As recently as 400 years ago, Wabanaki people would routinely canoe roughly 9 miles down what is now called the Goose River from their fields and forests along its banks to its estuary, joining the Passagassawakeag River and ultimately widening into Penobscot Bay. There they would have raked clams, gathered mussels and oysters, and fished, too. During the British colonization of their territory, when their people were killed or driven north into the woods, the Wabanaki — Penobscots around the Midcoast's bay area — lost their connection to the coastal lands and waters that had been their home and food source since their ancestors arrived there thousands of years earlier.
Today a group of visionary Wabanaki people has returned to a large tract of that ancestral land along the Goose River. Eighteen months ago they acquired Goose River Farm from Chris and Lynn Boynton, a former horse and cattle ranch with 245 acres of fields, forests and wetlands in "so-called Swanville." Thanks to the support of land trusts and others, their acquisition is debt-free.
After conducting their food, health and cultural work on leased and borrowed land since 2017 as the Eastern Woodlands Rematriation Collective, the women- and two-spirit-led group of Wabanaki farmers, health professionals and educators took title to the tract as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit called Niweskok. That translates to "dried seeds for planting" and also "spirit or essence of life" in Penobscot, adapted for their purposes into "From the Stars to Seeds." Niweskok will steward its returned land in perpetuity.
The concept of rematriation - defined generally by Native groups as the restoration of Indigenous people to their rightful place in sacred relationship with their ancestral land - is by no means unique to the Wabanaki; Indigenous people are seeking the return of their ancestral lands in many parts of the country. But Niweskok broke new ground in acquiring its land unburdened by a traditional conservation easement establishing rules for its use.
As Niweskok Co-Board Chair and Co-Director Alivia Moore explains it, "Usually land trusts understand conservation easements on land as the ultimate tool of conservation. We worked with the land trusts to say, hey, we hear that this has been a tool for you all in conservation, but you're trying to care for this land and get it back to the way it was when Wabanaki people were taking care of it.
"There was not an easement at that time. So, really, the ultimate tool of conservation care for land is Wabanaki stewardship, from Wabanaki values."
With this land, free of conservation easements and theirs to steward completely according to their traditions, Niweskok is engaging Wabanaki families in reestablishing their foodways and feeding their communities, restoring access to their traditional foods, and capacity for food production. With vegetable gardens, a food forest of fruit and nut trees, eventual animal herds, community harvests, an apothecary with traditional medicinal plants, a kitchen, classroom and community center for workshops, language instruction and social events, they are building a physical campus while recovering their Indigenous heritage.
Although initially there was some culture clash between Niweskok and the land trusts ("They think vertically and we think horizontally," Moore noted), they all stayed with it and over time grew to understand each other. On Jan. 30, 2025, a coalition of 12 organizations, including Maine Farmland Trust, Coastal Mountains Land Trust, private foundations and local philanthropists, made the historic acquisition happen.
Moore commented that throughout the process, Niweskok leaders found essential support in regularly looking to the earth for guidance, care and support, in keeping with their practice of rematriation.
"Oftentimes, folks who come from a predominantly patriarchal world, when they hear matriarchy, they think it's flipping patriarchy, with women instead of men being the dominant decisionmakers or in the power position between men and women, but that is not the framework of rematriation from the Wabanaki practice," Moore explained. "Rematriation is all of us, with our gifts, supporting regeneration, supporting life. And so in rematriation, we all have important roles to play and it's a much more balanced approach than patriarchy or just flipping patriarchy and then having women in charge. It's about shared power."
"It's really the dominant force is the earth, and we humble ourselves to the earth and to the limits and to the guidance the earth provides us."
Niweskok's stated mission is to restore the Penobscot Bay region as a food hub and reclaim food sovereignty, cultural knowledge and health for the people of the Wabanaki Confederacy, a coalition of five First Nations (the Penobscot, Wolastoqiyik, Mi'kmaq, Passamaquoddy and Abenaki) in northeast Wabanakik (so-called Maine).
With its 163 acres of forest, 37 acres of open fields and 30 acres of wetlands, their farm will support Indigenous-led land-based education, traditional crop cultivation and fisheries revitalization - but their ambitious array of programs requires infrastructure support, and that is happening simultaneously. The nine members of Nieweskok's leadership team meet weekly- while in most cases also managing their day jobs - to discuss the many directions in which they're moving, seemingly everywhere at once.
Their predecessor collective laid groundwork for trading food, as tribes have done traditionally since before colonization. To draw people to the farm, Niweskok offers food, classes and activities to Wabanaki people at no cost. "We don't have vehicles to provide transportation, but we have free gas cards, childcare, food at events," including ingredients foraged from the property, Moore said. "We're being really flexible with our timing so there are times of day or of the year that are supportive for people to be there."
One of their greatest signs of success, Moore said, "is when I see a Wabanaki license plate and they stop in - no event planned - like people want to be here, knowing this is a safe place. Folks asking, hey, you have this plant here, can we harvest this? There's a lot in the woods that's very culturally significant to us - so there's people knowing and showing up. And we have impromptu dinners here - they'll stop by and, well, I'll cook some extra, and then we're having music on and we're cooking dinner together! And it's like oh, my gosh, we're doing this!"
Early on, they set up one of the available farm buildings as their apothecary, providing traditional Wabanaki medicinal herbs. While earth workers mainly worked to rebuild soils in their first year, they did plant traditional ground nuts and sunchokes in the garden in front of the house. And they began offering potluck meals, lessons in the Penobscot language, other learning opportunities, and gatherings for special events.
For larger events, Moore said, they have Wabanaki folks "coming down across the colonial U.S./Canadian border." The original farmhouse has guest bedrooms for occasional overnight visitors. "We've hosted elders from Wabnakook, which is in Cape Breton. We've had a fair number ofWabanaki folks from so-called Canada come down for events, or they're relatives of our team and they're getting to go do clam harvests on the coast here." They emphasize multigenerational activities. "Part of what we do that is distinct is we work to engage kinship systems," Moore said, "so all ages of our community can be engaged in the activity; for example, the community harvest, because that is how we traditionally learned was in community, not separating children out. We feel it's important to support whole families to get engaged in the learning and teaching together."
Although housing is not part of Niweskok's mission, the nonprofit is able to house some employees on the farm, and currently three families live there. The leadership team has begun exploring other housing possibilities in the surrounding area.
Clamming is one traditional pursuit that can happen only when the Wabanaki can develop relationships with landowners. "Even though the intertidal zone has state access," Moore said, "you have to be on the abutting land to get out to it, so you have to have safe relationships with the landowner where they're welcoming you to go out to the intertidal zone."
She noted that while many of their people know how to rake clams and have the tools to do it, many do not, so Niweskok organizes multigenerational trips and secures safe access to the intertidal zone through abutting landowners with whom the group has built relationships.
Local land trusts have helped in that regard, Moore said, in gaining access not only to Penobscot Bay, but also to fields and forests where traditional foods are ready for harvest.
As they developed programs, Niweskok's leaders also began making infrastructure improvements starting in 2025, including the deconstruction of stalls in a horse barn beneath the large farmhouse, with a plan to repurpose the space as a community center to hold about 30 people.
Now with 18 months on their ancestral land, gardens are producing food and medicinal plants. The team is restoring the food forest on the land where June berries and hazelnuts are "responding really well to sunlight after selective cuttings. We had an arborist take out some white pines and maple clusters," Moore said, "and that has supported some black cherries." In the fall, plans call for planting fruit and nut trees among the existing trees. Niweskok is also working with the recently established Maine Wild Blueberry Collective, which is hoping to purchase an adjacent blueberry barren.
"We joked that this farm had every dream characteristic except there were no blueberry barrens," Moore said.... We don't have to own that blueberry land; we just want it protected."
Perhaps the group's most ambitious infrastructure project yet began this spring with pouring a slab for a timber frame outdoor kitchen and classroom. On July 4, Niweskok held an "INTERdependence Day" Timber Frame Raising and Barbecue Potluck. Over 90 people showed up and raised the sides of their new building, which will be an openair initally. The planners were thrilled with the response. Over the past week, a smaller group of workers added a roof.
Realizing that what they are building is actually a campus, Moore said this fall they will also undertake a campus development plan with an experienced campus architectural firm that is donating its work.
Looking back on Nieweskok's first 18 months, Moore observed, "It really feels like this is truly a homecoming." The leadership team had various community members visit the property before closing, but still they wondered whether Wabanaki people would want to make the drive to Swanville, want to spend time there.
"Unequivocally, the answer is yes!" Moore said. "It's very vibrant; it's really beautiful and healing for Wabanaki people to have this other place for our culture and our lifeways and our food practices to be practiced - but it's also been a place for the neighboring community to really welcome us home."
Admittedly making a leap, Moore said "it feels like it's also healing for the non-native people in this area - because this is an opportunity, in juxtaposition to when Wabanaki people were last here 400 years ago and we were violently removed- and now non-Native white folks who are here have welcomed us home and really supported us to be here."
For more information, visit niweskok.org.
Citation
Zachary, Carolyn (July 16, 2026). Niweskok Is Bringing the Land Back: Wabanaki farmers are plowing new - and familiar - ground in so-called Swanville. Midcoast Villager. wwww.midcoast villager.com