I was saddened to read Colin Woodard’s Oct. 11 report (“Don Gellers, counsel to Passamaquoddy tribe, dies in New York at 78”) of the death of Rabbi Tuvia Ben-Shmuel-Yosef, who was known in Maine as Don Gellers, the attorney who first represented the Maine Passamaquoddy Indians in the 1960s.

All Mainers should hang their heads in shame and ask forgiveness from Gellers and his family.

Gellers was the attorney representing the Maine Passamaquoddy Indians in their land claims against the state of Maine when he was despicably framed by the Maine Attorney General’s Office and the State Police just after filing the first land claims case. He was driven from the state, never to return, on a trumped-up drug-felony conviction that holds even today.

Gellers should have received a gubernatorial pardon years ago, and it is a black mark against the state and all of us who live here that he did not receive a pardon while he was alive. The governor of Maine or his successor should do the right thing and posthumously pardon Gellers in the name of decency and fairness.

I sincerely thank Colin Woodard and the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram for their 29-part series, “Unsettled: Triumph and tragedy in Maine’s Indian country.”

Woodard and the paper performed a great service to all of us by reporting on the deplorable and unjust treatment Maine’s Passamaquoddy Indians received from state and local governments, as well as on the Indians’ struggles against the external and internal corruption that severely hampered their attempts to prosper.

Faith Woodman

Bath