A Native American tribe received a piece of Brown University’s home in Rhode Island after decades of discussions. The Pokanoket Indian Tribe received a total of 255 acre of” traditional social home” from the Ivy League school.
After the class requested a” cultural awareness examination” of the site, the Tribe asserted ownership of the land in a release announcement on November 15. According to The Daily Caller News Foundation, Brown and the community reached an agreement in 2017 that included the free transfer of the land to the Native American party as part of a settlement that followed some Pokanoket residents setting up a month-long camp on the university’s property.
In a statement announcing the move, Brown University announced that it had given control of a portion of the land in Bristol, Rhode Island, to a survival confidence established by the Pokanoket Indian Tribe, ensuring that clans and Indigenous peoples in the area who value the property had significance could have access to the land and waters. Members of some African and Indigenous communities have significant historical and cultural significance because of the land’s value as Metacom’s ancestral home, also known as King Philip, the innovator of the Pokanoket people, and as the site of his 1676 dying during King Philip’s War.
The Haffenreffer relatives wrote a letter in 1955 announcing the payment of the Mount Hope home to the University in which they assured the family that Brown’s Trustees would not be unconcerned of the homeowner’s outstanding natural beauty, its historical context, or the community’s best interests, according to Russell Carey, executive vice president for planning and policy at Brown. The actions we are taking to protect the land in eternity are, in our opinion, entirely consistent with that vision, and those words are still as accurate and relevant as they were almost 70 years ago.
The Pokanoket Tribe is held accountable for any agreements with any other Native American tribes that may have had or asserted prior ownership of the land, according to the deal.
