Vanity book about Pequots

Longtime Critic Publishes Book On MashantucketsEven his detractors might have to admire Leo Fletcher's pluck.

The Norwich native and one-time tribal spouse, who claims he was banished from the Mashantucket Pequot reservation after being fired from his job there in the mid-1990s, has made good on his promise to publish an expose of the tribe.

The 50-year-old Fletcher, whose full name is Walter Leo Fletcher Jr., said he put up $7,000 of his own money to have Dorrance Publishing, a Pittsburgh, Pa., subsidy publisher, produce 5,000 paperback copies of “The Tribe of Foxes,” whose subtitle touts it as “The True Inside Story About the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation.”If that sounds at all impressive, read on:In a wrongful-termination suit he filed against the tribe in 1996, Fletcher maintained that tribal officials trumped up sexual harassment charges against him and that the real reason for his dismissal was the existence of his manuscript detailing racial tensions and corruption on the reservation. He had told tribal leaders, including then-Chairman Richard “Skip” Hayward, that he intended to publish it.

In reality, Fletcher has published only a small portion of what he said was a 207-page manuscript, most of which he said was stolen from him around the time he was kicked off the reservation.

Mostly, “The Tribe of Foxes” contains copies of court documents related to his case. Tribal Judge Edward B. O'Connell's decision, dated Feb. 19, 2002, which dismissed Fletcher's claims, is included.Comment:  The Tribe of Foxes sounds like a get-even scheme disguised as a book. I'm all for airing grievances, but I do it in the relative privacy of my blog. I don't presume that my "personal vendettas" are of interest to the wider world.

For more on the subject, see Mashantucket Pequots Strike Back and The Critics of Indian Gaming—and Why They're Wrong.