Student Life & Scholarship

Permanent URI for this community

http://hdl.handle.net/10066/97

Browse

Browsing Student Life & Scholarship by Subject "Abenaki Indians -- Maine -- Government relations"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Native Belonging: Identity and Narrative in the Maine-Wabanaki State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission
    (2013) Greulich, Amy; Hucks, Tracey E., 1965-
    On February 12, 2013, the Seating Ceremony for the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) took place outside of Bangor, Maine. Less than one year earlier, June 29, 2012 marked the highlight of my two months in Maine, as I witnessed all five tribal chiefs and the Governor of Maine gather in the State Capitol of Augusta to sign a document mandating the commission’s creation. The Mandate established that this TRC will record a shared “truth” or collective history of child welfare practices in regards to Wabanaki people since 1978 in the state of Maine, facilitate a process of healing for these Native communities, and through this knowledge, recommend better practices of child welfare for Wabanaki children in Maine. This thesis argues that Wabanaki Native Americans within the state of Maine are excluded from state-centered notions of identity that privilege the tension between the dichotomous roles of “Native Mainer” and temporary residents of “Vacationland.” The implication of this exclusion is near-invisibility for Native Americans in Maine. Beyond the labels of Native-named bodies of water or pieces of land, there is a collective failure to know the history or culture of Natives who have inhabited this territory for thousands of years. Mainers exhibit collective amnesia of policies of paternalism and colonization towards indigenous populations—exemplified in residential school systems like the Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, PA—which have occurred for over a century and left lasting trauma that pervades tribal communities today. In a larger context of United States, similar widespread ignorance of policies of assimilation and epistemicide is the norm. Even within Wabanaki communities, colonized mindsets are internalized because the extent of the trauma of those systematically deprived of their tribal kinship systems and other narratives have historically been silenced or discounted. Today, the limited narrative in which the Wabanaki tribes are presented creates a dehumanizing lack of space to be heard, recognized, and to belong in the wider system of the United States. I conclude with an assessment of the TRC through the lens of gender and decolonization to understand the role both take in shaping the TRC’s intent and structure, reflected in dialogue circles and human-to-human interactions, presentations, and conversations. The TRC’s purposeful emphasis on healing situates the Wabanaki people as the agents, rather than victims, who engage this space to share their countermemories of truth and trauma.