Penobscot elder Donna Loring on the future of Maine-tribal relations

Donna Loring has for decades been a major figure in Maine-tribal relations: legislator, tribal council member, aide to two governors, author and public intellectual. Now, fresh off her time as tribal relations advisor to Governor Janet Mills, the Penobscot elder took time to speak with me about her take on the future of the fraught relationship and the prospects for a negotiated reform of the Maine Settlement Act, which restricted Maine tribe's sovereignty.

You can read all about it in this article over at the Maine Sunday Telegram.

For more background on the tribes and the Settlement Act, start here, read about Mills's pardoning of the Passamaquoddy tribe's late attorney Donald Gellers -- driven from the county in a state-directed conspiracy -- and the backstory for understanding the tribes' predicament in "Unsettled," a 32-part series I wrote for the Press Herald a few years back.

Racist names banned by Maine law decades ago still on official registry

Based on a reader's tip, last week I discovered that Maine's official registry of coastal islands still contained several with names banned by law decades ago, including three with the "N-word."

How this could be remains unclear, as I reported in the Portland Press Herald, but the state has taken the registry offline for a full review. (The owners of two of the islands in question had already asked for a name change for them June 30 when they discovered the official names on their own.) Details in the story.

Thanks to New England Cable News for speaking with me for their follow up.

[Update, 7/22/20: I did a follow-up on the state's response.]

Colony, the Press Herald Maine Bicentennial series, concludes

With the world facing the biggest social, economic, and epidemiological crisis in at least two generations, I neglected to post the final two installments of "Colony," my six part Maine Sunday Telegram series on the backstory of Maine statehood and the lasting legacy of those (colonial) experiences.

The last two installments ran one and two weeks ago respectively and you can find the whole series on the Colony landing page over at the Press Herald.

Thanks to the incredible number of readers who wrote -- and continue to write -- with kind words about the series and what it meant to them. The most common question: will it be released as a mini-book? The answer is "I don't think so" -- the pandemic is drawing all the paper's resources -- but you can find most of these themes (and much, much more) in my 2004 book on the cultural and environmental history of Maine, The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier. 

Also, if you missed our 29-part series on Maine-Passamaquoddy relations, "Unsettled," it is indeed available as an e-book as well as free online to subscribers. I hope it brings some distraction to all of you bunkered down in the middle of this crisis.

Colony, Chapter 3: Massachusetts' conquest of Maine

Maine is celebrating the bicentennial of its statehood this year, but the story of our beginnings lies in the millennia and centuries that preceded March 15th, 1820, the day we regained our independence from Massachusetts. 

Colony, an ongoing six-part series in the Maine Sunday Telegram, tells that story, and the third installment appeared last Sunday, telling the story of how Massachusetts Bay annexed the formerly-independent colony of Maine in the 1650s. At one point they even send soldiers in.

The conquest made Maine a colony of a colony, and Boston ruled what eventually became known as the District of Maine -- which didn't even border on the rest of the Commonwealth -- in the interests of mainland Massachusetts, not the people living on the eastern frontier. As we'll see in the next three chapters of Colony, this experience, which lasted until 1820, fundamentally shaped Maine's culture, economy and self-conception.

If you enjoy this series and want more, consider reading my cultural history of Maine, The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier (Viking, 2004) and, on Maine-Wabanaki relations in more recent times, the Portland Press Herald series "Unsettled," also available as an ebook at the usual outlets.

Colony, Chapter 2: Maine and Massachusetts were different from the start

Maine is celebrating the bicentennial of its statehood this year, but the story of our beginnings lies in the millennia and centuries that preceded March 15th, 1820, the day we regained our independence from Massachusetts. 

Colony, an ongoing six-part series in the Maine Sunday Telegram, tells that story, and the second installment appeared in this past edition. It explores the stark differences between early Maine (Royalist, Anglican, West Country-dominated) and Massachusetts Bay (anti-aristocratic, Puritan, East Anglia-dominated) and how they quickly came to be rivals in the early 1600s.

Also thanks to the New York Times's Sam Sifton for plugging the series in his NYT Cooking newsletter this week. "It’s behind a paywall but worth the investment: The Portland Press Herald’s history of Maine on the occasion of the state’s bicentennial year," he writes.

[Update, 3/5/2020: You can read Chapter 3 here.]

If you enjoy this series and want more, consider reading my cultural history of Maine, The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier (Viking, 2004) and, on Maine-Wabanaki relations in more recent times, the Portland Press Herald series "Unsettled," also available as an ebook at the usual outlets.

Colony, a six-part series on Maine's long path to statehood

Maine is celebrating the bicentennial of its statehood this year, but the story of our beginnings lies in the millennia and centuries that preceded March 15th, 1820, the day we regained our independence from Massachusetts. 

Colony, a six-part series that launched in the Maine Sunday Telegram today tells that story. It's a harrowing and little understood saga of war and betrayal, of clashing empires and ethnic cleansing, of an intra-English civil war and a 170 year colonial occupation by Massachusetts of what had been a separate province. These events shaped us as a people and explain some of our culture’s most impressive virtues and most frustrating faults, as well as the still fraught relationship between this land’s real natives and the rest of us whose families came “from away” at some point in the past four hundred years.

This first chapter is on the prehistoric and immediate contact period hereabouts. The series continues each Sunday for the next month and a half.

If you enjoy this series and want more, consider reading my cultural history of Maine, The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier (Viking, 2004) and, on Maine-Wabanaki relations in more recent times, the Portland Press Herald series "Unsettled," also available as an ebook at the usual outlets.

[Update, 3/5/2020: You can read Chapter 2 here and Chapter 3 here.]

Speaking on history of immigration in Maine, Portland, Jan. 18

Portland Ovations is convening a panel discussion on the history of immigration in Maine on January 18th at the Maine Historical Society in Portland, and I'm pleased to be taking part. It kicks off at 1pm and is free and open to the public.

Here's the description from Portland Ovations:

When we talk about immigration to Maine, we start with white settler-colonialism. What has been the impact of immigration on Maine’s land and people from the first French explorers in 1604 to the present? What are the drivers of recent immigration movements, and how does each new wave shift Maine’s economy and culture? What specific challenges do Maine’s environment and population pose for new arrivals; and how do we support Maine’s first peoples?

**PANELISTS**

- Tilly Laskey, Curator of 'Holding Up The Sky' and Native art and culture specialist at, Maine Historical Society
- Alain Nahimana, Executive Director, The Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center
- Maulian Dana, Tribal Ambassador, Penobscot Nation
- Colin Woodard, Journalist, Author of American Nations and The Lobster Coast
- Moderator, Linda Nelson, Deputy Director, Portland Ovations and Bowdoin College graduate in American Studies.

Talking about the Don Gellers pardon with NPR

Late last fall my plane touched down at National Airport in Washington, I turned on my phone and there was an interview request from a reporter at NPR interested in the Don Gellers pardon story. I was able to drop by NPR headquarters and record an interview in person with Erin Slomski-Pritz, an NPR Storylab intern who, it turned out, was a Salt Institute for Documentary Studies graduate who had done her project on Dwayne Tomah's work to protect Passamaquoddy culture. She'd read about the Gellers case -- a state-sponsored conspiracy directed by the attorney general's office in the late 1960s to rid Maine of the tribe's all-too effective attorney -- and the pardon hearing.

This morning her piece ran on NPR's Morning Edition. Take a listen or enjoy the transcript.

Gellers received the first posthumous pardon in the state's history last week. His story was exposed in our 31-part Portland Press Herald series "Unsettled" in 2014, which concluded just months before he died.

The Israeli news agency JTA also took up the story today, with photo by my Press Herald colleague Greg Rec (via Getty Images.)

Don Gellers, victim of state sponsored conspiracy, receives full, posthumous pardon in Maine

In a 31-part Portland Press Herald series on the Passamaquoddy tribe's epic struggles with Maine, "Unsettled," I told the story of Donald Gellers, the idealistic young attorney who, in the 1960s, joined forces with Chief George Francis to challenge legal, civil rights, and material abuses of the tribe and its members by state officials, law enforcement, the courts, and local businesspeople. Upon returning home from filing a suit that sought redress for a $150 million trust fund and 10,000 acres of reserved land stolen by Maine -- the fund alone worth $1.1 billion in today's dollars -- he was arrested in a sting and raid that would be comic if its results were not so tragic and charged with "constructive possession" of six marijunaa cigarettes allegedly found in the pocket of a jacket in his upstairs closet.

The sordid case -- prosecuted by the head of the Attorney General's office criminal division, Dick Cohen, and his assistant, John Kelly -- resulted in a 2 to 4 year prison sentence and, most importantly, Gellers' disbarment in Maine, ending his ability to represent his clients. Gellers, with Cohen's tacit approval, fled to Israel, where the Justice Ministry found the case against him so absurd they admitted him to practice law without reservation. When he returned to New York in the 1980s -- now a rabbi -- U.S. federal courts did too.

On Tuesday -- five years after his death from cancer -- Gellers received a full pardon from Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a former Attorney General and career prosecutor who was overcome with emotion while outlining the litany of outrages connected with the state's prosecution. It is the first posthumous pardon known to have been issued in Maine's 200 year history, and also likely the only one to be granted on the grounds that the state had persecuted someone with bad intent. It is also likely to further the attempt to heal the rift between the state and Maine's tribes.

I attended the ceremony at the State House and wrote this dispatch for the Press Herald. I also covered the emotional October 2019 pardon hearing in Augusta, where Gellers' brother and leading tribal figures spoke out in his defense.

For a full accounting of the disturbing story of Gellers, the tribe, a horrific murder, the arrest, and the aftermath, please read the first thirteen chapters (and Chapter 29) of "Unsettled," which can be found here and is also available as a Press Herald e-book from Amazon, iTunes, or wherever you buy your electronic books. I also wrote this obituary after Gellers died.

I spoke with WCSH-6/WLBZ-2's NewsCenter Maine about Gellers' life on Tuesday evening. At available here. I also spoke with Susan Sharon of MainePublic. [Update, 1/15/20: NPR's "Morning Edition" did a story today as well.

The implicit, official censure of the state's behavior in the case is sobering for Maine's legal community, which in the late 1960s was extremely cozy. Many of the figures who participated in the prosecution were colleagues, mentors, or family members of people who are leading figures in the state's legal circles today. Judge William Silsby -- whose decisions during Gellers' 1970 hearing to be granted a new trial when evidence of a state conspiracy was uncovered will raise many eyebrows -- is  the father of Maine Superior Court Judge Herbert Silsby and grandfather of former US Attorney for Maine Paula Silsby. Attorney General James Erwin, where the proverbial buck stops, went on to be a two time Republican gubernatorial nominee, and his son is a prominent attorney who also served as Attorney General. Dick Cohen rose to become Attorney General, and Governor Mills herself worked for him for four years as a young assistant attorney general in the late 1970s; Cohen was appointed US Attorney by Ronald Reagan. John Kelly -- who arrested Gellers in Eastport and prosecuted the case with Cohen -- sits on Governor Mills' pardon board and, so, had to recuse himself.

“These 50 years have been very, very painful years,” Gellers told me a few months before his death, noting that his fugitive status had always hung over his head, waiting to be dropped on him by any opponent.

“It is a ‘Les Miserables’ story, and I am Jean Valjean,” he said, referring to the Victor Hugo novel. “It’s not simply a one-shot outrage, and when something like this is done it carries repercussions for life. These candlesticks are with me forever.”

He said he had never sought a pardon from a governor of Maine, and I asked whether he would ever want one. “Well, yes," he said. "Yes, that would be nice.”

Bills to protect working waterfronts, tribal women pass US House, sit at Senate

Some non-impeachment related Washington news.

I've recently reported on the passage of a couple of bills in the US House that are of particular importance in Maine. They're broadly regarded as non-partisan and, theoretically, should be uncontroversial, but are among hundreds with an uncertain future in the Republican-controlled Senate.

The first is a measure to help protect and revitalize working waterfronts, which passed the House this week with 34 Republicans in favor. There's no Senate companion bill as yet.

The second is the reauthorization for the Violence Against Women Act, which would extend jurisdiction to certain types of domestic violence and sexual assault cases occurring on tribal reservations to qualified tribal courts. The Senate surprised those following the issue when its majority Republican caucus unveiled a version that instead puts new restrictions in place for tribal courts.

There's also a bill to assess and respond to ocean acidification, a byproduct of global warming that's threatening shellfish growers and harvesters. The Senate version has bipartisan sponsorship, but no momentum.

I wrote about these three measures in particular because I help cover Maine's delegation for the Portland Press Herald, and all were introduced by the state's senior House member, Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-ME02, but they're likely indicative of a wider situation on the Hill.

Will Maine issue a pardon to the late tribal attorney Don Gellers?

Last week I covered the extraordinary pardon hearing for the late Don Gellers, the Passmaquoddy tribe's first attorney, who represented them successfully in matters ranging from racial discrimination in barber shops to police abuse and murder in the 1960s. Then he filed a treaty breach case that effectively started the tribe's land claim against Maine, and was arrested as he walked back into his home as part of an elaborate conspiracy involving the attorney general's office, the leadership of the Maine State Police and, at least tacitly, state judges. He fled the country in 1971 to avoid serving years in prison for the "constructive possession" of some joints allegedly found in the pocket of a jacket in his upstairs closet -- a charge that had already been decriminalized in the state.

You can read about the pardon hearing -- where one of the three pardon board members had to recuse himself because of his links to the case -- at the Portland Press Herald, and about the case in detail in the first thirteen chapters of the 29-part Press Herald series, "Unsettled." But I also spoke with Maine Public radio's Irwin Gratz for an interview that aired this morning and, presumably, again this evening during the local blocks within "All Things Considered."

Gellers died in October 2014, shortly after "Unsettled" concluded. Here's his obituary.

[Update, 1/10/20: Governor Janet Mills, a former Attorney General and career prosecutor, granted Gellers a full pardon and admonished the state's handling of the case.]

Six years after lawmakers reverse ban, alewives have banner run in St. Croix River

For seven years now, I've reported on the strange saga of the alewives of the St. Croix River, which forms the border between the US and Canada in eastern Maine and southwestern New Brunswick.

They're the key forage food fish of the river system and near-coastal ocean, but back in 1995, the Maine legislature decided to order the fishways closed to them in the St. Croix, on the behest of guides for smallmouth bass, an introduced species they feared would be harmed by the native fish (an assertion lacking in compelling scientific evidence.)

In 2013 -- under heavy lobbying by everyone from the U.S. and Canadian federal governments to the Passamaquoddy tribe and Maine lobster fishermen --  lawmakers finally repealed the law and the fishways were reopened.

Now, six years on, the river's alewives have seen a record run -- nearly half a million fish, or double 2018's level and five thousand times the 2002 run of 900. I had the story in Monday's Portland Press Herald.

Maine tribes could get power to try non-Indians accused of domestic violence

Maine's tribes have been excluded from provisions of the 2013 Violence Against Women Act that allow tribal courts to try non-Indians accused of domestic violence on reservations, but that may be changing.

The Penobscot Nation court was blocked from participation when the state of Maine -- and then-attorney general Janet Mills -- argued VAWA did not apply to Maine tribes under its interpretation of the 1980 laws that settled the tribes' claim to more than half of Maine's territory. As I report in today's Portland Press Herald, the US House has just passed a revised version of the act with language introduced by Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME01) that would explicitly include the Maine tribes.

For background and the bill's prospects in the Senate, please read the story.

For deeper background, settled into the 29-part series "Unsettled" on the land claims, the Passamaquoddy, and the fraught state-tribal relationship.

John Hickenlooper's time Down East in 1970

A few years ago, I was in Denver writing this POLITICO story on how the city built a metro-wide light rail system from scratch, a story that led to my interviewing then-governor (and former Denver mayor) John Hickenlooper.

He gets on the phone, hears I'm from Maine, and first thing he says is "You must know (D.L Geary Brewing founder) David Geary" (both men are micro brewing pioneers); the second is that as a teen he spent a summer volunteering at a free school in Maine. That school, it turned out, was in Robbinston and had been co-founded by Susan Tureen, who had been pushed out of her public school teaching job probably because she was married to Tom Tureen, the Passamaquoddy tribe's new attorney, in the midst of the epic land claims fight.

Now Hickenlooper is running for president, so I put a fuller story together for this week's Maine Sunday Telegram. Enjoy.

For more on the situation in Easternmost Maine in 1970, see the 29-part Press Herald series "Unsettled," especially Chapters 10 to 13.

Maine-born government whistleblower resigns with fiery letter demouncing Zinke, Trump

In today's Portland Press Herald I have an update on Joel Clement, the Department of the Interior manager and climate change researcher who earlier this year accused his boss of defying whistle-blower protections.

Clement, who grew up in Falmouth, resigned yesterday from the Interior Department via a fiery letter delivering a broadside against Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke -- who he said should himself resign -- and President Donald Trump. Details herein.

On the non-profit that ended debtors prison (and a whole bunch more) in Maine

Greetings on another awful mass-shooting morning in America, this time in Las Vegas. Remember this doesn't happen this frequently in any other advanced industrial democracy when you hear there's nothing that can be done on the policy front.

Largely unrelated: in yesterday's Maine Sunday Telegram, I wrote about Pine Tree Legal Assistance, the legal aid non-profit that ended debtors prison in Maine, spearheaded what became the Indian land claims settlement here (and opened up federal recognition for hundreds of tribes), exposed the national "robo-signing" home mortgage foreclosure scandal, and is celebrating their 50th anniversary later this week. Poor people still often don't get a fair shake in our legal system, but boy was it worse in 1967 when PTLA arrived on the scene. Details herein.

I've done a few history-minded pieces for the Press Herald and Telegram in recent months, including on former Maine US Senator Bill Cohen's critical role in the Watergate scandal (when Susan Collins was one of his junior staffers), the extensive Maine ties of the long-dead founder of the American Nazi Party (who neo-Nazis revere), and the strange early history of Maine and seacoast New Hampshire.

Exploring the lasting legacy of early Maine and New Hampshire

Readers of The Lobster Coast and American Nations are aware of the lasting effects of Colonial Era events on the future trajectories and characteristics of North America's disparate regional cultures and subcultures. Maine, especially, is shaped by events in the 17th and early 18th centuries, when a distinctive Anglican/Royalist/West Country-influenced society was made a colony of Puritan/Anti-Royalist/East Anglia-domnated Massachusetts. Its a colonial legacy that continues to effect our development, attitudes, values, and economic performance, even though few Mainers today either know the history.

A new exhibit at a museum on the border of Maine and New Hampshire shines a light on this poorly understood period in the two colonies' history, then bound together by shared experience and resistance to Massachusetts overrule. "Forgotten Frontier" is showing at the Old Berwick Historical Society's Counting House Museum in South Berwick, Maine, and I visited and wrote about it in this week's Maine Sunday Telegram. Have a look and consider a visit.

Interior Department whistleblower is a Mainer

For Thursday's Portland Press Herald I interviewed Joel Clement, the Department of Interior scientist and research director who wrote a fiery op-ed in Wednesday's Washington Post alleging the Trump administration and Secretary Ryan Zinke had retaliated against him for continuing to call attention to the climate change-driven plight of northern Alaskan Native villages.

Turns out Clement is from Falmouth, Maine, and from a family that tangled with native people back in the 1750s, ironically enough.

Enjoy the story.

Maine: Passamaquoddy political struggle persists

Thanks to everyone who has been asking about my take on the U.S. presidential election. I'm intending to write a proper American Nations-driven analysis, but other deadlines and missing data have held me back. Soon, I promise.

Meanwhile, I've written two updates in the Portland Press Herald on another ugly political situation: the power struggles at the Passamaquoddy reservation at Pleasant Point, on the Maine-New Brunswick frontier.

Last week, I had this story on the recall of the sitting Chief, Fred Moore III, by a more than five-to-one margin. Moore says he was ousted because he dared confront an alleged narcotics epidemic within tribal government itself.

Tribal officialdom was mum on why Moore had been removed until yesterday, when I put together this follow-up story. A tribal department director who spearheaded the recall drive against Moore says he was removed for self-enrichment and abuse of power.

All of this follows a more than year-long struggle between Moore and Vice Chief Vera Francis featuring efforts to depose one another, failed recall votes, and accusations of corruption. Before that, there was an unpleasant incident in which an elderly tribal councilor was arrested in connection with her circulation of a recall petition against Moore.

For more background on the tribe, there's this 29-part series.

Cleveland Indians were named for a Penobscot; they want Chief Wahoo to go

In today's Portland Press Herald, I have the story of Louis Sockalexis, the Penobscot baseball star for whom the Cleveland Indians are named. His tribe, the Penobscot Nation here in Maine, have asked the club to retire not the name, but rather the controversial "Chief Wahoo" logo and mascot. The team has declined to respond or engage them for sixteen years.

Now Cleveland is in the World Series, and the commissioner of baseball is putting some extra pressure on. Read on from the link for all the details.

The last time I thought about Cleveland was this summer, when I visited the city to write about the re-imagining of Public Square and its other civic spaces for POLITICO.