Brown University transfers ownership of a portion of its land to Pokanoket Indian Tribe

Brown University has transferred ownership of a portion of its land in Bristol, Rhode Island, to a preservation trust established by the Pokanoket Indian Tribe.

The move ensures that access to the land and waters extends to tribes and Native peoples of the region for whom the land has significance, according to the university, which finalized the transfer last month.

The land is the ancestral home of Metacom — also known as King Philip — the leader of the Pokanoket people. It’s also the site of his 1676 death during King Philip’s War, a bloody conflict between tribes and European settlers.

In August 2017, members of the tribe and their supporters set up an encampment at the university, saying the land was illegally taken from them hundreds of years ago.

The Pokanoket Nation said the encampment was aimed at reclaiming the tribe’s ancestral home in Bristol, which contains spiritually important sites. The tribe is not federally recognized, but its members say they are descended from the tribe that helped the pilgrims and its leader, Massasoit, father of Metacom.

The Ivy League university said at the time that the land was donated decades earlier and that it had owned the legal title for more than 60 years.

A month after the encampment began the school reached an agreement acknowledging that the land is historically Pokanoket.

The land is part of the university’s 375-acre (150-hectare) Mount Hope property, which was donated to the school in 1955. The property is home to the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology collections and a center used for educational programs and field research.

The transfer partly fulfills a pledge made in the 2017 agreement, according to the university.

Brown officials say they commissioned the Public Archaeology Laboratory, Inc., to conduct a tribal cultural sensitivity assessment, which recommended that the portion of the Bristol land comprising approximately 255 acres (100 hectares) should be considered a traditional cultural property.

The university plans to begin moving the museum collection in the fall of 2025 and anticipates vacating the museum facilities on the Mount Hope property by the summer of 2026.

The Pokanoket Tribe’s sachem, Tracey “Dancing Star” Trezvant Guy, hailed the land transfer.

“The significance of this land goes back to time immemorial for our people,” she said in a statement Monday to The Boston Globe. “For the first time in over 340 years, we unlocked the gates to the property for ourselves and walked onto our land. That is significant. It is historical.”

Russell Carey, executive vice president for planning and policy at Brown, said the university’s goal remains the preservation of the land along with sustainable access by Native tribes with ties to its historic sites.

The deed for the land transfer — which cannot be amended — states the Pokanoket “shall at all times and in perpetuity provide and maintain access to the lands and waters of the Property to all members of all Tribes historically part of the Pokanoket Nation/Confederacy, and to 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.”

Steve Leblanc, The Associated Press