FREE ESSAY ON THE PASSAMAQUODDY INDIANS

THE PASSAMAQUODDY INDIANS

For several hundred years people have sought answers to the Indian problems, who are the
Indians, and what rights do they have? These questions may seem simple, but the answers
themselves present a difficult number of further questions and answers. State and Federal
governments have tried to provide some order with a number of laws and policies,
sometimes resulting in state and federal conflicts. The Federal Government's attempt to
deal with Indian tribes can be easily understood by following the history of Federal
Indian Policy. Indians all over the United States fought policies which threatened to
destroy their familial bonds and traditions. The Passamaquoddy Indian Tribe of Maine,
resisted no less than these other tribes, however, thereby also suffering a hostile
anti-Indian environment from the Federal Government and their own State, Maine. But
because the Passamaquoddy Tribe was located in such a remote area, they escaped many
federal Indian policies.
In order to make more eastern land available for settlement, Congress passed the Indian
Removal Act in 1830. This enabled the President of the United States to have power
physically to move eastern Indian tribes to land west of the Mississippi River. Indian
Title did not grant the Indians the power to sell their own lands. The result of which
was that, the Indians went uncompensated for their lands and the Original Indian Title
was forsaken. Although more than 70,000 Indians had been forcibly removed in a ten-year
journey westward, a trip that became known as the Trail of Tears, the Passamaquoddy
Indians remained in the northeast. This was possibly due to their remoteness and harsh
winters of the North Atlantic coast.
Between 1821 and 1839 the state of Maine allowed timber havesting of the Passamaquoddy
land in direct violation of the 1794 treaty and later sold more of their lands without
compensation (Brooks 3). The 1774 treaty was signed between the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts and the Passamaquoddy Tribe. The treaty stipulated that the tribe would
surrender all claims to land in Massachusetts in exchange for 23,000 acres at Indian
Township and ten acres at Pleasant Point. Indian Township is located just above
Princeton, Maine, and Pleasant Point is located between Eastport and Perry, Maine. This
treaty was signed after the enactment of the Trade and Intercourse Acts, which held that
no treaties could be made with the Indians, except with federal approval. There was no
federal approval with this treaty (Brooks 3).
The State of Maine's courts in 1842 described Indians as charity cases and imbeciles,
subject to paternal control by the state. After years of being forcibly removed or
displaced by white settlers, the Passamaquoddy were reduced to living a meager existence
form hunting, fishing, trapping, and craft making (Brooks 3). 
The General Allotment Act of 1887 was passed with the concept that if Indians were given
individual plots of land, they would farm that land and assimilate into the white
culture. Allotted parcels of land were given to families, and the excess lands were sold
off. This resulted in a disastrous loss of Indian Land, from 138 million acres in 1887 to
48 million in 1834, 20 million of which was desert (Brooks 4). In 1924, Congress passed a
law giving U.S. citizenship to all Indians born in the U.S., but individual states could
still prohibit the Indians from voting. The state of Maine, in 1892, decided that the
Passamaquoddy Tribe no longer existed. This meant that the tribe was subject to all state
laws. In the education of the Indians, the goal was to eliminate all traces of Indianness
in the children (Baussenron 38).
The Great Depression in the 1930's made fewer jobs available for the Passamaquoddy.
Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, based on the concept that the
Allotment Act had been a complete failure (Baussenron 38). This new act helped the tribe
in self-government and protected the land base of the tribes. It ended the Allotment Act
and restored the surplus lands to the Indians. This land only included the land that had
not already been sold off. The Act also encouraged tribes to adopt constitutions.
However, this self-government still had to be approved by the federal government.
Congress terminated a number of tribes. This meant the Indians no longer existed as a
tribe. They were subject to state laws and their lands were sold off. The Bureau of
Indian Affairs (BIA) encouraged Indians to leave their reservations under its Relocation
Program. BIA offered grants to those Indians who moved to urban areas because there was a
high unemployment rate on the reservations. 
Maine was the last state to allow the Indians to vote, although they did not receive full
franchise to vote until 1967, they did have the right to vote in 1954. The 50's and 60's
brought hard times for the Passamaquoddy; unemployment, dependence on state aid, poor
living conditions and overcrowding on the reservations. These misfortunes only made the
Passamaquoddies families stronger. When the television came to the reservations, the
Passamaquoddy were able to see the civil rights activity in the South. This caused a
number of questions among the tribe regarding what their own rights were . Also in the
1960's the tribe found out that they were entitled to federal money because its people
were so poor. The tribe received federal aid from then on (Brook 4).
A group of men and woman of the Passamaqouddy tribe had a sit-in at the site of a
non-Indian who was building a cabin on Passamaquoddy land in 1964. The Passamaquoddy were
arrested and Don Gellen, the attorney representing them, prepared to file suit by the
Passamauoddy against the state of Maine for payment of land taken without compensation in
violation of the1794 treat. The Pasaamaquoddy were required to file against the state of
Massachusetts instead of Maine because of certain procedural laws. Three days after the
filing, Gellen was arrested for possession of marijuana and the case did not make it to
court (Brooks 5).
Later in the 1960's, the Georgia Pacific limber company began cutting timber form
Passamaquoddy land with state approval, but without tribal consent. The Passamaquoddy
Tribe appealed to the company and to its crews, but they were not successful. Some of the
Passamaquoddy dressed up in traditional war attire and staged an attack on the crews. The
cutting crew ran away in fear, leaving thousands of dollars in cutting equipment behind.
The Tribe confiscated the equipment and Georgia Pacific was forced into negotiations. The
result of this surprising confrontation was a resurgence of tribal self-respect and
pride. 
Congress passed the Indian Civil Right Act in 1968. This act gave Indians the same rights
that non-Indian Americans had under the Bill of Rights. In 1970, President Nixon issued a
statement that allowed tribes to manage their own affairs with the greatest degree of
self government possible. The Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of
1975 allowed tribes to administer federal Indian programs themselves.
The state of Maine cut off aid for the Passamaquoddy Tribe in 1969. The Passamaquoddy
retaliated by blocking off Route One through Indian Township and charging fees for cars
and trucks to pass by. The blockade ended when state aid was restored to the
Passamaquoddy. By the 1970's, only a few hundred of the Passamaquoddy's 2,300 member
tribe remained on the Pleasant Point reservation, a 400 acre peninsula on the Bay of
Fundy. A few hundred more inhabited the tribe's other reservation, Indian Township
(Waldman 1).
After Gellers' representation of the tribe ended, the tribe hired attorney Tom Turner,
who was fresh out of law school. Turner believed that the 1794 treaty was null and void.
He wanted to base the tribe's claim on the 1790 Trade and Intercourse Act of Congress.
This stipulated that no sale of Indian land was valid without authority of the federal
government. In 1975, Justice Grignours decided the matter in Federal District Court. He
said the Passamaquoddy were entitled to protection under the Trade and Intercourse Act
and the federal government would have to sue the state of Maine for taking Passamaquoddy
land. This caused quite an uproar. Maine politicians publicly fostered a hostile
anti-Indian sentiment. The state of Maine claimed that it had jurisdiction over Maine
Indians, and they were not entitled to any federal Indian benefits. The Carter
administration entered the scene as mediator (Baussenron 39). 
A settlement was reached in 1980, which stipulated that the Passamaquoddy Tribe's claims
of original Indian title to 12.5 million acres of land in Maine be extinguished in return
for $81.5 million for Maine Indians. The Passamaquoddy Tribe received $26.8 to buy
150,000 acres of land in Maine and $13.5 million to be held in trust by the federal
government with its interest distributed to each member. In addition, the Passamaquoddy
Indians would be eligible for all federal Indian benefits, and the tribe had the right to
govern itself. 
The Maine tribes built into the settlement the right to buy 300,000 acres of timberland
and crafted a diversified investment strategy. Their goal was to use the land-claims
money to solve unemployment, create more wealth, and raise their status in the community,
said Thomas N. Tureen. In 1982 the Passamaquoddy bought one of the state's largest
blueberry farms and two radio stations, and in 1983 the Dragon Cement Plant, which at the
time was losing money. Under the tribe's ownership it not only became profitable but also
originated a patented pollution-control system that could help resolve the acid-rain
crisis (Waldman 1).
The tribe sold the cement plant five years later for more than triple the purchase price.
This gave the tribe almost $30 million in cash and $23 million to be paid off in
installments over 20 years. The tribe used some of the money for social welfare programs,
built a Community Center at Indian Township and distributed the rest to individual tribe
members. Each Passamaquoddy received about $2,000 a year over about five years until the
entire lump sum profit was gone. The Passamaquoddy kept ownership of the scrubber
technology, which uses waste products to convert acidic emissions into salable
by-products and could have become the tribe's next big money-maker. The Department of
Energy and the Spanish buyers of the plant have since agreed to fund the construction of
a $9.6 million prototype scrubber at the Maine plant (Cohen 1). Of the Passamaquoddy's
other investment, the radio station was sold at a loss, and only Northeastern Blueberry
and the trunk-liner factory remain in tribal hands (Waldman 2).
The Passamaquoddy Indians were the first tribe to go shopping for investments, and this
made them a symbol for other Indian tribes. Dozens of the nation's 500 federally
reorganized Indian tribes have, in recent years sharpened their business skills and begun
to aggressively persue the kinds of deals and joint ventures with corporations, new
factories to be built on reservations, and control the mining and drilling on their
lands. The Mississippi Choctaws' five auto-parts factories and one greeting-card
operation not only have raised tribal employment to more than 80 percent, it has also
made the tribe one of the state's fifteen largest employers of workers. Other tribes,
such as the Salt-River Pima Maricopa, of Arizona, New Mexico's Jicarilla, Apache, and the
Devils Lake Sioux, of North Dakota, have likewise built well-managed tribal enterprises
(Coben 2). 
Through a combination of bad advice, bad judgement and bad luck, the Passamaquoddy and
the Penobscot investment never made enough money to lift the tribes out of poverty and
create a large numbers of jobs. Today on the Passamaquoddy reservation, the most vivid
legacy of the 1980 victory is dubbed Land Claim Day, an event each December when the
2,500 tribe members line up in alphabetical order to pick up a check for about $200,
their annual dividend from the tribe's investments.
Some things have improved at Pleasant Point since the mid-1970s, when many of the
remaining Passamaquoddy lived in wood shacks with bare floors and outhouses in the back.
The reservation's streets today are lined with government built ranch houses and capes.
Brick faced or cedar, they are crammed onto the land helter-skelter, some with a view of
the ocean, others with decks overlooking the sewage treatment plant.
Inside they are warm and clean, with all the appliances of any modern suburban household.
Outside things are not as tidy. Built by the low bidder, these homes have no garages to
hide the firewood, tricycles and junked cars that, left on front lawns, can make a
neighborhood look cluttered. In the middle of the day, adults walk along the roads and
stop for sundaes or cigarettes at the tribe's Wabanaki Mall on Route 1. This is a Texaco
mini-mart partitioned to make room for a convenience store, a luncheonette and a video
rental business. 
At Pleasant Point, half of the 386 working age adults are unemployed, said Rick Doyle,
the tribe's director of planning. Some can't find jobs in these remote, economically
depressed regions of the state. Others have persistent alcohol and drug problems and
simply can't hold on to their jobs (Ballen 2). 
In 1993, the Passamaquoddy asked the Maine Legislature for permission to build a casino
in the town of Calacis, a depressed Canadian border city almost exactly halfway between
the reservation at Pleasant Point and Indian Township. Unlike the Pequot or the Mohegan
Indian tribes in Connecticut, the Passamaquoddy tribe cannot build casinos, without
legislative approval because they signed away their rights under future federal laws as
part of their land claims settlements. The federal law that allowed Indian gambling was
passed by Congress eight years after the Maine land claims case. In mid April of 1994.
The Passamaquoddy's casino plan was rejected by the Maine Legislature.
Due to the remoteness of the Passamaquody reservation in Washington County, Maine, the
tribe was able to escape many destructive federal Indian policies. In all reality,
though, the tribe's biggest threat has not traditionally been the federal government, but
rather the state of Maine's hostile anti-Indian administration. 
Bibliography
Source Cited
Ballen, Kate Maine Indians as B-school study Time 22 April, 1991; p16.
Brooks, Lauren Native American Political Issues U.S. Federal Indian policy: 
Passamaquoddy Resistance. 17 Feb. 1999.
Bausseron, Sylvie Passamaqouddy Indians and their Survival as a Distinct Community,
Diss,. Universite de Metz, 1991. 
Chutchian, Kenneth Z. Bingo hall foes fearful of full-scale casino. The Boston
Globe 12 Oct. 1997: B13.
Hawkins, Steve L. Land war: Indian vs. Indian U.S. News & World Report 7 July, 
1986; p22.
Passamaquoddy Encyclopedia Britannica Online 23 Feb. 1999.
Stuart, Paul. Nations Within A Nation; Historical Statistics of American Indians. 
Greenwood Press Inc., 1987.
Walsh, Barbara. The Team of Journalists Who Produced the Deadliest Drug. 
Portland Press Herald 26 Oct. 1997: 14A.
Waldman, Hilary. Maine Parable. The Hartford Courant 27 May 1994: A1.