David Shane Lowry is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Southern Maine and a citizen of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. 

This is my addendum to the Feb. 18 op-ed by Passamaquoddy Chiefs Pos Bassett and
William Nicholas titled “Janet Mills has engaged thoughtfully with Maine tribes, shown us respect.”

Bassett and Nicholas celebrated Gov. Janet Mills’ support for tribal gaming (LD 1164). However, what Mills does not support is the overturning of the 1980 Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act.

Why is this important?

The 1980 Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act took away two-thirds (66%) of the state of Maine from the Wabanaki tribal nations. It also placed Maine in a position to veto much of what Wabanaki peoples attempt to do as sovereign Indigenous nations.

Today, most of the 575 federally recognized tribal nations across the United States live within states of self-determination. They operate within nation-to-nation or nation-to-state relationships. They have sovereignties equal to the United States and each state in the union.

American Indian nations are often treated as “wards of the state,” but we are not.

An 1831 Supreme Court case defined American Indian tribal nations as “domestic dependent nations” under the umbrella of the U.S. federal government. Within that history of colonial dehumanization of American Indian peoples, Wabanaki tribal nations — Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Penobscot and Passamaquoddy — are the only federally recognized tribes in the United States who are forced to request that a state (i.e., Maine) grant them permission to do business within their tribal nations.

Wabanaki leaders advocated for LD 2004, which would have effectively restored the tribal nation-to-state relationship. Gov. Mills posted a speech on July 7, 2023, titled “Why I vetoed LD 2004,” in which she suggested that she shared “the goal of ensuring the Wabanaki nations can access benefits that are generally available to other federally recognized tribes.”

However, Mills suggested that LD 2004 “would result in years (…) of new, painful, complex litigation that would only further divide (Maine).” She later suggested that the LD 2004 would create a “confusing patchwork of laws” that might “conflict directly with Maine laws.”

Each semester, in my course on Indigenous policy, after listening to this speech, at least one student blurts out something like: “Mills sounds like a mom talking to her children?!”

What becomes quite obvious to students is that, yes, Janet Mills is thoughtful, but her thoughtfulness is not indicative of her support for American Indian autonomy. Rather, her thoughtfulness is part of a long history of Maine stripping Wabanaki nations of their authorities to determine what is best for their lands and peoples.

The 1980 Act violates Indigenous human rights per the United Nation Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Articles 4 and 5 of UNDRIP state: “Indigenous peoples, in exercising their right to self-determination, have the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs, as well as ways and means for financing their autonomous functions. Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions, while retaining their right to participate fully (…) in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the state.”

This isn’t just a Maine conversation. Recently, Kevin Stitt, governor of Oklahoma, in his State of the State address, asserted that tribal nations in Oklahoma ought to be stripped of their inherent sovereignties in his (Stitt’s) pursuit of “one Oklahoma.” Stitt has previously opposed the right of tribal nations in Oklahoma to govern environmental policy.

What Janet Mills is communicating is different … but the same.

Maine isn’t working to strip Wabanaki tribal nations of self-determination in order to unify Maine. (That stripping took place in 1980. It ought to be reversed.) However, Mills and Stitt — Democrat and Republican, respectively — both make thoughtful claims that honoring the self-determinative authorities of tribal nations somehow “divides” their states. This is inaccurate, genocidal rhetoric that knows no political party.