North Stonington — The Eastern Pequot Tribe has renewed its pursuit of federal recognition, a crucial status it won in a 2002 Bureau of Indian Affairs decision that was reversed three years later.

In a petition sent last month to the BIA, the tribe — identifying itself as the “Historical Eastern Pequot Tribe” — asks the agency to “declare and reaffirm” its status as a “Previously Federally Acknowledged Tribe.”

Federal acknowledgment, or recognition, makes a tribe eligible for federal aid for housing, education and health care as well as to have land taken into trust for economic development, including casinos.

Connecticut’s two federally recognized tribes, the Mashantucket Pequots and the Mohegans, own Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun, respectively. 

As of Thursday, the federal government had not responded to the petition, according to Katherine Sebastian Dring, chairwoman of the Easterns’ tribal council.

She said the petition was sent to Lawrence Roberts, the Department of the Interior’s acting assistant secretary for Indian affairs, and to the department’s Office of Federal Acknowledgment.

“We are grateful to the Creator for providing an opportunity to request this judgment and necessary relief as justice requires,” Sebastian Dring said.

A BIA spokeswoman said late Thursday afternoon that the assistant secretary had received the petition and that it was under review.

Following a lengthy overhaul of the federal-recognition process, the Interior Department adopted new regulations last year that many believed would preclude the Eastern Pequots and other tribes that had been denied recognition from resurrecting their claims.

“Any petitioner that was previously denied Federal acknowledgment under this process may not re-petition,” the Interior Department announced. “This includes any petitioners that have reorganized or been renamed or that are wholly or primarily portions of groups that have been denied under these or previous acknowledgment regulations.”

The Easterns’ petition, submitted by James Benny Jones Jr., a Washington, D.C.-based attorney and a member of the tribe, contends that the Historical Eastern Pequot Tribe “has never previously petitioned for Federal acknowledgment as either the Historical Eastern Pequot Tribe, or under its constitutional government of the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation.”

Jones did not respond to phone and email messages seeking comment.

In 2002, the BIA acknowledged the Eastern Pequot Indians and the Paucatuck Eastern Pequot Indians as one group, the Historical Eastern Pequot Tribe.

The state and the towns of Ledyard, North Stonington and Preston joined a challenge of the decision, prompting the Interior Board of Indian Appeals to review it.

The Interior Department announced in October 2005 that it declined to recognize the Eastern Pequots and the Paucatuck Eastern Pequots, ruling that both tribal factions failed to meet two of seven mandatory requirements for acknowledgment.

The department found that the state’s recognition of the Historical Eastern Pequot Tribe did not constitute evidence that the tribe had existed as a “community” or that it had maintained “political authority and influence” over its members from historical times to the present.

The department’s Reconsidered Final Determination said the Eastern Pequots divided into two separate communities in the early 1980s.

According to the petition, the Historical Eastern Pequot Tribe formed a constitutional government in 2003, “and is known as the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation.”

The tribe asserts that the Reconsidered Final Determination applies only to the two original petitioners, the Eastern Pequots and the Paucatuck Eastern Pequots, not the Historical Eastern Pequot Tribe.

“The tribe submits that the Historical Eastern Pequot Tribe remains Acknowledged and can only be specifically terminated by Congress,” the petition says.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com