Boston, MA - Massachusetts Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward J. Markey released the following joint statement after the Biden Administration withdrew its appeal in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in the case Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe v. Bernhardt.  

"This is a major victory for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, and for justice. We have proudly stood with the Tribe throughout its fight to preserve the reservation, but their ancestral homelands should never have been in jeopardy. We are glad to see the Biden Administration make this just and necessary decision to withdraw the Trump Administration's appeal and halt this cruelty."

Senators Warren and Markey long opposed the Trump Administration's efforts to strip the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe of their homelands. After the Department of the Interior's latest attempt to disestablish the Tribe's reservation, they made a statement condemning the decision, and worked with the Tribe and the Massachusetts congressional delegation on the issue. The two senators also joined a congressional amicus brief to protect the Tribe's homelands in court, and the court acknowledged the arguments made in the brief when issuing a ruling that was a victory for the Tribe. Senators Warren and Markey also cosponsored legislation (S. 2808 in the last Congress) to provide a fix to the 2009 Supreme Court case Carcieri v. Salazar, so that tribal nations' lands-like those of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe-can be taken into trust and protected.