“It’s not if, but when.”

A tribe is losing reservation status for its more than 300. Housing development and breaking ground on a $1bn resort casino. Of Mashpee and the other half in Taunton near the Rhode Island. The tribe planned to construct its $1 billion First Light Resort and Casino on tribal land in Taunton, a project that would have a significant impact on the state’s commercial casino industry.

That’s what Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Chairman Cedric Cromwell told reporters Wednesday when asked about the fate of the long-promised, full-scale casino-resort planned for Taunton.

“The tribe is still an active player in Region C,” Cromwell, who oversees the Mashpee Wampanoag’s government and finances, said. “We’re going to move forward. Our goal is progress, move forward and keep it going.”

Cromwell’s statements come the day tribal attorneys presented arguments before the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will decide whether the tribe qualifies to have land taken into trust — a special status that promotes tribal self-governance by exempting the reservation from state and local regulations.

Following a legal challenge from neighbors of the proposed casino initiated in 2016, the tribe appealed a decision from the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts that essentially reversed a determination from the U.S. Department of the Interior, which said the tribe satisfied a definition of “Indian” spelled out under the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, and therefore qualified for trust status. Historically the Interior Department acts as the trustee for tribal land.

The Obama administration initially approved the Mashpee Wampanoag’s trust application, effectively securing the land needed to build the promised casino and green-lighting the project. But the court decision brought the casino’s construction to a halt.

The tribe’s bid to keep its reservation is made complicated by a 2009 Supreme Court decision known as Carcieri v. Salazar, which established that the Secretary of the Interior could not take land into trust for tribes that were not under federal jurisdiction before 1934, at the time of the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act. Carcieri v. Salazar increased the burden of proof tribes had to meet to qualify for trust status.

On Wednesday, David Tennant, an attorney for the Taunton neighbors, argued that under a plain reading of the 1934 statute, lawmakers at the time intended to exclude the Mashpee tribe from acquiring trust lands.

But tribal attorney Benjamin Wish argued that the language in the law is ambiguous, and that the Bureau of Indian Affairs is empowered to issue an interpretation in favor of the tribe’s interests, noting the agency’s fiduciary responsibility to tribes.

“The question is whether more than one reading is permissible,” Wish said.

Cromwell said the tribe’s finances have been “hit pretty bad” by the litigation.

“It’s tough to finance problems,” he said. “Our hopes is that this gets done pretty quickly ... we believe we stand on the right side of justice. The goal is to get economic development moving again.'

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