For Immediate Release
February 14, 2025
Native American Wampanoag Tribal Members, Residents Challenge New Sand Mine Underway in Plymouth MA
Groups Demand Cease and Desist Order to Stop Destruction of Ancient Native American Sites
Indigenous People’s Graves, Sacred Sites at Risk
No Archeological or Environmental Study Conducted
Contacts: Meg Sheehan, Attorney
Community Land & Water Coalition
environmentwatchsoutheasternma@gmail.com
Tel. 508-259-9154
Melissa Ferretti, Chairwoman
Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe
Plymouth, MA — Seven members of the Wampanoag Nation and six Plymouth residents appealed permits issued by the Town of Plymouth for a 33-acre sand mine and development on an ancient Native American site known as the “Great Lot” in south Plymouth.
Community Land & Water Coalition (CLWC) on Friday Feb. 14, 2025, filed a demand for a cease and desist after confirming that Eric Pontiff, doing business under the name of Standish Investment Group, LLC, started the work before the legal appeal period expired.
The group’s cease and desist request states:
The Work is destroying the ancestral lands and heritage of the Wampanoag Tribes including destroying potential burial sites, graves, and homesites without an archeological study, without Free Prior Informed Consent and in violation of Article 32 of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People, the laws of Massachusetts and the Zoning Bylaw.
Photos Above: February 14, 2025, tree clearing has started to cut down ancient trees on sacred Wampanoag Lands at 71 Hedges Pond Road, Cedarville, Plymouth MA.
One of the last remaining hills in the Town, sacred site of the Wampanoag People
The proposed mining site is 33-acres of forested land at 71 Hedges Pond Road. It is one of the last hills not leveled by decades of sand and gravel mining in the Town. The plans show massive excavation that will start at the top of the 150-foot hill and mine about 90 feet deep across the site.
The Town issued the permits to what some call a “shadow government” of the Town, a non-profit called “Plymouth Regional Economic Development Foundation, Inc.” The Foundation obtained the land from the Town for $1.00 and sold it to Standish Investment, LLC, whose operator is Eric Pontiff. Pontiff has operated sand and gravel mines throughout the area for decades, including at 140 Firehouse Road in Plymouth. Currently, the company is expanding a 50-acre mine in Carver.
In January 2025, following a recommendation by Plymouth’s Planning Board, the Town’s Director of Inspectional Services issued zoning and building permits to level the 150 foot hill, allegedly preparing the site for a “commercial complex” of large buildings. Over 1,000 letters were sent to the Town demanding that the Director require a special permit under the Town’s Zoning Bylaw. The Town ignored the letters.
The hill and forested land is in an area known as the “Ancient Indian Plantation” and are the ancestral lands of the state’s Native American Wampanoag People.
The petitioners bringing the appeal include members of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe. Wampanoag ancestral lands encompass the proposed sand mining site.
“We oppose this project and the development of this area on Hedges Pond Road,” said Melissa Ferretti, Chairwoman of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe based in Plymouth, which was called Patuxet by Indigenous People. “This location is an integral part of our original reservation lands known to us as the “Great Lot.” This project threatens to irreversibly damage our ancestral homelands, the heart of our existence and heritage here in Plymouth. The Great Lot holds immense cultural and historic significance for our community and any development would not only harm the land but also disrupt our deep-rooted connection to it. Honoring the sacredness of these grounds is fundamental to our community and culture,” Ferretti stated. In November 2024, Governor Healy issued an Executive Order granting the Tribe state recognition, a major accomplishment.
Speaking at the February 11, 2025 Select Board meeting,Indigenous youth urged the Town to, “At least consider and possibly even invite people from her tribe and other neighboring sister tribes to have discussions about these matters and include them in them.”
At the Select Board meeting Miciah Stasis from the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe said, “Our people have been here for thousands of years and our ancestors lay beneath those lands that you are trying to sand mine… If this was anybody else’s grandmother or grandparents that are being dug up right now, there would be an issue.”
The February 14, 2025 legal appeal and cease and desist demands an archeological study and compliance with state and federal laws that protect ancient historic areas and resources.
“Plymouth officials and the business interests that make up the Plymouth Foundation promote the Town as “America’s Hometown.” They market the Native American and Pilgrim story to the world’s tourists. They profit from the Thanksgiving story but are letting this project destroy that very history without even an archeological or environmental impact study,” said Meg Sheehan, attorney for the petitioners filing the appeal.
The community neighborhood Cedarville Village Steering Committee in a December finding unanimously rejected the “unified complex” plan calling it vague. By claiming a development is a “unified complex,” a sand and gravel company can seek to evade the more stringent special permitting process and proceed without a public hearing.
The February 14, 2025 appeal requires the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) to hold a public hearing on whether to uphold the permits. The hearing will be scheduled in several weeks and is open to the public. In a potential conflict of interest, two members of the ZBA are Directors of the Plymouth Foundation, which received the sand mining permit from the Town.
On another mining project, on March 3, 2025, the Zoning Board of Appeals will hold the second day of a public hearing on a proposal by PA Landers, a regional sand and gravel mining operator, to expand its 100 acre mine and level a hill visible from Route 3 North. This is adjacent to 71 Hedges Pond Road, the subject of the February 14, 2025, legal appeal. The hearing is in the Great Hall, 2nd Floor, 26 Court St., Plymouth, 7 pm.
On Sunday, February 16, 2025 at 7 p.m. the local group CLWC is holding its second public forum on sand and gravel mining in Plymouth.
A state-wide campaign, Stop the Desecration, seeks to raise awareness about the destruction of Native American archeological sites without proper legal reviews.
For more information:
I have some ”reservations” about this. While I applaud any efforts to protect any area from development, I do not approve of Indian tribes and would like to see them abolished. In some cases, such as this one, they do help to preserve some local areas and that is good, but in general, Indian tribes are detrimental to the environment.
The grazing of sheep in Arizona and New Mexico by Hopi and Navaho, Horrible torture of baby eagles in Hopi rain-making rituals, minning for uranium by Navaho workers in the Southwest, out of season fishing by Chipawa in Wisconsin, killing whales by the Makah in Washingtom State and by Eskimos in Alaska, and the annual slaughter of bison in Montana are all examples of Indian tribes being allowed to destroy the environment with impunity despite laws to the contrary. Such racist special privilege are an anachroism left over from the 19th century and should be abolished.
But politics must be above all, practical. For example, I think hunting for sport is literally insane, but Ducks Unlimited has protectd much wetland habitat for many species in order to be able to shoot ducks each Fall. So I reluctantly applaud this instance of Indians trying to protect an area in spite of their unconstitutional racist and superstitious motives for doing so.
Most of the harms that you listed are not because tribes exist, they are because of the colonizers. The Natives here did not have domestic sheep, they were brought here from Europe. The Dine (Navajo) did not practice animal agriculture until they were colonized, they were hunter-raiders. I agree about killing whales, and the reason for that is that people are living where they don’t belong; humans are tropical animals, and the farther they live from the tropics, they more harm they do.
That all said, the differences between Natives and Europeans are cultural, not genetic. Humans are humans, and as a whole we’re all the same in that regard. Raise a white baby by hunter-gatherers living in the natural world, and that baby will grow up to be a hunter-gatherer. Raise a baby of hunter-gatherers by our industrial agricultural society, and that baby will grow up to be a modern human. My point is that as that traditional Native cultures get ever more destroyed as time goes on, a larger percentage of the Natives become just like the colonizers: they want money, and will get it by logging, mining, and grazing. These non-traditionalists have unfortunately become the large majority of Natives, and there is little if any traditional Native culture left in the U.S.
My point in all this is that your focus here is misplaced. It’s not “tribes” that are the problem, it’s the agricultural and industrial human mindset, and the lack of mental and spiritual evolution that’s responsible for it. If we shed or at least mostly shed our material desires and feel oneness with all life, we don’t act the way that the vast majority of modern humans act, with little or no regard for the Earth or the nonhumans who live here. You focus on tribes, who are doing no more harm than the rest of our society, and you probably do so because you expect better of them considering their traditional lifestyles and attitudes. A better way to look at this is that regarding environmental and ecological issues, Natives should be treated no different than anyone else, because humans shouldn’t be our focus, the Earth and the nonhumans here should be. THEY are the least among us, THEY are being killed, harmed and destroyed, and THEY are the ones who need help. Humans are thriving, at 8 billion plus and increasing.
None of the historical facts you mention have anything to do with the current facts on the ground, that the exception for tribal groups from conservation laws that apply to everyone else should stop and the members of those groups should have to abide by the same laws that apply to others. Regardless of how someone’s ancestors lived or who got to this continent first, there is no excuse for exempting anyone from much-needed ( though woefully inadequet )conservation rules on grounds of their ancestry.
All Indian tribes should be stripped of their special legal status and made to obey the same conservation laws as the majority of the population. And all reservation land not currently occupied by an individual should revert to the Federal government and be managed for the benefit of the entire public instead of being reserved for the exclusive use of some small group on the basis of their ancestry. And no religion or tradition should have any standing to commit acts that would be criminal if done by anyone else.
And all treaties signed in the 19th century by people who thought the wilderness and wildlife were endless and who could not imagine the situation we face today should be declared null and void.