An official who helped bring clean drinking water to a Passamaquoddy Tribe reservation will be among the honorees at an event hosted later this week by the Wabanaki Alliance.
The Alliance — which includes the Mi’kmaq Nation, Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, Passamaquoddy Tribe and Penobscot Nation — will hold its second annual event on the evening of Thursday, July 11 at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor.
The event, titled “Nihkaniyane: Let’s Go Forward Together,” is meant to celebrate the people and relationships that have helped the Wabanaki Nations to pursue major goals in recent years.
However, as the Alliance noted in a press release, the tribes still haven’t succeeded in their ultimate push for more sovereignty by overhauling the 1980 settlement that gave up their claim for more than two-thirds of the state’s land in exchange for becoming regulated like cities and towns.
The Alliance will honor three individuals at this week’s event, including Rena Newell, the former chief of the Passamaquoddy Tribe’s reservation at Sipayik — also known as Pleasant Point — and the former Passamaquoddy Tribal Representative to the Legislature.
In addition to working to build support for the broader sovereignty push in Augusta, Newell also sponsored the legislation that two years ago gave the Passaquamoddy at Sipayik more power to regulate its local drinking water and resolve quality issues that had sometimes resulted in brown liquid coming out of taps. Newell, who was recalled from her chief role in the tribe last year, has also devoted much of her professional life to education.
The two other honorees at this week’s event will be Beth Ahearn, who worked with the Alliance while lobbying on environmental issues for Maine Conservation Voters, and Carol Wishcamper, a founding supporter of the Alliance who sat on the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Tickets to the Wabanaki Alliance event at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday can be purchased online.
