Now, the Pequots are loaded, influential and a bit pushy. Until a few years ago, the tribe was a minuscule, penniless group that no one much cared about. In response, locals like Greene have formed a grass-roots movement that has pressured elected officials from the three towns surrounding the reservation to sue in federal court to stop the Pequots from adding 165 acres to their 1,238-acre homeland. This constitutes a reversal of historic proportions: Indians, long consigned to dismal parcels of land, are encroaching on white territory. And now they want more land to expand the reservation. 'Then came the casino in 1992, and they got rich.
Greene, a scrappy middle-age clerk of old Connecticut Yankee stock, leans in to make the point, tapping his feet insistently. 'Back in 1983 when the tribe got federal recognition, I thought, Good for them, about time America did what's right.' Then in 1986 when they opened the bingo hall, I didn't think much about that, a few old ladies going up there on Sundays. Sitting on the back porch of his stream-side cottage in this tiny New England town, Larry Greene explains how he came to resent the Mashantucket Pequots, owners of Foxwoods Casino, one of the most profitable gambling operations in the world.
