From left, Lokotah Sanborn, Darren Ranco and Mihku Paul perform “Once Upon a Time in New England,” a developing play about the Treaty of Casco Bay at SPACE on Feb. 27. Sophie Burchell / The Forecaster

“The story I’m about to tell is true according to the ‘historic record,’ which, of course, means that it’s not true. Figure it out yourself.”

This is how the Wabanaki Trickster beings narrating the tale of the negotiations of the Treaty of Casco Bay in a new play, “Once Upon a Time in New England.”

With a stage full of bears, settlers, the king of France and a personified river, the story examines the treaty through a Wabanaki lens while commenting on colonial dynamics of today. Written by Maliseet artist and activist Mihku Paul, the in-process play was previewed at Portland’s SPACE on Feb. 27.

The play is in the style of commedia dell’arte, a form of satirical street theater that was popular in Europe about the time of the Casco Bay Treaty negotiations from 1726 to 1727. Consisting of recurring characters and often commenting on present or historical events, commedia dell’arte often served to comically point to injustices and criticize regimes – so much so that Napolean outlawed the style in 1797.

“Humor has always been a critical part of our life. I think I daresay in more contemporary times, humor is about a way of coping,” said Paul, who is still working on completing the play.

“Entering into this heavy material through a humor lens has been a really great experience, and I think it’s allowing us to more actively mine those concepts and point to those moments and look at it almost … not just as a tragedy, but also in an absurdist way,” she said.

For “Once Upon a Time in New England,” the comedic style of the play is a path to examining a painful and complex past. Following negotiations in 1726, Wabanaki leaders in 1727 traveled throughout the region to present-day Portland to meet with representatives of the colonial Massachusetts government and companies. Responding to decades of warring as colonists infringed on Wabanaki territory, the council reached an agreement between the colonial authorities and the Wabanaki, leading to only a brief period without conflict but setting the stage for future settler-Wabanaki relations.

The play is part of the larger project “Spinning Wampum,” a public art initiative for Wabanaki artists and scholars to reclaim and commemorate, or “reclaim-memorate,” of the story of the Treaty of Casco Bay through a contemporary Wabanaki lens. The project was funded by a Kindling Fund grant through SPACE as part of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts Regional Regranting Program in 2023. The group has met once a month for two years.

“There is a kind of … special dynamic that happens when Wabanaki people get together to create, but this isn’t just strictly a creative endeavor. We are also taking a very close look at the language of the treaty and finding ways that we can really have underpinnings that are key concepts and moments from that treaty,” said Paul.

“And we’re also having a lot of fun doing it,” she said.

For Wabanaki and other Indigenous peoples, the purple and white shell beads of wampum served as a record of events, a symbol of connection and as currency. These values are symbolized through the project’s title of Spinning Wampum, as new ideas and threads of history are woven together in the group’s artistic work.

“I think that’s a cross-cultural phenomenon people can relate to that art, and arts in a Western sense, is supposed to mine pain or historical legacy to create the possibilities of futures that are whole or are healed or just,” said Darren Ranco, chair of Native American Programs and professor of anthropology at the University of Maine and a member of the Penobscot Nation.

The initiative originated from the In Kinship Collective, an interdisciplinary group focused on learning and creating through Wabanaki guidance. Wanting to focus more specifically on the Treaty of Casco Bay, members began Spinning Wampum to brainstorm and collaborate about how to reclaim and memorialize the event 300 years ago and bring it into the future of Portland.

“How do you create an Indigenous future out of colonial erasure? How do you turn that page? How do you revisit that to create that sense that Portland is undeniably Wabanaki space?” asked Ranco.

“We need to address this in a way that is productive for us,” he said.

In addition to the play, future projects from Spinning Wampum include a variety of public art and gatherings that demonstrate Portland as a Wabanaki place. Ideas and plans include murals, canoe armadas on Casco Bay, flash mobs, Indigenous food events, and even a rave inside a wigwam.

Spinning Wampum also aims to work with other educational and cultural institutions in the area to integrate Wabanaki history, culture and presence into everyday life. Members expressed a desire for more of their history and culture to be widely known, so not every exhibit on Wabanaki history or art in Portland would have to attempt to cover the whole story but could be more specific and highlight complexity. In this vein, many members of In Kinship and Spinning Wampum contributed to the development of the Wabanaki curriculum that was integrated into Portland Public Schools in 2023.

Overall, the group has the goal of creating Wabanaki visibility by both disrupting the status quo and encouraging Portland residents to see their city and its history in a new light. As the Kindling Fund has ended and Spinning Wampum emerges from its brainstorming phase and into action, the collective is looking to next steps. As the anniversary of the Treaty of Casco Bay approaches next year, they hope to not just shed light on Portland’s Wabanaki past, but the city’s role in a Wabanaki present and future.

“To do the kind of work that we’ve been doing, it requires an immense amount of planning and thought-provoking engagements over a longer period of time,” said Ranco.

“How do you do that in a way where the erasure is so deep and the need for it, the reimagining of Indigenous futures is so great? It can’t be served by a single project,” he said.