Indigenous Mainers are working on a plan to boost tourism for the state’s five Wabanaki nations.
The Wabanaki Cultural Tourism Initiative has received both a federal grant from Health and Human Services and a state grant from the Maine Office of Tourism.
As a member of the Penobscot Nation, Charlene Virgilio, executive director of Four Directions Development Corp., northern New England’s first Aboriginal community development financial institution, said cultural preservation is at the heart of the project. Her goal is to create unique experiences to share how the Abenaki have long been stewards of the land and water.
“Canoeing, kayaking along the ancient rivers that we have, traditional fishing methods, whatever,” she said, “those kinds of things that will help preserve the culture, but also help tourists to discover this culture.
Four Directions and the initiative are set to participate in Governor Janet Mills’ annual tourism conference today and tomorrow. Virgilio said authenticity is key for many Wabanaki communities interested in boosting tourism.
In addition to preserving and sharing culture, said Matthew Lewis, director of Wabanaki program and operations for Four Directions and a member of the Passamaquoddy Tribe, this effort is a way to bring more income to Maine’s native communities and stimulate local economies. For example, he said, there are so many artisans in the community to engage with.
“Tourism can sometimes have a negative connotation with some communities, saying we don’t want people walking through, taking pictures, doing the Disneyland kind of package,” he said. “We want meaningful engagement with the community and meaningful engagement with the culture.”
As they map out the strong four-season tourism industry they hope to achieve by 2030, Lewis said, they also need to consider the infrastructure needed — from hotels and restaurants to workforce development and in hotel training.
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A Chronicle of Higher Education article showed that progress has been made at Arizona State University (ASU) in recruiting Native American faculty and students to the Tempe campus.
Arizona is home to more than 20 tribes and about 400,000 native citizens, but until the late 1990s they were underrepresented at state universities.
ASU founded the Center for Indian Education about 20 years ago in response to the growing number of indigenous students on campus.
Bryan Brayboy, director of the Centre, said there was a clear need to hire more Aboriginal teachers.
“We wanted to be really intentional in listening to our students telling us that they wanted more teachers who looked like them and wanted to be seen,” Brayboy explained. “They felt invisible, so we sat down and came up with a plan to try and fix that.”
Even though Indigenous students make up only about 1% of ASU enrollment, many are the first in their families and communities to attend the university. Brayboy noted that this led them to recruit 60 indigenous scholars for teaching positions.
He argued that programs such as the Center are integral to the university’s mission of inclusiveness, research for the public good and response to the communities they serve.
“Indigenous students and many of our non-Indigenous students come to college, come to ASU particularly because they believe in the mission of the place and are interested in serving society,” said claimed Brayboy.
Brayboy pointed out that the center is also important because of Arizona’s history of using schools as a way to assimilate Native children into Anglo-Saxon culture.
“It’s not that we don’t care about the past, we do,” Brayboy argued. “It’s important that guides us in all sorts of ways. But the hope is that we’re moving towards transforming society and people’s lives by really thinking about what’s possible.”
He added that while the Center is honored with this recognition, it will not rest on its laurels.
“People said to us, ‘God, you’re an overnight success,’ and we’ve been an overnight success for 25 years,” Brayboy pointed out. “This has been in place for a long time as we begin to move towards these goals.”
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Groups that gathered at the State House on Monday called on lawmakers and Governor Janet Mills to pass and sign a bill to address high levels of toxic chemicals in drinking water at the Pleasant Point Reservation Passamaquoddy.
The students and tribal leaders of Pleasant Point, also known as Sipayik, were joined by hundreds of allies also supporting LD 906.
This would exempt the Passamaquoddy Water District from municipal taxes — it’s the only water district in Maine that pays property taxes — and allow tribal members to source water from alternate plots of land.
Pleasant Point Tribal Government Leader Maggie Dana said her community had lived for generations with unsafe drinking water.
“Our culture is clear, water is life,” Dana said. “And to the Passamaquoddy people, it’s poison. As the Passamaquoddy people, we want to take responsibility by regulating our drinking water on our own lands.”
Opponents of the bill say the ongoing water system improvements will solve the problem, but Dana noted that it was one step in a larger battle for tribal sovereignty.
Since the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act of 1980, Maine’s Five Wabanaki Nations have less authority over natural resources, gaming, and taxation than other tribal nations in the country.
Noela Altvater – a 19-year-old from Sipayik – noted that it is possible to have clean water and it will help reverse the negative health effects that people in Sipayik are facing.
“The toxicity of our water has resulted in major health risks,” Altvater said, “like liver disease, respiratory problems, cancer and kidney problems.”
Maulian Dana is a Penobscot Nation Ambassador who is President of the Wabanaki Alliance. She said it should be obvious that clean water is a basic right – but she notes that indigenous communities often have to make obvious statements and defend themselves.
“We should be outraged,” Dana said. “We should be angry, we should be furious at a lot of the living conditions that we had to endure in our homeland. But instead, we’re rising above, we keep coming back in a respectable way. This power is love.”
Maine lawmakers are expected to vote on LD 906 this week, although the governor has voiced opposition. Tribal leaders hope she will sign the bill if it lands on her desk.
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Knowing where to start can seem daunting for people who want to get involved in their communities, and civic engagement can mean something different for the indigenous people of Montana.
Ronnie Jo Horse, executive director of the nonprofit, nonpartisan group Western Native Voice, which works to involve more Montana natives in the election, said a motivating and empowering factor to involve people is to explain the relationship between the tribes and the US government.
“Understand that American Indians or Alaska Natives are not another racial or ethnic group, but have a unique sovereign political status that is recognized in the U.S. Constitution, various Supreme Court decisions, executive orders , acts of Congress and other federal policies,” Horse said. .
Horse pointed out that people are also more likely to engage in elections when they understand Native American voting history. Native Americans were not granted U.S. citizenship until 1924, then faced Jim Crow-era hurdles until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. About two-thirds of Native Americans voted in the 2020 election in Montana. The 2022 state primary election will be held on June 7.
Horse pointed out that people can start small if they want to be civically engaged. To have the biggest impact, she said in-person conversations were the most powerful. Horse noted that unfortunately the pandemic has disrupted his organization’s ability to work in this way, but they have expanded their digital footprint.
“We had a wider reach with the younger generation,” Horse explained. “But it was difficult because of this lack of face-to-face interaction to get the message across.”
Horse added that it’s also important for elected leaders to understand Native American communities and some of the barriers they face, particularly in voting. Issues like voting by mail are critical, for example, because mailboxes can be far away from voters living on reservations or in rural parts of the state, which can be a barrier to voter turnout.
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