A new report examining a 2001 law requiring schools to teach K-12 students about Maine’s indigenous tribes and nations claims the state has not enforced the law.
The report, “The Wabanaki Studies Law, 21 Years After Implementation,” was unveiled Monday, Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
“I think that this report is a great reflection of the shortcomings of this law, but also the real brilliance of this law, and without it we wouldn’t be able to reflect on these shortcomings and recommend how to best move forward,” said Maulian Dana, Penobscot Nation Ambassador and President of the Wabanaki Alliance.
The law, formerly referred to as the Wabanaki Studies Law, was signed in June 2001. It requires schools to provide instruction about history, culture, economics and other subjects as they relate to the Wabanaki territories, a collective reference to Maine’s four Native American tribes and nations — Mi’kmaq Nation, Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, Passamaquoddy Tribe and Penobscot Nation.
The Wabanaki Alliance, Abbe Museum and the ACLU of Maine used the state's open records law to survey 10 districts and the state education department on their compliance with the law. The Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission also joined in the report.
The 21-year-old state law requires schools to teach Wabanaki history, economic and political systems and culture.
Among the reporter’s findings:
Maine Department of Education only includes “vague” references to Wabanaki studies in the Maine Learning Results, a tool the state uses to evaluate education statewide.
The department does not list the Wabanaki Studies Law as one with which schools must certify compliance.
There are no sample lessons or guidance on the department’s website.
Wabanaki experts asked to assist the department are not compensated.
The department offers no Wabanaki studies-related pre-certification or continuing education requirements for the state’s teachers.
There are some success stories, such as how Portland Public Schools reconfigured its curriculum to include Wabanaki studies and how Calais High School is offering classes in the Passamaquoddy language.
But the review revealed that one school district had no records demonstrating how it complies with the statute, and another admitted it didn't systemically include Wabanaki studies in its curriculum.
Several school districts referred to Wabanaki people in the past tense and focused only on colonization, playing into a misconception that Wabanaki people are either invisible or a thing of the past, the report said.
“The Maine Department of Education has made some progress toward this goal, and many of its staff care deeply about the Wabanaki Studies Law. However, the Department has failed to use available tools to enforce the law,” the report’s authors wrote.
Overall, however, the report described statewide implementation of the law as “uneven.”
TRIBES TREATED AS 'SECOND-CLASS CITIZENS'
The study came at a time of fraught relations between the tribes and the state of Maine.
The tribes are pressing to change the Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Act of 1980, which prevents tribes in the state from having the same rights as the other 570 federally recognized tribes.
The Maine House approved the bill that would have amended the settlement in April, but the Maine Senate never gave a final vote because of a threatened veto by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills.
The tribal frustration comes despite some successes: The state ended tribal imagery for high school mascots, changed the name of Columbus Day, and gave tribes revenue from mobile sports betting.
President Joe Biden proclaimed Monday to be Indigenous People's Day for the second year, as states and cities rebranded the federal holiday that had long-celebrated Christopher Columbus’ sighting of what came to be known as the Americas.
But Rep. Jeffrey Evangelos, an independent from Friendship, WROTE in an op-ed in the Portland Press Herald on Monday that Maine's Indigenous people are still treated as “second-class citizens.”
“The relationship between the Wabanaki Nations and the state of Maine is frayed, and one way to repair that relationship is for the state to invest in proper implementation of the Wabanaki Studies Law," said Maulian Dana, a Penobscot and president of the Wabanaki Alliance.
The state contends it's making progress in schools.
Maine Education Commissioner Pender Makin convened a working group of tribal leaders and Wabanaki scholars in the first months of the administration, an agency spokesperson said.
Decisions on what’s taught in the classroom are made locally, and the Maine Department of Education provides resources by grade on its website that have been reviewed by tribal cultural experts and educators, spokesperson Marcus Mrowka said.
The agency recently hired an educator to lead the work of creating lessons for the state’s online lesson sharing website for teachers from kindergarten to high school, Mrowka said.
Across the country, there have been recent gains in teaching students about Native Americans, with new requirements in states such as Connecticut, North Dakota and Oregon.
Dana spoke Monday of the need for change, including compensation for Native Americans who are asked to help craft curriculum.
“I think that’s something we can’t stress enough,” Dana said. “We’re often asked to do a lot of labor, and it’s offered to us like a favor, ‘Will you come in and speak to my class?’ And the reward is networking and attention, and people will know you and see you, and you’ll help these kids. And that’s all great, but you only treat marginalized people that way. We need to really honor the knowledge of Indigenous knowledge keepers.”
Advocates on Monday said they are calling attention to a problem they want to work with the state to fix.
“It’s not about blame and shame, right?” Newell Lewey, chairperson of the Main Indian Tribal-State Commission, said. “It’s needing to know the history of where we are as people and I don’t mean ‘we’ as in Passamaquoddy, or Penobscot, or Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Abenaki. I mean that all of us need to understand where each of us are coming from so that we can be better people, better citizens of this state if you will of the nation, if you will, the United States, but also of our nation as well.”
Among its recommendations, the report recommended the reinstatement of the Wabanaki Studies Commission, a group established with the law in 2001 composed of tribal and education experts to lay out how the law should be implemented.
The commission issued its last official report in 2003. The report also recommended the department update its Maine Learning Results to include Wabanaki studies, and make Wabanaki-related learning a mandatory part of teacher certification and continuing education.
Meagan Sway, policy director at the Maine ACLU, wants the public to ask local school boards to get involved with improving Wabanaki-related studies.
“We really need resources to make that happen and without the resources, we’re going to see the sort of good attempts but incomplete attempts at implementing this law,” Sway said.
With reporting from Sean Murphy at Spectrum News and David Sharp of the Associated Press.