A preservation trust set up by the Pokanoket Indian Tribe now owns a section of the land that Brown University once owned in Bristol, Rhode Island.
According to the university, which completed the transfer last month, the action guarantees that tribes and Native peoples of the area who value the property would have access to the land and rivers.
The area is the ancestral home of Metacom, the Pokanoket people’s leader, also known as King Philip. His death occurred there in 1676 as a result of the violent battle between European settlers and Indians known as King Philip’s War.
Tribe members and sympathizers established an encampment at the institution in August 2017, claiming that the property had been unlawfully seized from them hundreds of years prior.
The camping, according to the Pokanoket Nation, was intended to retake the tribe’s ancestral home in Bristol, which is home to sites of spiritual significance. Members claim they are derived from the tribe that assisted the pilgrims and its chief, Massasoit, father of Metacom, despite the fact that the tribe is not officially recognized by the federal government.
At the time, the Ivy League university claimed to have had the legal title to the land for over 60 years and that it had been donated decades before.
The school came to an accord acknowledging that the site is historically Pokanoket a month after the camping started.
The site is a portion of the Mount Hope property, which was donated to the university in 1955 and spans 375 acres (150 hectares). The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology’s collections and a center for fieldwork and instructional activities are housed on the premises.
According to the institution, the transfer partially satisfies a commitment made in the 2017 agreement.
According to Brown officials, they hired the Public Archaeology Laboratory, Inc. to carry out a tribe cultural sensitivity assessment. The assessment’s recommendation was that the roughly 255-acre (100-hectare) section of Bristol land be designated as a traditional cultural property.
The university expects to vacate the museum facilities on the Mount Hope property by the summer of 2026 and will start transporting the museum collection in the fall of 2025.
Tracey Dancing Star Trezvant Guy, the sachem of the Pokanoket Tribe, celebrated the land transfer.
She told The Boston Globe in a statement on Monday that the land has been important to our people for ages. We opened the property’s gates for ourselves and set foot on our land for the first time in more than 340 years. That’s important. It has historical significance.
Brown’s executive vice president for planning and policy, Russell Carey, stated that the university’s objective is still to preserve the land while providing Native tribes with connections to its historic sites with sustainable access.
All members of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the Assonet Band of the Wampanoag Nation, the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe, and the Pocasset Tribe of the Pokanoket Nation will always have access to the lands and waters of the property, according to the deed for the land transfer, which cannot be changed.
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