WampaGate

Gayle Andrews: A "Woodwork Cousin"

Starring in a New Roll
In pursuit of the elusive brass ring

By Peter Kenney

Some very well known members of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe tried to hitch their wagons to the Aquinnah Wampanoag star years ago. One of them is now back in Mashpee and seemingly in a very powerful position within the tribe. This is yet another story of how the few and the corrupt are trying to bully the many and the honorable.

What happened to get her expelled from the Aquinnah and how did she gain reinstatement into the Mashpee?Gayle Andrews: A force to be reckoned with?
Gayle Andrews is the daughter of Anne Peters Brown whose brother was the late Russell Peters and whose older sister is Amelia Bingham. Gayle Andrews is unquestionably a Mashpee Wampanoag. Why, then, did she resign from the Mashpee rolls and apply for and receive membership in the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe? And, what happened to get her expelled from the Aquinnah and how did she gain reinstatement into the Mashpee? This is an interesting situation in and of itself but it is all the more so because Gayle Andrews has become a very powerful presence at Mashpee tribal council headquarters.

She has returned from Tallahassee, Florida where she lived and worked for the better part of thirty years, first as a CBS affiliate’s statehouse and political reporter and then as an independent media consultant to various political candidates and even as a democrat campaign manager. Now she is reportedly being paid several thousand dollars per month to handle various tasks for the tribe, the same tribe from which she once resigned. And, she is also reportedly the unseen hand behind the web site known as “Wamp Facts.” Add to this the formidable temper she is widely said to possess -- a temper that she releases freely -- and one can see that Gayle Andrews is someone to be reckoned with.

In the 1990's resigned her membership in the Mashpee to join the Aquinnah WampanoagsMembership has its privileges
But in the nineteen nineties this woman, whose brother rose to become perhaps the best known Mashpee chief of the twentieth century, resigned her membership in the Mashpee to join the Aquinnah Wampanoags. As the story goes, Andrews met and became close to Beverly Wright who was at the time the head of the Aquinnah Tribal Council. Wright told Andrews that she should join the Aquinnah tribe because their newly granted recognition was going to make then into a gambling powerhouse and all the tribe’s members would be rich. That is precisely what both Andrews and her mother did. They formally applied for admission as full members of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe.

It took the Aquinnah’s genealogist sixteen years to undo the Andrews-Brown scamBeing recognized as a tribe member required documentation. Of course, the fact that Andrews and her mother were known to be members of one of the largest and best known Mashpee families might make some people on Martha’s Vineyard suspicious. And it did. But, it took more than a year of hard work by June Manning, the woman who has been the Aquinnah’s genealogist for sixteen years to undo the Andrews-Brown scam. One bit of evidence of their Aquinnah heritage the two submitted was what was purported to be a letter written early in the twentieth century saying that Brown had been adopted by, or taken in by, an Aquinnah family living in North Tisbury, specifically in an area now owned by the tribe and known as Christian Town. In Island parlance this is an area up-island near West Tisbury. Questions about the letter’s authenticity drove the tribe almost to point of having expensive tests run to establish the ink and paper as being of the right age and type.
Now she is back in Mashpee, mysteriously returned to the rolls when other lifelong members appear to have been removed without cause or notice
F.O.G. – Friend of Glenn
Some people hesitate, except in private, to use words such as fraud and forgery. But it is established that the letter was thoroughly discredited. Also, other documents submitted with the membership application have failed to pass muster. So, approximately ten years ago Gayle Andrews and her mother were removed from the membership rolls of the Aquinnah Wampanoags. Now she is back in Mashpee, mysteriously returned to the rolls when other lifelong members appear to have been removed without cause or notice. This is yet another case that makes one wonder what Patricia "Pattie Cakes" Oakley is doing as genealogist for the tribe. It also sheds light on the close relationship Andrews and Glenn Marshall were said to have enjoyed. One might wonder if their well-known tempers and their shared but curious definition of honesty destined them to be friends and confidants. Andrews must now be hoping that she catches the brass ring in Mashpee that she missed in Aquinnah.

Calls to the offices of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council asking for Gayle Andrews have not been returned, nor have calls made to her Tallahassee business telephone.  I wanted to ask if she is what Indians refer to as a "Woodwork Cousin" -- someone who becomes Indian only after a tribe gains recognition -- one of the many who come out of the woodwork when being Indian becomes respectable.