The Wampanoag Tribe’s misguided drive to open a gaming hall in Aquinnah hit a legal derailment last Friday. In forty carefully reasoned pages, U.S. District Judge Dennis Saylor 4th laid out exactly how the tribe had bargained away its rights in the 1980s in an agreement settling land claims.

Tribal leaders are still considering their options, but it’s difficult as a legal matter to see how the judge’s decision granting summary judgment to the state, town and homeowners’ association could be overturned. And viewing the situation from a 21st century perspective, it is the right political outcome as well.

The Vineyard that we all now share would be ill-served by a casino at the westernmost tip of the Island.

The toll it would take on Island roads, emergency services and the quality of up-Island life would surely outweigh any modest benefits to the tribe. And while resort casinos have made many Indian tribes wealthy, increased competition has hurt their reliability as an engine of economic development. Just look at Atlantic City.

There is modern reality, of course, and there is history, a long dark history in which native Americans were systematically driven from their ancestral lands. For members of the Wampanoag tribe, the original inhabitants of what has come to be called southern New England, that original sin is hard to forget.

While the tribe’s fight for gaming rights always seemed wrongheaded, its desire to assert sovereignty is understandable and even admirable. Efforts to preserve tribal culture, including a preschool program described in this issue of the Gazette to reintroduce the native Wampanoag language, deserve Island support and encouragement.

Perhaps the tribe, finding one door shut, can develop another creative idea that will elevate opportunities for its members, one that fellow Islanders can honor and rally around.