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Rev. Marvin M. Ellison is the Willard S. Bass Professor Emeritus of Christian Ethics at Bangor Theological Seminary.
As an ordained Presbyterian minister and educator, I’m grateful that people of faith across the ecumenical and interfaith spectrum are encouraging the Maine legislature to pass LD 2007, “An Act to Advance Self-Determination for Wabanaki Nations.” This bill will help correct serious harm that Native peoples have long endured.
Because faith requires us to seek justice and set things right, my hope is that together we may demonstrate deep respect for the Wabanaki people by promoting their full human and civil rights, including their right to self-determination. To love one’s neighbor as oneself, in this instance our Wabanaki neighbors, requires both: respect and rights.
As soon as I moved to Maine in early 1981, I began to hear about the strengths and weaknesses of the federal Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act (MICSA) and the state of Maine Implementing Act (MIA), both of which had been ratified the year before. I was surprised to learn that the state of Maine did not contribute money to the settlement. I was even more surprised to learn that the settlement did not actually give land to the tribes, but rather only established a federally funded mechanism for land restoration, which in the intervening years has had only modest success.
Above all, I have been surprised, and dismayed, that the settlement acts have allowed Maine to exert an unusual degree of jurisdiction over the tribes, an arrangement unlike that of any other state. Although the Wabanaki tribes are federally recognized, the state of Maine relates to them not as sovereign, self-governing tribal nations, but rather as if municipalities or, to use an antiquated term, as if wards of the state, presumably without the freedom or capacity for self-determination.
The moral and political right to self-govern is foundational to tribal integrity, tribal development, and tribal well-being. That’s the case made by a 2022 Harvard research study entitled “Economic and Social Impacts of Restrictions on the Applicability of Federal Indian Policies to the Wabanaki Nations in Maine.” Because the 1980 Settlement Acts prevent the tribes in Maine from exercising self-governing in the same way that the vast majority of tribes govern themselves throughout the U.S., Wabanaki people have been both disrespected and disadvantaged.
While the good news is that tribes across the U.S. have experienced significant economic growth and political stability in recent decades, the bad news is that the tribes in Maine have fallen seriously behind according to important metrics for gauging both personal and social well-being.
The Harvard study offers a range of empirical evidence in support of its sobering finding that, “The subjugation of the Wabanaki Nation’s self-governing capacities is blocking economic development to the detriment of both tribal and nontribal citizens, alike.” Example One: While Maine’s child poverty rate for a recent five-year period was a dismal 15.1 percent, that compares to an even more shocking rate of poverty for Wabanaki people ranging from a low of 40.2 percent for the Passamaquoddy Tribe of Indian Township to a high of 76.9 percent for the Mi’kmaq Nation. Example Two: Outside of Maine, a 30-year economic boom has been happening throughout Indian Country as tribal nations have averaged personal income growth of 61 percent. During that same extended period, Maine’s Wabanaki nations saw only 9 percent growth. Example Three: Wabanaki nations have consistently had higher unemployment rates and lower levels of educational achievement than Maine as a whole.
What accounts for the Wabanaki tribes’ lagging economic and social development relative to the rest of Indian Country? As the Harvard study underscores, a primary reason is that the state of Maine has consistently maintained that the Wabanaki tribes are subject, first and foremost, to state law and has limited the tribes from benefiting from more than 150 federal laws passed by Congress since 1980. Those federal laws have greatly improved conditions for other tribal nations, but not for those in Maine. Tribal communities here have been left behind unnecessarily, to everyone’s detriment.
Because it’s the first-order business of our state government to correct injustice and promote the kind of social, economic, and political conditions so that all people can thrive, let’s join together to repair this fraught history. As a faith leader, I see this moment as a promising opportunity. Both the tribes and the state will benefit from a more respectful, more equitable re-ordering of their relationship. After all, isn’t living, working, and thriving together as mutually respectful partners the way life should be for everyone?