BAR HARBOR — From one perspective, Penobscot Chief Joseph Orono in 1775 traveled to Watertown, Massachusetts, to ally the Wabanki people with the revolutionary Americans at war with British colonizers.

It is this scene that Penobscot artist and historian James Francis Sr. depict in an acrylic dot painting now hanging in the Abbe Museum’s “In the Shadow of the Eagle” exhibit. But Francis, the director of cultural and historic preservation for the Penobscot Nation, notes that the Penobscot people and the British had been at war for 20 years already, and it might better be said that the Americans allied with the Wabanki people, and not the other way around.

“It’s about how you frame things and it’s about a perspective and understanding an indigenous presence,” he said.

Francis contemplated this alongside Zeke Crofton-Macdonald, the tribal ambassador for the Houlton Band of Maliseets, on a panel moderated by Siera Hyte, of the Cherokee Nation, about centering Wabanki voices during the upcoming 250th anniversary of the United States’ founding. The event was a part of the Abbe Museum’s second annual Dawnland Festival of Arts and Ideas, and was inspired by the new exhibit, which Hyte curated.

The museum in downtown Bar Harbor is dedicated to illuminating and advancing understanding of, and support for, Wabanaki Nations’ heritage, living cultures, and homelands.

It hosted Dawnland for the second time last weekend, although the festival was preceded for many years by the annual Native American Festival and Basketmakers Market. Organizers estimated over 1,200 people attended the free two-day festival, which featured performances and 64 Indigenous vendors, mostly from regional tribal communities, with a range of artwork including traditional baskets and jewelry. The event also highlighted Wabanaki thought leadership with a series of panels throughout the weekend.

“Native arts and culture can’t be separated from native ways of knowing,” said Betsy Richards, the museum’s executive director and senior partner with Wabanaki Nations. “Knowledge systems, our values, our traditional knowledge and our contemporary knowledge are all also tied in with the byproduct — all this incredible expression that you see.”

“In the Shadow of the Eagle,” which opened in May and was timed to coincide with the semiquincentennial event next year, does not celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary. Rather, the exhibit contextualizes the event within the history of the Indigenous communities that have historically lived in the region.

“We wanted to center indigenous narratives from the colonial time frame,” Hyte said in an interview. “Wabanaki people have been here for thousands of years before any European contact on these lands.”

To provide a sense of historic scale, the curators intentionally included contemporary art, such as Francis’ and the work of Portland-based Penobscot photographer Maya Tihtiyas Attean, as well as various stone implements dated between 6000 BC and 1600 CE.

“Indigenous people are not just an aspect of history, and it’s not just something you read about in textbooks,” Crofton-Macdonald said during the panel. “We are still here. We will always be here, no matter what. I think we’ve proven that time and time again.”

Both the panel and the exhibit also touched on the role of Indigenous people in the U.S. military, many of whom fought on behalf a country that did not afford them the right to vote. Native Americans have the highest per-capita rate of military service of any ethnic group in the U.S.

For Francis, his own service in the U.S. Air Force was a continuation of a legacy carried through his family, dating back to scene of Chief Orono captured in the exhibit.

“For me, it started with that trip, that canoe trip to Watertown, Massachusetts, by Chief Joseph Orono allying Wabanaki troops to what he calls our brothers, the Americans,” Francis said on the panel. “Wabanaki warriors have fought and died in every war for this country since the birth of this country. I wanted to capture that.”

The “In the Shadow of the Eagle” exhibit will remain open through October 2026.

Reuben M. Schafir is a Report for America corps member who writes about Indigenous communities for the Portland Press Herald.