The ash tree is an important part of Wabanaki history and culture, says Associate Professor of History Joe Hall. That’s why he keeps a hunk of the hardwood — a gift from one teacher to another — in his Pettengill Hall office.

An expert on Native American interactions with Europeans in Colonial times, Hall is well-versed in the history of the five nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy that lived in Maine, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and eastern Quebec.

In the origin story of one tribe, the Penobscot Nation, the cultural hero Gluskabe splits an ash tree with his arrow, from which emerge the first Penobscot man and woman.

Joe Hall works in his Pettengill Hall office. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Native peoples in Maine have long used the wood of brown ash (also known as black ash) trees to make beautiful and functional baskets. Hall had learned about the importance of the ash tree from a number of Wabanaki educators, but even after living in Maine for 10 years, he had never actually seen such a tree.

That changed one day about five years ago during a visit to his sons’ Auburn elementary school, where he ended up talking trees with one of their science teachers, Jim Chandler. “Can you show me what an ash tree looks like?” Hall asked.

Chandler took him into the woods behind the school and said, “This is an ash tree.” Hall also learned how to identify the species and what kind of soil it grows in.

Hall then explained his interest in Wabanakis and that ash trees really matter a great deal to them. “Oh, I have something you might want,” replied Chandler, who went back into his office and returned with a piece of splintered brown ash that showed “both what the wood looks like and how it is that you actually turn this strong, hard wood into splints for weaving baskets,” Hall says.

Hall holds a prized possession. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

As Hall has learned from Wabanaki basketmakers, to create the ash strips called splints, you whack the wood with the back of an axe or other blunt instrument. That separates the growth rings so eventually they peel off. A tool called a splitter may be used to make the first splints even smaller and thinner.

These strips are ideal for weaving a basket. “If you’ve ever held a wooden baseball bat,” Hall says, “you get a sense how solid and dense ash is. These strands also show how flexible it is, so the tree can be used to make baskets that are incredibly light and strong. They’re really marvelous constructions.”

A closeup of Hall’s piece of split brown ash. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

This important Wabanaki tradition is now threatened by an invasive beetle species from eastern Asia, the emerald ash borer, that since 2002 has gradually spread from Michigan and other parts of the Midwest into New York and more recently Maine.

Hall shows the piece of ash to students so they can appreciate how Wabanakis turn wood into a basket, “because it doesn’t immediately make sense that you can make wood weavable,” he says. It’s also a reminder that “there’s nothing in our lives that isn’t made from other things, things that we all depend on in our connections to the world around us, such as the trees that surround us.”

Most of the time, Hall’s prized possession sits on a shelf facing his computer so he can look at it as he works. “It provides me with this connection to the people — Wabanakis and non-Indians — who have educated my children and also educated me.”

A portrait of Esther Attean by Maine artist Robert Shetterly, from his “Americans Who Tell the Truth” series.

Harward Center Civic Forums at �ֲ���ý in October afford the opportunity to learn more about the role of immigration in Maine’s economy; and about a historic effort to redress problems created by government policies toward Native American children.

Denise Altvater and Esther Attean, members of the Maine Passamaquoddy Tribe and architects of the Maine Wabanaki–State Child Welfare Truth & Reconciliation Commission, discuss that initiative’s history and prospects at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 1, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

James Tierney, former attorney general of Maine and majority leader of the House of Representatives, gives a talk titled Immigration in Maine: Past and Future at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 20, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

Both presentations are open to the public at no cost as part of the Civic Forum series presented by the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, the �ֲ���ý office that connects the college and the
community in mutually beneficial ways.

A portrait of Denise Altvater by Maine artist Robert Shetterly, from his “Americans Who Tell the Truth” series. Shetterly will introduce Altvater and Esther Attean (shown above) at a Harward Center Civic Forum.

For more information, please call 207-786-6202.

Truth and Reconciliation

The Oct. 1 forum will explore the recent formation of the Maine Wabanaki–State Child Welfare Truth & Reconciliation Commission, the first of its kind in the U.S. The commission was formed in response to the long and little-known history of state child welfare programs forcing the assimilation of Native American children into the dominant culture.

The commission aims to discover the truth about the experiences of Wabanaki people with child welfare programs, and to promote healing and lasting change. The five commissioners were seated last February and their work will continue until June 2015, when they will make recommendations based on their findings.

Joining Altvater and Attean as presenters will be Arla Patch, community engagement coordinator for the Maine-Wabanaki Reconciliation, Engagement, Advocacy, Change and Healing coalition; and Maine artist Robert Shetterly, who will introduce Altvater and Attean. Shetterly included the pair in his portrait series “Americans Who Tell the Truth,” depicting 200 individuals who have addressed issues of social, environmental and economic justice.

Starting in the 1800s, Wabanaki children in Maine were taken by the state from their families and communities and put into boarding schools or foster care to integrate them into the dominant culture. This policy stripped the children of their culture, language, family and community, losses still felt in Maine native communities today.

Immigrants and Maine’s Economic Future

James Tierney.

For the second October forum, �ֲ���ý welcomes Tierney, Maine’s attorney general from 1980 to 1990 and a veteran of the Maine Legislature whose eight years in the House of Representatives included two sessions as majority leader.

With the aging of Maine’s population posing a threat to economic vitality, “we need more people,” Tierney told a University of Maine audience in a landmark 2002 talk about diversity and immigration that has become a standard reference for state and community leaders.

“We must see immigrants as an opportunity,” Tierney said. “California, Texas, New York, Florida, Arizona, Washington — the states that are our country’s engines of economic growth are culturally diverse.”

Tierney now serves as the director of the National State Attorneys General Program at Columbia Law School, where he has taught law since 2000. He also lectures at Harvard Law School and works as a consultant to attorneys general around the country, offering guidance on the effective performance of their office.

Tierney served as special counsel to the attorney general of Florida during the contested and still-controversial 2000 U.S. presidential election.

A panel discussion and lecture at �ֲ���ý College on Feb. 11 will focus on the material culture of the Wabanaki people, the Native Americans that include Maine’s Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Micmac and Maliseet tribes.

The panel presentation Artistic Lives — Living Art: Wabanaki Basketmakers begins at 4:15 p.m. in the Keck Classroom (G52), Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk). A Basket Is a Song Made Visible, a keynote talk by Native American scholar Clara Sue Kidwell, follows at 7 p.m. in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

These events are made possible by a Colby-�ֲ���ý-Bowdoin Mellon Collaborative Faculty Enhancement grant. For more information, please call 207-753-6933.

As a program titled Learning and Teaching with Wabanaki Culture, these events will examine Wabanaki material culture as a means for integrating aspects of indigenous thought and practice into a curriculum.

The program is part of a larger effort to increase awareness of Native American and Wabanaki issues at �ֲ���ý, and to promote collaboration between the campus and Wabanaki communities.

With panelists including basketmakers Jeremy Frey, a member of the Passamaquoddy tribe, and Richard Silliboy of the Micmacs, the afternoon discussion will explore what material culture means to the Wabanakis and the roles that material culture can play in intercultural education.

Kidwell, director of the American Indian Center at the University of North Carolina, will address Native American knowledge systems, and scientific thought and practice.

She is an enrolled member of the White Earth Chippewa tribe and is also of Choctaw descent. Prior to coming to North Carolina she was director of the Native American studies program and professor of history at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

Her publications include A Native American Theology (Orbis Books, 2001), co-authored with Homer Noley and George Tinker; Native American Studies (University of Edinburgh Press, 2005) co-authored with Alan Velie; and The Choctaws in Oklahoma: From Tribe to Nation, 1855-1970 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2007).

She received a bachelor’s degree in letters and a master’s and doctorate in the history of science from the University of Oklahoma. Before joining the faculty there in 1995, she served as assistant director of cultural resources at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution.

Kidwell previously taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Dartmouth College and the University of Minnesota, among other institutions.

Featuring three panelists, Monday’s symposium is titled Latin American Indigenous Movements in the 21st Century: Frontiers of Activism. It takes place in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave., and is sponsored by the Mellon Innovation Fund, the environmental studies program, the anthropology department, the social science division and the Multicultural Center at �ֲ���ý.

Tuesday’s roundtable discussion is titled Indigenous Environmental Activism Among Near and Distant Neighbors and includes two of the Monday panelists and two Native Americans from Maine. It will explore forms and roles of native environmentalism and its engagements with Western environmental policies. This takes place in the Benjamin Mays Center, 95 Russell St., and is sponsored by the Mellon Innovation Fund, the environmental studies program and the Multicultural Center.

The programs have been put together by �ֲ���ý College faculty including a group associated with the Latin American Studies general education concentration at the college. General education concentrations, or GECs, part of the college’s core curriculum, are groupings of courses oriented around a common theme and often drawn from diverse academic departments and programs.

Monday’s panel is composed of three activists involved in indigenous politics in Latin America: Patricia Gualinga, Victor Montejo and Trevor Stevenson ’00.

Gualinga is a member of the Kichwa indigenous community of Sarayaku in Amazonian Ecuador. She has spent years leading the community against oil exploration on indigenous lands, a process that has put Sarayaku in the international spotlight. Gualinga has also ensured that women’s voices are heard in the movement for indigenous rights and environmental justice.

Her efforts have taken her around the world and led to collaborations with non-governmental organizations in the United States and Ecuador, as well as participation within the Ecuadorian government and CONAIE, Ecuador’s national indigenous federation.

Montejo is a Jakaltek Maya from the Northwestern Highlands of Guatemala, where he was a schoolteacher before coming to the United States. He fled Guatemala in 1982, after his brother, also a teacher, was assassinated by government soldiers and his own name appeared on death lists.

For the last eight years Montejo has chaired the Native American Studies Department at the University of California, Davis. In 2003, he gave up a Fulbright grant to run for Congress in Guatemala, and was elected in December of that year. He is the author of several books.

Stevenson is originally from Wyoming, where he was involved in environmental and indigenous issues. He has worked with indigenous movements in Latin America for more than a decade and has extensive experience in coordination between indigenous peoples and local governments and NGOs. He has served as the executive co-director of the Washington, D.C.-based Amazon Alliance for Indigenous and Traditional Peoples and their Environment.

Gualinga and Stevenson will join two members of Maine Wabanaki tribes in Tuesday’s event. Brenda Commander is serving her fourth term as chief of the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians. She is overseeing tribal efforts to restore the Meduxnekeag River, a tributary of the St. John River that flows through tribal lands. Through partnerships with private and government agencies in Canada and the United States, the tribe is improving the water quality of the river for cultural and environmental reasons.

John Banks has been director of the Penobscot Nation’s Department of Natural Resources since the department’s founding in 1980. During that time he has overseen the implementation of an extensive water quality testing program for the Penobscot River to ensure that the river complies with state and federal clean water standards.

In addition, Banks and his department have played an important role in the newly formed Penobscot River Restoration Trust, which is raising money to pay for a removal of dams that would reopen 1,000 miles of river habitat along the Penobscot.

Titled Wabanaki Hopes for Their Lands: A Conversation, the panel discussion will explore the relationship between the lands of the Wabanaki (a term that refers to Maine’s four Native American tribes) and their cultures.

Open to the public at no cost, the panel is made possible by the Philip J. Otis Endowment at �ֲ���ý. For more information, please 207-786-6237.

The college’s annual Otis Lecture follows the discussion at 7:30 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. The Otis lecturer is N. Scott Momaday, whose novel “House Made of Dawn” earned him the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a Native American.

The event is open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required and can be reserved by e-mailing olinarts@bates.edu. A reception and book signing follow the lecture. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.

The speakers in the 4:15 panel are Brenda Commander, chief of the Houlton Band of Maliseets; David Soctomah, Passamaquoddy tribal representative and historian; and James Francis, Penobscot Nation tribal historian. The panel, says organizer and �ֲ���ý history professor Joseph Hall, “is a way for us all to learn how we might collaborate more closely as inhabitants of the same state.”

The annual Otis Lecture at �ֲ���ý is funded by the Philip J. Otis Endowment, established in 1996 by a gift from Margaret V.B. and C. Angus Wurtele in memory of their son, Philip, a member of the class of 1995 who died attempting to rescue injured climbers on Mount Rainier.

In recognition of Otis’ appreciation for nature, the endowment helps support �ֲ���ý programs with an environmental focus, in particular those exploring the spiritual and moral dimensions of humanity’s relationship with the environment.