These inequities helped form a rationale for the Indian's claim to the common lands, but the white residents of Gay Head believe their antagonism to the suit is equally valid. The Gay Head Taxpayers Association moved to intervene two years after the Indians filed their suit. A stormy Gay Head town meeting, which received extensive coverage from the national media, provided the opposition's impetus. After the dust settled, the town of Gay Head, with an Indian majority, voted both to dismiss the lawyer the town hired to defend the suit against the tribal council and to give the contested land to the Indians. Vague hints that the town might wish to code even more land to the Wampanoags upset the whites, so the Taxpayer's Association initiated legal action.
Robert L. Stutz, president of the Taxpayer's Association, says the non-Indians pay 80 percent of the local taxes but, as most of the white property owners are summer residents, they have no vote at town meetings. Stutz also mentioned these principal concerns of the taxpayer's association:
The Wamponoags have made no provisions for conservation or development control on the 238 acres, which include the Gay Head cliffs, a "fragile area which need special care."
The 238 acres include 98 per cent of the public beaches. The non-Indian residents want to be assured of continued access for bathing and shellfishing.
Bruce M. Bailey, another member of the taxpayer's association, pinpointed what may be the white's central worry: the suit has cast doubts on the whites' legal claim to their own land. The Indian Non-intercourse Act, as Tureen and many of the Wamponoags have stated, applies to all the lands the Indians once owned. Creating an uncertain legal and financial situation, Bailey said, no bank will give a mortgage on Gay Head property, nor will an attorney certify legal title, James Howell, a Gay Head real estate agent, says. Virtually no land sales have occured since the suit was filed, and those who have had to sell for financial reasons have taken huge losses on their original investments. "No legitimate realestate broker would push this property if it's just going to be taken away," Howell says.
The legal doubts have affected Indians as well. Those who are on a "fixed rural income" are hardest hit, Howell says. He cites cases where Indians have applied to banks for loans, but were not permitted to use their land as collateral.
Besides these official objections, certain whites privately and anonymously have expressed doubts as to the validity of the Indians' claim that they are an aboriginal tribe, a term that the law defines as "a group of people of the same race, under a common government, with a well-defined territory." Bailey calls the Indians extremely acculturated, and distinguishes between the Wamponoags and the Pasamaquoddy Indians of Maine, who have their own language and their own territory.
Another Gay Head resident says "They make a lot of noise about their 'Indianness', but they seem to me to be grasping at ethnic straws. They're living with white girls, and have intermarried extensively."
The Wamponoags, of course, refute not only the whites' claim of assimilation, but also white fears of Indian exploitation of the land. One woman said, "No one had to worry about conservation until the whites despoiled the land. We've always taken care of our land, and we always will." C. Earl Canderhoop, one Indian resident, dismisses white fears of Indian takeover angrily, says, "Some white people want everything. It's mean and selfish of them not to give us the common land--at one time we owned the whole island, and that's all that's left. There's a case on record where one man sold 40 acres for a hat. In the old days they had to live, but that sale was disgraceful."
For a year, both sides remained intractable, but pressure mounted to reach an out of court agreement, instead of a protracted court battle that would drain both the Indians' and the whites' resources. Late last June, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis announced the appointment of Albert M. Sacks, dean of the Law School, as a state mediator. Sacks had a preliminary meeting with both sides in July, then left to fulfill another commitment, returning in August to continue the talks.
Sacks, as well as the tribal council and the Taxpayers Association, has repeatedly refused to comment on the course of the negotiations, but both sides have declared themselves impressed with Sacks as a mediator. The legal aspects of the case are temporarily at a standstill, but the emotions surrounding it quietly continue to ferment.
Some of the anger and division between the whites and the Indians emerged in midAugust. At that time, Tureen drew up a preliminary plan that proposed setting up a Wamponoag reservation that would include fishing rights in the neighboring white community of Chilmark.
Tureen's plan was leaked to the public and part of the resulting furor stemmed from the fact that neither Gay Head nor the tribal council ever had fishing rights in Chilmark. Although Tureen and all members of the tribal council insist that the document was only a draft, to be used as a basis for discussion during negotiations between the taxpayers association and the tribal council, its release angered factions on both sides. Wenonah Silva, tribal council president, charged that the draft's release was an attempt at sabotaging the negotiations by disgruntled tribal council members. Certainly the public discussion inflamed white fears, while further delineating the division within the Indian community.
The anger over the reservation plan has simmered down, but no end to the negotiations is yet in sight. Although the town is suffering flom some underlying racial rancor and tension, relations on the surface remain cordial. Gay Head is a small town and most of its inhabitants would like to remain on at least speaking terms with their neighbors. A negotiated settlement must take into account certain justifiable protests on both sides. One look at the shops that pack the breathtaking cliffs gives a convincing argument for the whites' concern for conservation.
On the other hand, as the Wamponoags say, the stores, eyesores though they may be, are commercially essential for the Indians' survival, and result from white economic domination of Gay Head. Under these conditions, conservation may be a luxury only whites can afford, motivated by belated guilt over past white rape of the enviroment.
The intense political maneuvering among the Indians, and the factions within the tribe, do support some whites' doubts that the Indians are the unassimilated and united body they claim to be, Although the fight to regain the Indian land is in part a moral stand, both whites and Indians have other more selfish interests at stake.
In trying to make reparations for misdeeds of the past, some groups, as Gay Head is learning painfully, must suffer. Few Gay Head residents like the current controversy, but as the Wamponoags point out, they could claim much more than they are legally demanding now. As Tureen says, "The politicians are screaming now, but I think they will find that the tribe has been generous. Or if not, they'll forget about it." Tureen's comment is an apt summary. After the issue is resolved, Gay Head will most likely slide back into anonymity. The Indians will be a little richer, the whites a little poorer, and perhaps justice--in some compromised sense--will have been done.