poor Jessie, she never resolved her self esteem issues.  She will do anything to be important Her Tobey relatives still bare the scares of her last shunning episode.

When you’re corrupt,  you have to cover up.

Since the Tribe is sovereign in name only, you still have to follow US law. Free speech cannot be impeded, and the other problem is the lame attempt to cover up all the illegal activity in Housing. more about that later.

The other constitutional violation says that anyone running for the Council has to be a full time  employee of the Council. Who will leave their jobs to risk going to jail? This is totally transparent and targets Carlton Hendricks, Jr., Laura Miranda and others preparing to run in Feb. Why don’t they pay them part time now, if they’re so interested? If you’re working for the Council you damned sure aren’t going to challenge wrong doing and loose a pay check..And as we all know, Shovel Ready Ceddie and his crew are desperate to keep a lid on the gross theft and negligence that surrounds the Gaming Commission in particular.

Currently, tribal members have no knowledge or say in what happens to the over $ 2m a month funneled into the Gaming Commission…..that has no casino to govern or any prayer for a casino in the near future. We do know that $900,000 a month goes to Genting’s architect to redo the casino ( that will never be built).  If that ain’t money laundering what is? Genting knows we’re not good for anything else cause LIT ain’t happening cause the BIA can’t take the LIT even if we meet all the requirements  Jessie said LIT was going to happen in July. now Shovel Ready Ceddie says November.  Nobody’s listening anymore.

On to the funny stuff:

Marge launches search for financial documents-Somebody  got a hold of the Genting financial plans and left them in the copy machine. It says the gaming giant will cut us off at $150 million.  Jez…we’re at $90m now.  They just got another $10 m. Form a search committee Marge, they’ll help you find it.  Only requirement is that everyone has to be sober.

Shovel Ready Ceddie calls security…Actually “SRC” is so frightened he has Mashpee police on duty all the time…parked in front of  the Echo Chamber.  He can hire the cops, but he won’t pay for the things tribal members need.  But we got that $90m debt and his bobble head embarrassing us at every turn.

After 4 years of blatant mismanagement and discriminatory practices. Housing has a new supposedly permanent director from New Bedford, named Diedra Lopes.  Ms Lopes, you’re in our prayers.

Valerie shredded everything and screwed up the Housing files: This is according to our top notch Housing Committee that has worked so hard for tribal members for 5 years.The same Housing Committee that has as members the Tribal Secretary Tah Tah and her mother Carol who do as they please and take what they want from the till….unchecked. More later on the Housing Horrors. So don’t worry about all the  things that Tah Tah, Valerie and Leon did….HUD will find them quick, fast and in a hurry. 

One of the advantages of having a little education is discovering how various writers will analyze the many foibles of men who find themselves with power, while lacking the most basic qualities of justice.  Eugene O’Neill wrote two of my favorite plays, “The Hairy Ape” and “The Emperor Jones.”

Brutus Jones was an American convict serving time for murder, who escapes to a Caribbean Island, where he installs himself as a dictator, Emperor Jones.  I leave it up to you to read this great piece of stage drama, but will reveal, that in the end, Jones is on the run from the people that he oppressed.  He had let it be known that he could only be killed with a silver bullet.  The downtrodden people obliged him.

You may  be asking “what on Earth does this have to do with anything?”  Well, you may want to take a good look at the leadership of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, in particular, the Chairman, Cedric Cromwell.

He has taken for himself powers and privileges unprecedented in the history of our tribe.  I don’t want to alarm you, but this behavior is definitely not the “Indian Way.”  Our ancestors were never under any kind of dictatorship, but followed the leaders who performed, those who had the best interests of the Tribe in mind.  This administration, in particular the Chairman, has only its own interests in mind.  Could it be that this is the way things are in this age of diminishing liberty, the bitter dose that we must swallow to become a gaming Tribe?  I don’t think so.

Brutus Jones traveled far from his home to lord it over the people of the island.  Similarly, Cedric Cromwell, who grew up outside the bosom of Mashpee, has never lived here, nor do I think he plans to, lords it over us.  Now calling himself Dr. Cromwell, he is showing signs of some sort of strain.  As Aretha Franlkin sang, “I ain’t no psychiatrist, ain’t no doctor with degrees,” it doesn’t take a shrink to see someone falling apart.  Frankly, I’m concerned about his state, I wish someone close to him would  intervene, but I am more concerned about the state of our Tribe and its future.  Heaven help us.