Blog: Voices of Decolonization

Beyond the Claims– Stories from the Land & the Heart  Wabanaki REACH, a Native-led nonprofit organization, has launched its newest truth-telling initiative focused on the Maine Indian land claims, Beyond the Claims– Stories from...

  During the last few cold and windy days of December, I decided to hike to the top of Black Mountain. I was very excited, especially since it had been a while since I...

by Marieke Van Der Steenhoven, Special Collections Education and Engagement Librarian, Bowdoin College   How do you prepare to bear witness—even if from a distance—to genocide? Bringing the archive of the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare...

When I was first approached to work on TRC efforts, I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic. As a Penobscot historian, I was well aware of the legacy of trauma that Wabanaki people had endured in our...

Decolonizing While in Colonial Systems: Serving as Tribal Ambassador to the Governments that have Historically and Perpetually Oppressed our Nations In 2015 the Penobscot Nation and Passamaquoddy Tribe voted to remove their Representatives to...

  From the dawn of history when the people were one and the gatherings weren’t of need but were life, there was nothing to turn back to, nowhere to come from, just moving forward...

by Butch Phillips, Penobscot Nation (An  excerpt from “`Wilderness within Wildness without’ by Bridget Besaw) During an up river canoe trip to Katahdin, our sacred mountain, my son Scott and I paused to rest...

by Erika Arthur [Warning – painful content on Indian Boarding Schools below] In May, 2021 the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation of Canada announced that they had discovered the bodies of 215 children buried...

By Jeffrey Hotchkiss. In 2009, I learned of my connection to an infamous act of violence against Indigenous people. My family name was on the four cannon that helped to kill hundreds of Lakota...

The Dawnland Signals show for December was such a special treat. We had a wonderful virtual visit with poets Mihku Paul and Penthea Burns, discussing how they came to write poems and how they...