Learning about Maine’s Wabanaki

As an undergrad, I took an English course focused on Maine writers and Maine stories. The course was called “Many Maines,” and it was the first time I encountered tribal stories from the Wabenaki. I enjoyed the stories of Gluskabi and the Wind Eagle, but most of the texts for the class were focused on what I understood to be representative of modern day Mainers, such as those imagined by Carolyn Chute in The Beans of Egypt, Maine or Ruth Moore in The Weir. Those fictional Mainers dealt with poverty and loss, but I did not occur to me that Maine’s indigenous peoples were still living in Maine and were enduring the same kinds of poverty and struggle.

It wasn’t until I moved to Maine in the early 2000s that I began to learn about the state’s history of racism, from the removal of residents of Malagada Island to the separation of indigenous children from their homes. Particularly since I enjoy so much of my summer hiking and traveling around Maine, I want to better understand the history that surrounds me.

In exploring the UNE library’s collection of Community, Equity, and Diversity Collection, I found an article on The International Center for Transitional Justice site, a non-profit with the an ambitious purpose: “While many groups working on human rights focus on exposing and denouncing violations and atrocities, our focus is on what often proves even more challenging – trying to put the pieces of a broken society back together again on foundations of justice and the rule of law. This requires staying in the struggle for the long haul and being an active part of the solution,” as described on their site. The article I read clearly demonstrates the ICTJ’s dedication to this philosophy.

“Shadows in Dawnland: Wabanaki Tribes and the State of Maine Set out to Hear the Truth about a Painful Past” by Hannah Dunphy begins at Indian Township in Princeton, Maine, where Aubrey Sockabasin, a victim of family separation, was taken from his home on the Passamaquoddy reservation at age 6. Sockabasin and his brother were removed by the State from their Wabanaki parents, and Sockabasin did not get return to the reservation for decades. The article does not specify the reason Sockabasin was removed from his father and step-mother’s care, but later in this article, Dunphy notes that “cultural misunderstandings about traditional ways of child-rearing in Native communities—especially the prominent role of the extended family—resulted in state agents mistaking these ways for signs of maltreatment.” Alcoholism and child neglect are given as common reasons for removal, but some families voluntarily put their children in foster care due to lack of opportunity on the reservations, according to Dunphy.

In foster care, Sockabasin endured physical and sexual assaults. He considered drowning himself in a nearby river after he was abused at his first foster home. At his third foster home, he set fire to a barn to escape the home. Then he turned himself in, admitting to it. Following that, he was sent to Maine Youth Center, where he was often in solitary confinement despite his young age, and, according to Dunphy, he “was ostracized by his peers and caretakers for being Passamaquoddy, and no serious efforts were made to encourage him to reconnect with his tribe or heritage. One year, as a joke, administrators presented him with a fake feathered headdress.” Dunphy states that Sockabasin’s experience was not uncommon.

From 2012-2015, the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has been documenting situations like Aubrey Sockabasin’s through interviews with indigenous and non-native Mainers. In the article, Dunphy ponders the emotional and cultural tolls of the practice of child removal on the Wabanaki. She also acknowledges that the formation of the commission in itself ia a big step forward. Many individuals and organizations are involved with TRC, including Ester Attean, the Co-Director of Maine Wabanki REACH, which stands for Reconciliation, Education, Advocacy, Change, and Healing.

According to Ester Attean, there are currently about 8,000 Wabanaki in Maine, but not all Wabanaki live on reservations. The Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Micmac, and Maliseet have reservations in Maine. Attean discusses the policies of cultural genocide used against indigenous people across the US; she describes the primary tool as the boarding school. In an ITJC video, Co-Director Attean explains the use of boarding schools to destroy indigenous cultures. She asserts that the stated mission of the Carlisle Residential School in Pennsylvania, for example, was “kill the Indian to save the man,” meaning that eradicating cultural traditions was the only way to assimilation. This sentiment was voiced in the late 1800s but shaped the federal policy well into the 1900s. These practices were not specific to Maine or the US, sadly. They were practiced in many colonized places, such as Canada, which has recently been reconciling its state-sponsored practice of separating children from their families, most recently after the discovery of a mass grave of 251 First Nations children in British Columbia.

The first commissioners of the TRC were both indigenous and non-indigenous, and the committee is unique in that it includes representatives of both the State of Maine and Maine’s tribal nations. Dunphy lists the commissioners as then Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, gkisedtanamoogk of the Wampanoag tribe (who has a TED Talk from 2013 about the TRC), Educator Carol Wishcamper, Dr. Gail Werrbach (Director of the University of Maine School of Social Work), and Sandra White Hawk (a member of the Lakota Sioux). Since the article was written in 2013, the TRC has published a report by Ester Attean in conjunction with Penthea Burns of University of Southern Maine, Martha Proulx of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, Jamie Bissonette-Lewey of Maine Indian Tribal State Commission, Jill Williams of the Center of Social Inclusion, and Kathy Deserly of the Indian Child and Family Resource Center. Although I have not read the report yet, in exploring these resources, I have added to my understanding of not only Maine’s history but also some of the treatment of indigenous peoples in other US states as well as Canada.