Editorial

Take your pick Mashpees - a Casino or a Sunrise Greeting

But you aren't going to get both
What up Chuck? Don't you want the tribe to get rich?

By Walter Brooks

 Is this Chucky Green's solution?

Anyone who has lived on this sandspit a few decades knows that our Native American Mashpee Wampanoags are impossible to differentiate from the rest of the Cape's population.

They shop at the same stores, drive the same cars and trucks, send their kids to the same schools and... go to the same churches.

They don't run down to South Cape Beach to watch the sun come up any more than they still live in wigwams or hunt buffalo.

Maybe Chucky Green does, but you know Chucky, he'll do anything for a little publicity.

The Mashpee Wampanoags are Christians like most of the rest of us. They have been since the mid-1700s when they were converted and given land for the switch in what we call Mashpee today.

Roll the dice or roll your eyes

Sometime very soon the state of Massachusetts will decide who, what and where to put a few casinos.

If the tribe gets one, every one of its 1,800+ members will become very rich and very soon. The state is drowning in "red ink", and Beacon Hill sees a renewable wind energy industry as a key to survival along with casino gambling.

If the tribe kills Cape Wind and stops the state from prospering, the state will stop the tribe from propering.

If Chucky Green gets his way they'll all freeze their butts off on Cape South Beach trying to see the sunrise over Eastham.