Kirk Francis is the chief of the Penobscot Nation. He is writing as part of Wabanaki Voices, an effort with the Wabanaki Alliance to share tribal perspectives in the Bangor Daily News opinion section.
Along with being the chief of the Penobscot Nation, I have had the honor of being elected president of United Southern and Eastern Tribes (USET) by my peers. In this capacity, my role is to educate and advocate on behalf of tribal nations. The Wabanaki Nations in Maine are all members of USET, which represents 33 tribal nations spanning from Maine to Florida to Texas and everywhere in between.
In this role, I witness the impact the federal government has on many regions of our country. I can assure you that President Donald Trump and the recently created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has already had devastating impacts. Unfortunately, it seems they have just scratched the surface.
When President Trump took office in January, he issued a flurry of executive orders ranging from the renaming of landmarks and bodies of water to gutting federal agencies and withholding funding. Instead of delivering on his promises of lowering inflation, lowering the cost of eggs and groceries, and providing more affordable housing, he focused his energy on working with his billionaire friend, Elon Musk, to take a hatchet to services Americans rely on.
For a local example, sweeping cuts to the national parks will have detrimental effects on our tourism economy here in Maine. With limited personnel and a decline in maintenance, will those nearly 4 million annual visitors to Acadia still be willing to come? I hope so since numerous small businesses depend on our tourist season for their livelihoods, including tribal people.
On the topic of federal personnel, President Trump promised to drain the swamp in Washington, D.C. With 80 percent of the federal workforce not living in the Washington, D.C area, this experiment is having detrimental effects for everywhere but “The Swamp.” It’s hitting places like Kansas City where 1,000 workers were terminated. Imagine if 1,000 workers were let go in Maine in one day. What would that look like?
We know what that looks like. When the military base in Limestone, located in Aroostook County, closed in 1994, 4,500 military jobs were eliminated, 1,100 civilian jobs were lost and 2,181 indirect jobs that supported the installation evaporated. I understand this personally as I watched my father’s livelihood evaporate overnight due to Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) like many of you. It’s a hard truth to accept but the Limestone area has never been the same like many of our blue collar rural communities where we hang on to the promises of the good ol days coming back.
Instead of wielding a hatchet, they could instead be much more deliberative and surgical in their search for waste, fraud and abuse, which I think we all agree with. They should be delicately handling a scalpel and working to make sure that efficiency also considers empathy.
There has been a call for a freeze on federal funding, which has affected a cross section of Americans. For those counting on cancer research to save their lives and farm subsidies to save their multi-generational businesses, despair has reached the doorstep of millions of Tribal nations and rural communities across the country and here in Maine we are also going to feel the pain of indiscriminate federal funding cuts like major cuts to our universities and young people.
The funds that come to tribal nations from the federal government like many of yours support our community’s education, health care and substance use disorder treatment programs. It also protects our environment and other vital elements to make sure our people are safe and healthy.
Handing over the keys to a non-elected billionaire isn’t the way to govern. We should not reward Elon Musk for contributing $277 million to the president’s campaign and leave him unchecked because someone may get a political opponent for not agreeing with their every move. Working to improve and provide better customer service to the people who pay for them — taxpayers — is what should be our focus. Improving the quality of life for all Americans should be the goal of all governments.
Let’s hope creating headlines, padding the wallets of friends and scoring cheap political points isn’t the priority, and I hope our leaders in positions of power will not allow this. I believe in our democracy even when I do not agree with the outcomes, but we have to focus on our most vulnerable disenfranchised people for everyone to come from the same strength of power and opportunity. Otherwise what are we serving?
