With New Tribal Council Officers Sworn In, Chairman Talks Priorities
With several newly elected officers and one new council member on board following the February 9 general election, the new administration of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council is ready to get to work.
The Tribal council is again under the leadership of Brian Weeden, who was reelected to his second term as chairman. He has committed his life to public service both within the Tribal community and beyond, and was elected in 2021 as the youngest Tribal chairman; he, as chairman, notably led the Tribe’s efforts to secure its reservation lands through the issuance of a new Record of Decision by the Department of the Interior and serves as president of the Tribe’s Gaming Authority.
Also reelected to his position was Tribal councilman David W. Weeden, who has served in that position since 2017. Mr. Weeden also serves as the director of the MWT Tribal Historic Preservation Department and Tribal historic preservation officer.
Edwina (Winnie) Johnson-Graham is the Tribal council’s new vice chairwoman. She is a longtime Tribal council member, having served for 16 years. She is also extensively involved in the Tribal and larger Mashpee community, serving on the Mashpee Inclusion and Diversity Committee and the Indian Education Committee.
Also elected on February 9 were Tribal council secretary Talia Landry and treasurer Fenton N. Soliz. Ms. Landry has a bachelor’s degree in communications and a masters of business degree in administration, and is pursuing her juris doctor degree. She is an advocate for Indigenous youth and issues, and serves as the Tribe’s community development corporation president. Mr. Soliz brings four decades of banking and finance experience to his new position of treasurer. Previously a resident of New York, he returned to Mashpee in 2023 and is seeking to “strengthen [the tribe’s] financial foundation for future generations.”
To fill the Tribal council seat left open by Ms. Johnson-Graham’s election as vice chairwoman, the Tribe has tapped Suzette Peters Mattis. The appointment was made at the Tribal council’s regular meeting on February 12. An announcement from chairman Weeden said that to fill the vacancy, the Tribal council appointed the candidate who received the next highest number of votes in the election that filled the seat. Ms. Mattis, having received 171 votes in the 2023 general election, was appointed; she was then sworn in last weekend, the Tribal chairman said.
Elected officers serve four-year terms, Mr. Weeden said; the terms for the other six Tribal council members will be up in two years.
Chairman Talks Priorities
Speaking to the Enterprise last Friday, February 14, Mr. Weeden said the new slate of officers is eager to get to work.
“This group is definitely excited to finish our project First Light, to bring the casino and that vision to fruition,” chairman Weeden said, “so that will be a priority for this administration, as well as making sure that we protect what resources we have, such as programs, grants and different other kinds of funds that we have, along with creating other economic development outside of gaming.”
First Light Resort & Casino is a project the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe is undertaking on its own ancestral lands in what is now Taunton. Though the broader project is still in the early stages of its phased development, the Tribe did open the doors to a Welcome Center at the site, located on O’Connell Way in East Taunton, which gives a sneak peek at what is to come when First Light is fully up and running.
“Right now we have a Welcome Center open with about 10 gaming machines,” chairman Weeden said. “We are looking to expand, hopefully, by the end of the month to add 40 more machines, which will bring us to a total of 50 machines.”
And it’s just a little preview so patrons can play some sample games and get a feel for things. The plan, chairman Weeden said, is to then move all of those machines into the larger facility.
“The Tribe is currently in the middle of financial close,” he said, “which will, hopefully, happen toward the end of March; hopefully, early springtime we’ll close on the financial deal to start building a 600-machine facility.”
The planned casino is far from the only thing the Tribal council is excited to work on. Another priority chairman Weeden highlighted is land—how to care for and preserve the lands the Tribe has and more importantly, how to get back more of the land that is historically theirs.
“The land is definitely a priority for this administration,” chairman Weeden said. “The original Tribal council was founded because of the land loss back in the ‘70s. It was never really about a casino for us; it was about our land. We own half of one [0.5] percent of our ancestral territory, so it’s really important to us to make sure we reclaim our land, and that will be a priority for us. We have started those conversations with the governor about state land here in Mashpee and we look forward to continuing those conversations and hopefully see a lot more land-back initiatives happen.”
Chairman Weeden said the Tribe is also continuing to work closely with the Town of Mashpee’s conservation commission to establish a co-stewardship of the town’s conservation lands.
“We set up a little working group between Tribal citizens, members of our natural resources department and our natural resource commission to kind of work on those co-stewardship, co-management agreements, which will definitely be interesting,” chairman Weeden said.
The new slate of officers will also get to work on other high-priority projects, chairman Weeden said, including strategic planning, the tax code and work on “laws and legislation to help the Tribe.”
Amid a storm of confusion related to several federal funding freezes put forth and later rescinded by the Trump administration, there was specific uncertainty regarding how Tribal funding and programs could be affected. Now, though, with mass firings happening in federal departments across the board and no one positive about what could come next, the question remains the same: how will this affect things?
“There are always those concerns regardless of who’s occupying the Oval Office or Congress,” chairman Weeden said when asked about potential funding disruptions, “but we do see a lot of things happening already with this administration, with trying to get rid of some of the employees that are on their probationary period, they’ve been there for a year or two years…which is a concern because there are a lot of new people at the Department of the Interior, the Department of Justice, Education, so on.”
Recent weeks have seen massive purges of probationary status employees—typically either employees hired within one to two years or who were recently promoted or moved to a new role—at the federal level. On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration fired an additional 1,300 employees at the Interior Department over the holiday weekend, adding to the 1,000 employees of the National Park Service fired the week before.
“We are definitely making sure we have those strong connections and relationships with our congressional delegation to make sure that they continue to advocate for the Tribes, to make sure that we can have those employees and personnel and the services in place to help,” chairman Weeden said.
Members of the community can help, too, Tribal member or not. Support from the community at large is important in helping support the goals, initiatives and success of the Tribe and its individual members. Smoke Sygnals handles communication and public relations for the Tribe, chairman Weeden said, and its team is good about “getting the word out when we have any call to action.”
“We did that campaign when we were looking to save our reservation lands,” chairman Weeden said, “and it was really helpful to have the community support in those efforts as well.”
To learn more about the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, visit www.mashpeewampanoagtribe-nsn.gov/.