Tribe fires white woman who complained of discrimination

Thursday, April 17, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

Barbette Warren, who had worked for the tribe for four years, filed a second complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination after she was told Tuesday that she had been fired.

"I believe I have been fired in retaliation for opposing the Tribe's unlawful practices ...," she said in the new complaint.

The MCAD was considering her earlier complaint - that days after the tribe's personnel committee offered her the $30,000-a-year job as education director, the tribal council voted to deny her the position.

She said she was told she was denied the job because she is white.

The Boston Globe today said Warren was fired Sunday at a tribal council meeting, at which Jeffrey Madison was fired as the tribe's economic development director. Warren was Madison's administrative assistant.

In her latest complaint to the MCAD, Warren said her firing was triggered by an April 6 Globe story about her racial discrimination complaint at being denied the education director job.

The Globe said Warren was not available for comment Wednesday, but that George K. Regan, the tribe's media consultant in Boston, confirmed that she had been fired.

"The decision to terminate Miss Warren was undertaken for just and proper reasons not related to racial issues," Regan told the newspaper. "We are more than satisfied with the legitimacy of these reasons ..."

In her complaint to the MCAD over her firing, Warren said, "The tribe has indicated that I was fired for allowing my photograph to appear in the Globe, and releasing confidential information.

"I did not contact the Globe; the Globe contacted me. I did not release any confidential documents to the Globe," she said.

She said the Globe used information from documents filed with the MCAD.

"When I posed for the Globe picture, I was on leave from my job and posed on state property, to wit, I was exercising my constitutional rights," Warren said in the complaint.

"The tribal council of the Aquinnan Wampanoag Tribe views any allegation of racial discrimination very seriously," Regan told the Globe Wednesday. "The Wampanoag Tribe knows of discrimination firsthand, and does not discriminate."

In her first complaint, Warren said she had "to suffer mistreatment because of my race" continually during the four years she worked for the tribe.

Following the filing of that complaint, the tribal council said the tribe has sovereign independence, and questioned whether the MCAD had jurisdiction in the case.

The Wampanoags want to build a gambling casino in Fall River, but the Legislature has not approved that type of gambling in the state.

As part of its earlier proposal to build a casino in New Bedford, the tribe pledged to obey equal opportunity laws in hiring for the casino.

Madison, who had been working on the tribe's proposal, was hired this week as director of Indian gaming for the Carnival Hotel and Casino Corp., which was helping the tribe's efforts to get a casino.