Maliseet exhibit at museum

AUGUSTA – A 90-year-old recording of the music of Maliseet Indians provides the backdrop for a traveling exhibit from Canada that is now on display at the Maine State Museum.

The exhibit documents, in more than 100 photographs and accompanying text, the lives of the Maliseet Indians in Maine, New Brunswick and Quebec. The photos range from the 1860s to the 1950s.

Most of the 5,500 or so Maliseets live in New Brunswick, but smaller groups reside in Quebec and Maine, including the 743-member Houlton Band of Maliseets. The Maliseets, who sometimes call themselves Wolastoqiyik, are concentrated primarily in the St. John River valley, along both sides of the border.

“This is their history,” said Deanna Bonner-Ganter, a curator at the state museum who is in charge of the visiting exhibit. “It represents their closeness to the river and to the land.”

Brenda Commander, chief of the Houlton Band of Maliseets, said the exhibit called “Wolastoqiyik – Portrait of a People, Portrait d’une nation” was a big hit with her tribe when it was displayed in Houlton a few months ago.

The Houlton stop was especially valuable to tribal children because it helped teach them “all that their ancestors have been through,” while giving them a stronger appreciation of their roots, she said.

Now, Commander said, having the exhibit on display at the Maine State Museum will help educate non-Indians about one of Maine’s native tribes.

“I was very impressed with it,” Commander said. “I think, for me, it helps preserve something that could have been lost.”

Sponsored by the governments of Canada, New Brunswick and the Maliseets themselves, the exhibit underscores the Maliseets’ ties to the River Wolastoq, more commonly known as the St. John.

Thanks to the official bilingualism of Canada’s federal government and of the provincial government of New Brunswick, all of the explanatory material is written in both English and French.

Although the exhibit focuses in large part on the Maliseets of Canada, the Maine State Museum has added its own touch with four framed portraits, representing prominent people from the Maliseet, Micmac, Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes of Maine.

The four are the vanguard of a 16-piece collection of photos of Maine Indians that will be displayed at the State House once ongoing renovations have been completed there, according to Bonner-Ganter.

The photographs will be hung at the State House under a 1999 law ordering the museum to display “portraits of outstanding Indians” in the Capitol. Eventually, some of the photographs may be replaced by oil paintings on canvas.