Bellicose Bumpkin

I’m a strong support of alternative energy in general and Cape Wind in particular. I was skeptical when the Aquinnah and Mashpee Wampanoag partnered with the Cape Wind opposition group Save Our Sound. The objection was that the turbines would disrupt a sacred sun greeting ceremony. I did a podcast with the Communications Director of Cape Wind and started reading up on it. One thing that I’ve never been able to understand is how the sun greeting ceremony fit into the Wampanaog belief system. The Mashpee Wampanoag are Christian and have been for hundreds of years. While following the Middleboro casino issue, I often see tribe members refer to the “Creator” in talking about tribal rituals, pow-wows etc.
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Shortly after the Cape Wind opposition became big news, I spoke to Gil Solomon Sachem of the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag. While he supports the Mashpee opposition to Cape Wind, he said it was “inconsistent” for them to support a Middleboro casino and oppose Cape Wind. I also asked him how the sun ceremony fit in with their religion since I thought they were Christian. He basically said “don’t go there”. I’m sure the forcing of Christianity on the Wampanaog is a real sore point, but I think opposition to Cape Wind would seem less incongrous if the tribe’s culture was understood.
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The reason I’m writing this now is because of this blog post in Cape Cod Today that raised some of these issues and floated the idea that Mashpee opposition to Cape Wind could work against their casino ambitions:

Hopefully some of my Wampanaog readers can fill in the blanks about how their Indian traditions fit in with their Christian ones.

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