North Stonington - Six years after the federal government rescinded its recognition of the tribe, the Eastern Pequots are asking the secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior to review the decision.

The tribe, in an 11-page petition, raises procedural and constitutional issues and argues that the Bureau of Indian Affairs was wrong to discount the state's longstanding recognition of the tribe in deciding whether to grant federal recognition.

For the tribe, time may be running out.

"It got to the point where there was a deadline coming up. We had to do something to preserve our rights," James Cunha Jr., chairman of the Eastern Pequot Tribal Council, said Wednesday in a phone interview.

Federally recognized tribes enjoy sovereign status and are eligible for certain federal aid. Land the federal government takes into trust for them is exempt from state and local jurisdiction. Federal recognition was essential to the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes' ability to develop casinos.

While Cunha, in a June address to members of his tribe, reported that the tribal council had "authorized an aggressive pursuit of economic expansion," the petition filed with the BIA says the tribe has "a staggering debt approaching 80 million dollars, for which we have nothing to show but our modest longhouse."

Cunha acknowledged Wednesday that the tribe has no income and no backers. He said the debt began to accrue as separate factions of the tribe prepared their applications for federal recognition. The Eastern Pequots began the costly process, which included hiring anthropologists and genealogists, in 1978 and the Paucatuck Eastern Pequots followed suit in 1989.

Eventually, the BIA combined the applications, citing the groups' shared Lantern Hill reservation and shared histories. In 2002, the BIA concluded that the groups, as a single tribe, satisfied the seven criteria for federal recognition. Another Indian group, the state and the towns of Ledyard, North Stonington and Preston appealed the "final determination" to the Interior Board of Indian Appeals, which in May 2005 sent it back to the BIA.

Five months later, the BIA, in a decision signed by Associate Deputy Secretary James E. Cason, found that the Eastern Pequots had failed to demonstrate that they had existed continuously as a community and as a political authority, two of the criteria for recognition.

At the same time, the BIA also rescinded the recognition it had previously granted another Connecticut tribe, the Kent-based Schaghticokes. The tribe appealed the reversal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the BIA. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the matter.

Before the Eastern and Paucatuck Eastern factions were combined, each had deals with financial backers eager to build a casino. At one point, Donald Trump backed the Paucatuck Easterns while Eastern Capital, whose principals included Southport developer David Rosow, supported the former Easterns. Part of the tribe's current debt is related to the deals and lawsuits that ensued after the tribe's federal recognition was rescinded, Cunha said.

"When I took over (as chairman of the combined tribe), we were in the middle of a huge lawsuit with Trump," Cunha said. "Everything's been settled, but we have huge bills for lawyers and outstanding payments to financial backers, Trump among them."

Struggling to move forward, the Eastern Pequots hope to start a small business. The tribe owns a building in the Holly Green plaza on Route 2 and its council meets there several times a month, according to Cunha. Recently, it took on a tenant, the nonprofit Rhode Island Indian Council, which is leasing office space in the building.

The tribe has more than 1,100 members. Ten to 15 tribal families live on the tribe's 244-acre reservation on Lantern Hill, Cunha said, with the rest scattered mostly across Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

At this point, he said, the tribe has no grandiose development plans should it gain federal recognition.

"Everybody just assumed we're only interested in a casino," he said. "It's not about a casino; it's about making sure we live in something that's safe, that we can get what every other recognized tribe gets in the way of help with housing, education, health care."

First Selectman Nicholas Mullane II, a staunch opponent of the Eastern Pequots' designs on federal recognition, said he continues to monitor their efforts.

"We really don't know what's going on," he said of the tribe's petition. "We've got to evaluate it."

Mullane said he believes the tribe fails to meet the federal requirements for recognition and could not survive as an "independent sovereign nation" capable of providing its own police and fire protection, for example.

"We have a lot at stake," he said. "No town can afford to lose tax base and incur additional service costs."

b.hallenbeck@theday.com