Johnna Ossie, a social work graduate student, lives in Portland. 

For over 40 years, the state of Maine has used the 1980 Indian Claims Settlement Act to deny the Wabanaki Nations the basic right of self-governance afforded to the 570 other federally recognized tribes nationwide. The passage of LD 785, An Act to Enact the Remaining Recommendations of the Task Force on Changes to the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Implementing Act, is a morally urgent matter that directly addresses this historical injustice.

As with most issues affecting our society, children are disproportionately affected by injustices perpetrated by adults. The Wabanaki Alliance reports that childhood poverty rates in Wabanaki communities range from 40%-77%, alarmingly higher than the overall state average of 15%. As a Maine resident, a social work graduate student and a human being, I find this statistic deeply troubling.

Maine has a long, painful history of harming Wabanaki families. For generations, the state systematically took children from their homes through a child welfare system that continued to target Indigenous children at rates that far outpaced almost any other state, long after the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed.

In 2015, the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported that between 2002 and 2013, Wabanaki children in Maine entered foster care at more than five times the state average. This cycle of family separation has created deep intergenerational trauma. As a social work student and someone who has worked in early childhood education for over a decade, I recognize that true healing cannot occur until the systemic roots of these disparities are addressed through meaningful policy change.

The 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that all children have the right to be raised by their parents or guardians and to speak their own language and practice their own cultural traditions. Article 30 states, “In those States in which … persons of indigenous origin exist, a child …who is indigenous shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of his or her group, to enjoy his or her own culture, to profess and practice his or her own religion or to use his or her own language.”

This international standard underscores Maine’s moral obligation to support Wabanaki self-governance through LD 785. When we deny tribes the right to manage their own affairs, we are effectively denying these children the cultural and community protections guaranteed to them by international human rights standards.

We cannot move toward reconciliation for Wabanaki families within a framework that suppresses the economic and sovereign tools Wabanaki parents need to provide for their children. LD 785 permits the Wabanaki tribes to access federal education, health and infrastructure programs that are currently denied to them.

The 1980 Settlement Act is a failed state policy that leaves Maine lagging other states in the rights of Indigenous peoples. I urge the Maine Legislature to enact this vital legislation to ensure that the next generation of Wabanaki children has the opportunities for prosperity and self-governance that are their birthright.

The time for half measures has passed. LD 785 cannot right the wrongs of Maine’s past, but it can give Wabanaki peoples the rights afforded to 570 other federally recognized tribes that are denied to them.