For decades, conservation organizations around Maine have worked tirelessly to conserve and steward Maine’s natural places. The phrase “land conservation” has traditionally meant “protection from” – from development, from impacts, from people. In so many ways, this understanding has shaped how we have approached this work.
For thousands of years, the Wabanaki – the Abenaki, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot people indigenous to the place we now call Maine – have lived on and with these lands and waters. Their traditions and ways of living are informed by generations of direct experience with and knowledge of nature. Rather than considering people as separate from the natural world, Indigenous cultural practices have prioritized living in a relationship with it. Despite the atrocities and injustices of colonialism, the Wabanaki continue these practices today.
In recent years, a movement has gained strength among Maine conservation organizations to learn the true, complicated history of colonialism in this region, to grapple with conservation’s role in it, and to incorporate those lessons into our work. This has meant learning to listen to Wabanaki voices on the power of Indigenous-led conservation. It has included learning from and with groups like Wabanaki REACH and First Light, which provide an invaluable bridge between Wabanaki and non-native communities. It has included working to build trusting relationships with the Wabanaki people. It has included more than a few mistakes and stumbles, as well as some heartening progress. And it is only just beginning.
One thing our organizations have learned through this process is that this work is central to our collective missions. From preserving biodiversity to addressing climate change, the best, most durable conservation outcomes are only possible when we have strong relationships with people and communities. Indigenous communities have the longest connection to the lands and waters where we live and work. Partnering on projects, restoring access and supporting Indigenous-led conservation is an essential path to a healthy, sustainable future.
Increasingly, land and people throughout Maine are benefiting from this understanding. Collaborative projects among sovereign Wabanaki governments, Wabanaki nonprofits, private landowners and Maine conservation groups are on the rise. In just the past few years, our organizations have had the honor of supporting land rematriation in Downeast Maine, where an island known as Kuwesuwi Monihq was returned to the Passamaquoddy Tribe; partnering to develop signage that incorporates Indigenous knowledge and language into storytelling at Long Point in Machiasport and Erickson Fields in Rockport; and collaborating to return more than 30,000 acres of ancestral land known as Wáhsehtəkʷ, near Katahdin, to the Penobscot Nation. Projects like these are leading to increased access to land and water for Wabanaki people.
Maine is fortunate to have the Wabanaki Commission on Land and Stewardship to help guide this work. It includes representatives of the Penobscot Nation, the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Indian Township (Motahkomikuk), the Passamaquoddy Tribe-Pleasant Point (Sipayik), the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians and the Mi’kmaq Nation. Working together, these leaders seek to improve the health and well-being of the Wabanaki people by expanding their access, management and ownership of lands. Their guidance has led to the return of land to Wabanaki people, and to partnerships with the conservation community on specific projects that are returning lands and waters to all of the Wabanaki Nations in Maine.
As leaders of three statewide conservation organizations, we are committed to this work, and we are excited about how it is strengthening conservation in Maine and beyond. Real progress will take ongoing dedication from groups like ours, as well as from private organizations and public agencies. It will also require greater investment from public and private funders for efforts like the Wolankeyutomone kisi apaciyewik (“Let us take good care of what has returned”) Fund, which supports direct, unrestricted grants to Wabanaki projects created by Wabanaki people, their organizations and their governments.
Nature needs us to be in a relationship with it and with each other. If we can strengthen our relationships with the lands, waters and communities, we can build a brighter, more sustainable future for all our children, and for all generations.
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