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.

Maine reopening despite missing benchmarks, lacking adequate testing regime

In today's Maine Sunday Telegram I wrote about how Maine has been reopening even as it has missed the prerequisites set by the White House, the testing thresholds advised by public health experts, and some of the benchmark metrics set by Gov. Janet Mills's administration itself. Leading experts from across the country warn such a tact has risks for both the economy and public health.

The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention refused to answer written questions for this story and denied interview requests with its director, Niav Shah, for nearly two weeks. Gov. Mills's office also did not directly answer questions, sending instead a statement that didn't address most of them.

Earlier this week I reported on how Maine is now the only state in the country that cannot compile and present daily testing data.

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.”

Maine's governor wants the state carbon-neutral by 2045. What will that take?

At the United Nations, Governor Janet Mills pledged to make Maine carbon-neutral by 2045, tasking the new Maine Climate Council to come up with a plan to do so via an executive order.

So what does being "carbon neutral" mean, and what would Maine likely have to do to achieve such a status -- something no other state and only one foreign country has thus far achieved? I explored this in the current edition of the Maine Sunday Telegram, which published last Sunday.

In short: Bhutan, the only country that's already carbon-neutral, is 71% forested and has about 50 people per square mile. Maine is 90% forested and has just over 40 per square mile -- a carbon sink with not that many people and a huge structural advantage right out of the starting block. It's still going to require massive changes in how energy is produced and the types of vehicles and heating devices we use to consume it. Details in the story.

Maine launches its Climate Council, charged with slashing emissions

Last Thursday I covered the opening launch event of the Maine Climate Council, the 39-member body charged with coming up with detailed plans to slash Maine's greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050 (a requirement set in statute) and to make the state carbon-neutral by 2045.

The event, keynoted by Governor Janet Mills and former US Environmental Protection Agency head Gina McCarthy, was attended by what became a standing room only crowd of more than 200, most of them movers and shakers of one sort or another: department commissioners, top officials at agencies, non-profits and municipalities, legislators and business leaders. The emphasis was on taking real, concrete action, rather than talking about it.

Details in the story. Hope you enjoy.

For background on the governor's commitments to make the state carbon-neutral -- made at her speech before the United Nations General Assembly last week -- start here.

Maine's governor in effect represents US at UN Climate Conference

This week, as the Trump administration has become mired in impeachment proceedings, I've been knee deep in climate coverage for the Portland Press Herald, much of it the result of Maine Governor Janet Mills being invited to speak before the UN Climate Action Summit in New York.

Mills, who took office in January, was the only official from the US among the 93 people invited to speak before the General Assembly at Monday's summit. She was also the first sitting Maine governor to address the body.

Here's what she said to the world there. (Please follow Maine's lead.)

Here's what she did the following day. (Meeting lots of foreign officials who now know they'd best spend their time speaking to state and city leaders, rather than the US federal government.)

Last week, I wrote updated about how climate change is affecting the Gulf of Maine and how Maine is finally responding after years of inaction under former governor Paul LePage, a volatile Trump-Tea Party-wing Republican.

Tomorrow's story is also on climate change, which makes six in a row. There may be a pattern here.