U & D

What the Indians ate is the title of an article in the current (June, 2009) issue of Down East magazine. The first page was slipped mysteriously into my mailbox today and, luckily, I had the perseverance to track that gift down. The article is taken from a new book, Notes on a Lost Flute: A Field Guide to the Wabanaki, by Kerry Hardy, which is also being published by Down East Publications. The quality and authority of the article can therefore not be validated by its publication in this journal - this is publicity. But, OK - in these days I respect the steps taken by any organization to keep itself and its workers afloat. The only information I could find out about this author is this speech he made to Maine’s legislature, quoted in a blog by a (possible) native author whom I could also learn no more about. Hardy seems to be a respected authority on water and waterlife preservation issues.

For teacher reasons, I pre-ordered the book from Amazon.com. My reasons relate to the usefulness of this article for “layered” teaching of Wabanaki studies content. In my case, the layering will be onto the language arts, grade 7, class I will teach next year. For the first time in three years, I will be able to use my curriculum to complement the social studies curriculum - I plan to use Micmac and other stories in the fall trimester, along with our reading of folktales and mythology from other times and culture. When the social studies teacher begins his Wabanaki studies unit - which I hope can be also in the fall - I will read this article and do a shortened version of my Native plants curriculum, which is really about Worldview and Land Use.

Why this article? It meets nicely several of the Maine standards for informational text, making it a great teaching tool. There are headings and subheadings, illustrations, captions, great transitional language, native terms, and even an interesting chart! The facts in the article seem to me to be accurate, or at least well-aligned to other resources (e.g. Passamaquoddy Kit Lesson 5 and my own Penobscot seasonal migration lesson which is based on a primary source account). And the author does know his fish. Does it get better than that?

Yes. There are flaws in this text, which make using it the Maine classroom problematic. The teacher has got to address these flaws:

• The “Indians” in this case are, of course, the five federally recognized nations know as “The Wabanakis,” plus the many bands and nations that flourished pre-Contact and no longer do. The article’s title would be better as anything but what it is (suggestions?). And while we are at it, did ALL of Maine’s native peoples do ALL of these activities? That is a question the alert teacher should put on the table. Peoples living far inland, away from an “eel run river” might elect to seek a different primary diet.
• Ate is a problem. The use of the past tense inevitably suggests that the population studied is gone - a done deal. That is, course, not the case. I understand why the past was used (this is a historical study of food sources, or part of one), but the allusion to a dead Indian civilization is there - and it has to be clarified for students. Throughout the text the past tense is used: “the Indians started catching eels in September.” Teachers today should make sure that students know that the Penobscot nation has been a key player in movements to protect the migratory eel (and other food fish) populations threatened by river dam turbines.
• “primal” is a word used in the first sentence, again suggesting that the Indians being studied are somehow less than civilized (savage). This is not the author’s intent, but the students will make inferences - and not let go of these unless the teacher points out the word. I suggest reading the first paragraph aloud - as a think-aloud.
• And while you are at it, see if you can’t find what Native language is used in this text - my guess is that skua-higan is Penobscot/Abenaki, because of references made in the blog post to Kerry’s knowledge of Penobscot place names. Students should know that there are other Native languages in Maine, and, if possible, compare words.
• The Wabanaki Food Year is a pretty cool chart - but why is it not based on Native moon calendar? It would have been a no-brainer for the author to use a native calendar to create this piece - his showpiece. A little research would have given him many accurate options.
• “Migratory” is itself a term contested by many of the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot educators. Following food sources is not the same migration. And, in fact, some tribal groups did migrate by moving permanent homesites (not camps) so as not to overchallenge resources.

Actually, I don’t want to go further. Unless you feel comfortable addressing the points made above, please do not use this as a middle school reading text out of it larger context. I am curious to get the larger book, which may address the points made above.

Think for a moment about governments in distress, globally. There are contested elections, civil wars, usurpations of power, repressed and unrepresented populations, revolutions, invasions, rampant fraud, tyrannical leaders, cartels and pirates.  Within Maine itself, tribal-state relations have, over the last year, come unraveled, a situation  documented in MITSC’s archive of News.

The turmoil of nationhood and nation-building is not lost on the Micmacs of Maine. Federally recognized on November 26, 1991, the Aroostook Band has recently scored what should be a significant legal victory.

An April 13 decision in the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a trend that was tying the hands of tribal governments in resisting state encroachments. The ruling in the case Aroostook Band of Micmacs v. Patricia Ryan, executive director, Maine Human Rights Commission; [et al.]preserves the right of the northern Maine tribe to defend its sovereignty before a federal judge instead of a possibly biased state judiciary. (Micmac win sovereignty case)

The case was argued by the Micmac tribal lawyer, Douglas J. Lukerman, who is also arguing sovereignty cases for the Narragansett and Wampanoag tribes. The root of the cases, as indicated in the quotation above, is the ability of a federally recognized Nation to challenge the actions of a State that limit tribal sovereignty. Given the growth of tribal involvement in environmental, energy-generation/transmission, and gaming issues, for example, this may prove to be an important step forward for Maine’s tribes. It is certainly an example of a tribal government taking an action - all the way to a top court - that will benefit its people as a whole.

On the other hand, this same government is in some disarray. For the last two years, there has been a dirth of information about Micmac internal issues relating to government, even though the existence of distress is well known. This tribal privacy has to be respected.  I was surprised, therefore, to run across two recent articles in Indian Country Today.

The first, dated April 27, is called Report: BIA official supported unelected Micmac chief and council for two years. The article is a summary of a BIA report that has not been publically released, but which was obtained by ICT.  What we have here is a reporter’s summary of a report giving the background of the inter-tribal political issues of the last two or so years.

The 2nd article, dated May 1, is called BIA will encourage new Micmac elections.  Although it is interesting that the attitude and role of BIA and its officials, RE Micmac sovereignty, flip-flops between the two articles (more than once), the more interesting things to me are:

• The text of the interview with Victoria Higgins “Seated chief”, which is in the 2nd article.
• The Comments that follow both articles.

The interview is frank - I wonder if Chief Higgins saw it before publication. It is too bad that ICT did not show a tribal leader more respect. On the other hand, I do not know the history of the author, Gale Courey Toensing, but (he/she) also can be found writing about Maine issues in the MITSC archive. It may be that the interviewer has a less than objective point of view.

The Comments are really amazing, far out-numbering those for any other ICT article I have read recently; far outnumbering comments to articles in the Bangor Daily News or the Portland Press Herald. They demonstrate a deep and passionate response by the tribal community to the interview and to the issues embraced by the Report. Personalities and names aside, the  “outsider” reading these exchanges recognizes the depth of the concern of the tribal members for their sovereignty, their tribal health, and their future growth and welfare.  There are clearly disparate opinions and hyperbolic passions, but there are also voices of reason. These comment strings are a lesson in “civics,” it seems to me.

Would I use them in a classroom? No - from my point of view, these are private, inner-tribal conversations. But I would certainly not shy away from referring to the  political unrest in the  Aroostook Band of Micmacs - this is a validation of the sovereign and active nature of their government - and I would remind students that this government was able to achieve the legal victory that I noted at the top of this article.

Questions arise about the role and charge of the BIA.  Students can be referred to the Bureau of Indian Affairs Division of Tribal Government Services, which will at least provide a non-Indian frame of reference for reading the two articles above. But the relationship, in theory and in fact, between the BIA and the Micmacs seems to be complex and a bit smokey.  Some of the publications of the BIA that relate to “Self-Governance” seem to be more concerned with dotting tribal i’s and crossing tribal t’s than with facilitating self-determination and self-governance.

It is tempting to side with the Micmac Commenters who say, “Leave us alone to solve our problems - for we can.”

I like the phrase “original free and independent existence.” It comes from a lucid essay by Steven Newcomb, appearing in the May 1, 2009, Indian Country Today (On Non-Indian, Anti-Indian Law).

Newcomb does not discuss specific laws, such as the one I looked at in my last post. He does not propose new laws or suggest ways to redress specific wrongs. What he does for the Maine Studies educator and student in make clear and understandable the roots of the European attitudes that denied, and continue to deny, Sovereignty to Indian nations. Every student should read (or hear) this short essay - as a “kick off” to any discussion of injustices done, sovereignty, or history.

Read it, for example, along with Dean Suagee’s Tribal Sovereignty and the Green Revolution. Suagee’s call for state and federal governments to make sovereign partnerships with the Indian nations, on energy growth policies, is important; but when read through the lens of Newcomb’s essay, with open eyes so to speak, the reader better understands how difficult the road to such partnerships is going to be.

Follow Newcomb’s essay with a reading of the newly introduced (again) S. J. Res 14 (Apology Resolution), which begins:

To acknowledge a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the Federal Government regarding Indian tribes and offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States.

Whereas the ancestors of today’s Native Peoples inhabited the land of the present-day United States since time immemorial and for thousands of years before the arrival of people of European descent;

Follow this Resolution, and its partner Resolution introduced in the House (find links in Indianz.com). Write letters to your Senators and Representatives. Debate the points made in the Resolution. If it goes nowhere (again), you might say that Newcomb has a point. If it passes, you might say that perhaps the non-Indians and anti-Indians are turning a corner. You might.

I read, and filed away somewhere, a recent Maine ruling (by whom?) that would make it possible for the Maliseet band to have their own court. At the time, my students were reading The Heart of a Chief, in which the tribal police are minor characters. How does law enforcement work on the reservations? they asked. I told them what I know, which was not a great deal, mentioned the Green Fleet purchased by the Penobscot nation with federal funding, and then told them some of the stories I have heard about racism directed at Native men by police off-reservation. I filed the bigger question away under “something I need to find out about - don’t make assumptions.”

Today I ran across this NPR archive transcript from last Sunday’s Weekend Edition, Lawmakers Move to Curb Rape on Native Lands. Read it. Your students should know that:

“But the 1978 ruling [Oliphant vs. Suquamish] says Native American police and prosecutors can only prosecute Native Americans. They can’t arrest and charge people from outside the reservation, which is especially problematic…Tribal law enforcement is also hamstrung because even when they have an American Indian offender, the law says they can’t prosecute felonies like rape and they can only imprison an offender for up to one year.”

and also that “This jurisdictional maze could change though, if a new bill before Congress passes. A bipartisan group of senators has introduced the Tribal Law and Order Act, which would allow tribal police to arrest anyone who commits a crime on Indian land, regardless of the offender’s race. The law also calls for better tracking of which cases the U.S. Attorney’s office declines and why. It would give local police and sheriff’s offices grants if they cooperate with tribal police and cross-deputize their officers.”

One wonders how and why this 1978 ruling came to be. What were state governments, state police forces, and federal law enforcement offices afraid of? This is certainly related to issues of sovereignty, but probably also to just plain bias. Read this excerpt from When Tribes and States Collide - biased from the Native side, which is point of view that our students do not access nearly enough, and therefore a good text for class (it’s also short). Students may well conclude from reading about Oliphant vs. Suquamish that the stereotype that “backward, primitive and lawless Indians” can not police themselves or their sovereign territory is alive and well today.

It is interesting to me, as I read the text of the 2009 Act (read it here (.pdf download), that some of the specific jurisdictions relate to social services needs: alcohol, youth services, sexual assault. Others relate to support for better-tech record keeping. Overall, there is an emphasis on both cooperation/communication with other (non-Tribal) law enforcement and on law enforcement (albeit controlled and limited) within the reservations. I fail to see a negative to any of this, except of course for funding of programs. But that is what the Law is responding to: stimulus and other Obama budget funding.

Here are some resources for more information on the proposed Tribal Law and Order Act of 2009 [the Act of 2008 died due to budgetary issues, it seems]:

• What is the Tribal Law and Order Act - download informational .pdf file
• Turtle Talk has a brief editorial on the Act’s limitations

What about the Wabanaki nations? Here are some questions that should be answered and shared online as a Wabanaki resource (a great HS Native Studies course project):

• What is the nature of reservation police organizations?
• What is their funding?
• What is their jurisdiction?
• What are the limits on their activities, if any?
• How do the reservation police interact with local, county, state and federal law enforcement?
• What is the “crime rate” on the reservations (individually), as compared to that in Maine as a whole?

To save you some time, here are quick links to Maine tribal sites to look at:

• Public Safety - Passamaquoddy Tribe at Pleasant Point has an administrative division
• Passamaquoddy Tribe at Indian Township has a phone number for Tribal Police
• Penobscot Indian Nation has phone numbers for the Patrol Room and for Emergencies and Officers
• Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians has a Tribal Court (read this history - it is well done), but does not seem to have a police or law enforcement department of its own.
• The Aroostook Band of Micmacs does not at this time appear to have a tribal law enforcement force or a tribal court.

There you go - Diversity. But the alert student will wonder at the inconsistency and perhaps at the inequality.

Resources come in surprising places. I would not have thought that the federal government and an independent Native organization could come together smoothly in providing quality, and needed, resources.

Then today I received my free copy of Lessons of Our Land, the k-college curriculum created by the Indian Land Tenure Foundation and the Tribal Education Departments National Assembly (TEDNA). The curriculum, which comes on CD and which can also be downloaded online here (Guides are available for download from TEDNA), is valuable in and of itself. Apple users will find it a bit confusing to use at first because it has been created as an autorun resource for Windows users. However, I was able to open all of the resource files for 6-8, open the folders, and download and read the .pdf and .doc lesson and resources files.

As I read through the lessons, whose primary goal “is for all Indian students to become intellectually reconnected to the land and to internalize its significance to their past, present and future as sovereign and land based peoples“, I realized that much of the content is already embedded in my curriculum and in the goals of LD 291. Use of stories, local habitat (flora, fauna), historical mapping and study, for example, will appear in the Maine Wabanaki Studies benchmarked curriculum. This indicates to me that we are heading the right direction.

I followed up on many of the resources for the 6-8 lessons. Unfortunately, some government sites (those from FEMA) have disappeared due to reorganization. But two online resources impressed me in their usefulness in the classroom.

• The EPA maintains a Tribal Program Portal for land-based legislation, actions, and grants affecting federally recognized tribes. Hidden within the site are the most current factual information I have found about the land holdings, populations, and programs affecting the Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Micmac and Maliseet tribes. Find these at the New England Portal.
• The government also has created a javascript driven mapping application called Map Maker - nationalatlas.gov.  As students add the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy reservations to the Maine map, then layer on toxic waste, dams, rivers, federally owned land, and other data points, they can begin to make some conclusions about the land, and land use, of lands lost by and lands held by the Wabanakis. It is interesting, for example, to note how many toxic sites are found in Maliseet lands and near the Penobscot River watershed.

I urge Maine’s teachers to access this new curriculum. Its spirit, at any grade level, is well aligned to the Essentials for Understanding.

The following is from Joseph Charnley (Wabanaki Connections), used with his permission.

I watched most of Monday night’s “We Shall Remain”: Episode 1. Although the series focus is
on Native nations in MA and further west, it is unique in that it relied
heavily on Native academic support and guidance. Each of the 5 episodes
(April 13, 20, 27, May 4, and 11) is an in-depth look at a particular
historical moment and the cast of characters that inhabited that moment.

Massasoit, his son, Philip, and the English so-called “Pilgrims” and
Puritans, were the characters who highlighted episode 1 and provided a
much broader understanding of that period’s struggles than anything I
have seen before.

[Upcoming episodes will cover Tecumseh, Geronimo, The Trail of Tears, and Wounded Knee.]

Below is a link to the PBS.org site which has background information as
well as a host of Teacher resources. Please take a moment and check out
this site and glean what you will from it. A viewing of all 5 episodes
will give you a general background to some of the pressing issues behind
this history. One of the producers said that the goal of this series is
to “bring Native American history back into the center of American
history”. Just focusing on how Native history has been allowed to be
sidelined is a seminar in itself.

I have downloaded some of the material from the site and will make it
available to folks as requested. It is in PDF format. I have also
ordered the series and will make it available for viewing in some
format, perhaps here at KMS. School libraries should also consider
purchasing it for loan. There is a 20% off feature for pre-ordering the
set, 40.00 instead of 50.00. Use MAYFLOWER in the code section of the
order form. [This offer is good until 5/1/09. I have also purchased this set].

The transcript from Episode One is available for download, as Joseph mentions. Even if you missed the series, you can appreciate the value to Maine’s Wabanaki Studies contained in information such as this:

It was a community of communities and they had inter-meshed and had their own agendas, their own political problems, their own warfare, and their own trade. There was a rich sort of political interaction in this region.

Massasoit is a classic sort of village chief or super village chief in the Algonquian world. He is a man of great respect among his people. He doesn’t have the coercive power that a European sovereign or a monarch would have. He is a person who leads by example, and people have faith in his leadership and his experience.

Massasoit is a classic sort of village chief or super village chief in the Algonquian world. He is a man of great respect among his people. He doesn’t have the coercive power that a European sovereign or a monarch would have. He is a person who leads by example, and people have faith in his leadership and his experience.

[Narrator: ] Throughout that winter, Massasoit wrestled with the question of how to deal with the newcomers. The Chief’s first impulse had been to put a curse on the Pilgrims, and watch them die off altogether. But the weakened Wampanoag needed any friends they could get. Massasoit was paying steep tribute to the Narragansett, but he knew his near neighbors had the numbers to overrun the remaining Wampanoag villages whenever they chose. And he was aware that the strangers came from a nation of wealth and military might.

This is not a picture of ignorant, savage people, but of intelligent, compassionate, reasonable individuals in a highly organized culture. Let’s make good use of this series in our classrooms!

When my video set arrives, I will loan it out to schools for the cost of the mailing.

Link to PBS.org site:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/weshallremain/

Middle School teachers seeking an avenue into Worldview might consider the contemporary Slow Food movement - championed by Indian Country - as a point of discussion. Sustainability is certainly an element in this movement, as is environmental preservation. Begun as part of an Italian protest against MacDonalds, the movement has grown in this country to embrace grass-roots economics, organic gardening, and anti-obesity education. But from the worldview of a Native, Slow Food is not a change or a protest; it is one aspect of worldview made concrete.

Here are comments from a recent Indian Country Today editorial titled Back to the beginning:

For most of his life Haudenosaunee scholar John Mohawk extolled the virtues of the slow food movement, a worldview that appreciates food as medicine for mind, body and spirit. The idea that we can be nourished completely by the bounty of creation is catching on with a mainstream public increasingly concerned about the safety and environmental impacts of industrial agriculture. Although tough economic times may force families to spend less on groceries, there is also a growing awareness of the havoc cheap fast food can cause our bodies.

But indigenous knowledge goes far beyond “green” eating. It acknowledges a familial relationship between human beings and the rest of the natural world. Consider this part of the ancient address, Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen (“Words before all else”), recited by the Haudenosaunee to food plants: “Since the beginning of time, the grains, the vegetables, beans, and berries have helped the people survive. Many other living things draw strength from them too. We gather all the plant foods together as one and send them a greeting and thanks.” It is a relationship defined by humility, one that has sustained Native peoples since time immemorial.

We have in these word several key aspects of worldview: humility, an interdependent relationship with nature, deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world, patience, gratitude, and the 10,000 year timeline of cultural history and practice.

If students can reflect on these points as they share together a local harvest, or plant together a school garden, they will gain deeper understanding of Wabanaki worldview, without the pretense afforded by the use of “spiritual” and/or “mystical.” This is a contemporary, realistic worldview, not the collective memory of a distant culture.

Some resources for the teacher:

Slow Food (the global organization)

Slow Food USA

“My students most want to know why you are not angrier,” I asked at the April LD291 Best Practices - Native Studies conference. Not a very PC question. But I got an answer. [paraphrased] “For us, land is power. And we have always been here. So why should we be angry?”

This is THE key concept that non-Native teachers have to accept.

I have been wrestling with the concept since April. It turns the idea of Unequal Power on its head. We non-natives have always been taught, historically and even within our family structures, that power resides with those who have the economic upper hand, the physical upper hand, and the most allies.

But here is one Passamaquoddy elder telling me that he has real POWER that economic superiority, physical stength, and greater numbers can not take away, minimalize or overcome. A power of place and heritage.

I get close to understanding when I add up Native territories and people over 10,000 years. It is not a time frame that I am accustomed to, being from a family that can at best kind of, sort of, trace itself back to New Amsterdam, and that derives no strength or identity from a tenuous connection to Peter Stuyvesant. If you ask your students to imagine 10,000 pebbles in a line, and then to imagine 10,000 parallel lines of pebbles, and then to multiply this by 30,000 generations, you might be able to help them to see the power of this native heritage in the territory we call Maine. It is formidable.

This is one way in which we, as teachers, can answer the directive of Penobscot Elder Butch Phillips to “tell them who we are.” It helps me to accept that it is not possible to separate inherent Native power from land and resources.

It is also true that economic power can not be separated today from land and resources. Or from political power, which derives from law and from control of resources. From one way of looking at the power relationship, as it affects the Wabanakis, there is indeed unequal power. Refer to my previous post on Environmental Sovereignty & Unequal Power for a discussion of one aspect of this power relationship, and to my post Thoughts on Sovereignty for another.

On the other hand, the Native power of place and heritage, a power that some understand as “spiritual,” is far greater than any similar claims made by non-native individuals or governments. This is, it seems to me, recognized explicitly in the statements and documents quoted in the my previous posts.

The real power struggle is between the power of heritage rights and the power of contemporary ownership and law. For this to be a balanced struggle, in which Native defeat is not pre-ordained, there has to be an acceptance of the value of Native power. That must be a threatening thought to those who want to sit pretty with economic power and the political power to control land and resources development. Hence the danger of Unequal Power taken from the non-Native point of view - or the contentment with this point of view.

This acceptance of Native power should not be clouded by a false understanding of the contemporary tribal economies and political agendas. These are not naive hunter/gatherers. Teach your students the issues of today as well as the meaning of those 10,000 pebbles. Teach them that Native studies is historically about Us v. Them, but must be about working together for mutually beneficial, or at least mutually respectful, economic and political goals.

Just found this unpublished post - the news is old, but still important.

Some of you teachers probably have heard this on MPBN or read it in a newspaper. For the rest of you, THIS IS LD 291 NEWS. It might seem like a very small step, but it is not.

Headline: Maine House approves new recognition for tribal representatives

Article link

Please, print this article and share it with your students! It should surprise them that tribal representatives had to sit outside of the legislative hall for over 30 years. Ask your students: Why? What might be the next change step? Is this an equal power relationship?

And congratulations to the Bangor Daily News for covering a story accurately, including a picture, and quoting both Rep. Donald Soctomah (Passamaquoddy) and Rep. Wayne Mitchell.

Last week’s meeting of the Department of Education’ Committee for the Development of a Recommended Wabanaki Studies Curriculum Profile (I am calling this CDRWSCP), which will support the implementation of LS 291 while at the same time support the 2007 Social Studies learning results, started with the Big One - Worldview. When that and Culture were put to rest, with a temporary parking of Unequal Power (what a U & D concept that is, which is probably why we could not meet consensus), we moved to another Big One - Sovereignty.

Those of us who read Indian Country News, and MITSC reports, and information from and about the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet and Micmac nations (in books, news reports, workshops, speeches…), know that this is indeed a huge issue today in Maine. I decided five years ago that sovereignty is the one of the two issues (the other being Worldview) that middle school students have to grapple with in a Wabanaki studies unit or activity or discussion.

But what is Sovereignty? I think it will not be bursting a bubble tell you that the CDRWSCP defined sovereignty as “the right to unique political, cultural, economic and geographic identity.” This is a sound definition, and a good place to begin discussion.

The interesting outcome of this definition was the lively discussion of levels of sovereignty, perspectives on sovereignty, boundaries of sovereignty (does an unrecognized tribal group have sovereignty?). These are questions that belong at the upper levels of high school, and beyond. After all, we were a group of highly educated adults doing little more than throwing interpretive ideas around. We ended by developing two essential questions for instruction that should allow the teacher to find a comfort zone within the ping-pong ball of sovereignty issues.

Our teachers will need some resources - lots of resources - in addition to what does not yet exist - a rounded set of statements (video and print) from the Native and non-Native communities. A continuing goal of CDRWSCP

So, having a few free minutes this evening, I did my own information hunt. My focus was the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. I have to confess - I have not paid due attention to this important document. But the meeting today also raised this question: Do powerless indigenous peoples have sovereignty? So tonight I have read the Declaration.

Recognizing the urgent need to respect and promote the inherent rights of indigenous peoples which derive from their political, economic and social structures and from their cultures, spiritual traditions, histories and philosophies, especially their rights to their lands, territories and resources…

Do you know that the US voted against this Resolution, along with Canada, Australia and New Zealand?

Do you know that Maine was the first state to support the Resolution by vote of state legislature? Read about that here. This vote was, by the way, contained in legislation presented by the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy (non-voting) representatives to the legislature.

I have also been reading commentary. I recommend that teachers looking for a “doable” historical background read Peter d’Errico’s Sovereignty: A Brief History in the Context of U.S. “Indian Law”. It provides good historical background for general questions and for the definition of sovereignty within our Federal policy and law - and it predicts the passage of the Resolution.

Article 3
Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

Article 32
1. Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for the development or use of their lands or territories and other resources.
2. States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.
3. States shall provide effective mechanisms for just and fair redress for any such activities, and appropriate measures shall be taken to mitigate adverse environmental, economic, social, cultural or spiritual impact.

Article 39
Indigenous peoples have the right to have access to financial and technical assistance from States and through international cooperation, for the enjoyment of the rights contained in this Declaration.

Much of what you read above is embodied in the actions and proposals made by the Penobscot, Maliseet, Micmac and Passamaquoddy nations within the last quarter century. It has been slow progress. In fact, in light of recent Federal decisions involving the for-profit use of sacred lands in the West, and of the reticence of this state to address egregious and ongoing environmental damage to and depletion of water and land resources essential to Wabanaki subsistence, it is no wonder that the US has not signed the Declaration, and that our legislature could wipe the slate clean by passing its resolution of support. One has to wonder how much “good faith” there is on the part of the State.

Worldview and Sovereignty must be taught so that they can truly be understood, from the Native view and from the white view. Otherwise, we will continue to act with hypocrisy and see though cloudy lenses.