Yes on Question 3 is a vote for tribal sovereignty

Recent news has been abundant with stories about Native American tribes in Maine. Invariably, regardless of the issue, the media tell us that the state opposes almost anything that tribes want. No matter what they want, the state is usually against it.

While this is disturbing enough it is even more disturbing that the media seldom speak about what is really at stake in all these issues, which is tribal sovereignty. That’s why in 2001 we formed the Maine Coalition for Tribal Sovereignty, a group of concerned citizens from diverse backgrounds supporting the sovereignty of Indian peoples.

We are primarily nontribal individuals who have organized to encourage and promote the establishment of government-to-government relationships between the state and indigenous tribes in Maine. We advocate for the right of a tribe to pursue its goals as a governmental entity but we are careful to take no stand on tribal domestic or internal affairs. In three short years, the coalition has grown to more than 17,000 members statewide.

We are primarily an educational group that seeks to help all Maine citizens understand that sovereignty is nonthreatening, and that the protection of Native American sovereign rights is a public obligation. We believe tribal sovereignty is important to Maine because centuries ago treaties were signed by the federal government to ensure that Indian people could live on reservations where they would be protected from intruders and where they could exercise self-determination.

In the truest sense, sovereignty means the supreme or absolute power of a people to govern themselves without interference from another sovereign. In 1823, in writing the decision for the landmark Supreme Court case Worchester v. Georgia, Chief Justice Marshall wrote: “Indian nations are distinct political communities, having territorial boundaries, within which their authority is exclusive, and having a right to all lands within those boundaries, which is not only acknowledged but guaranteed by the United States…”

Over time the decision of Justice Marshall has been challenged repeatedly in Maine courts. Nonetheless, by 1976 it had been proved in court that the Penobscot Nation and the Passamaquoddy Tribe were federally recognized sovereign nations.

Then in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter was enjoying his last days as president, he agreed not to veto a proposed Indian Land Claims agreement. Time was running out so to get a foot in the door before Ronald Reagan took office a less-than-finished treaty was hastily signed by all parties. Intentionally, gray areas were written into the treaty so that once it was in effect it could be reviewed and revised as both parties saw fit. In other words, the Indians were led to believe that this was a “living document.”

Sovereignty cannot be given to a nation or taken away from a nation by anyone or by any other nation. The sovereignty of Indian tribes has existed as long as the tribes themselves. Again, to quote Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall: “Indian tribes are neither states, nor part of the federal government nor subdivisions of either. Rather, they are sovereign political entities possessed of sovereign authority not derived from the United States, which they predate. Indian tribes are qualified to exercise powers of self-government by reason of their original tribal sovereignty.”

To further muddy the water, Penobscot and Passamaquoddy sovereignty has been recently threatened at the expense of our local rivers. When mills pollute rivers with contaminants they pollute the tribes, and they pollute all of us. The tribes want paper mills to stop dumping dioxin and other contaminants upstream of their reservations so tribal members can eat fish, muskrat, turtle and fiddleheads. The plants and animals of the river offer sustenance to these people. Pollution from mills has changed all that.

Indians argue that cleaner water is in everyone’s best interest. They do not argue against mills or papermaking. Many Indians are employed at paper mills and do not want to lose their jobs. They only argue for a cleaner manufacturing process. It may be more expensive to run less environmentally harmful mills, but jobs don’t need to be lost.

July 19 marked the 227th anniversary of the signing of the Watertown Treaty at Watertown, Mass. – a treaty between the continental Congress and delegates from the Indian Nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy (from which all tribes in Maine have descended).

In 1776 the Indians agreed to furnish a regimen of 600 fighters to enter into service in Boston to await orders from Gen. George Washington. The Watertown Treaty states that Indians “shall be treated as friends and brothers” and that “the Massachusetts Bay Colony (of which Maine was a part) shall and will furnish proper articles for the purpose of supplying said tribes the necessities and convenience of life.”

Maine tribes valiantly gave to the colonies in what Maine tribes are attempting to do now, to be free and independent and to establish commerce for themselves. The First Nation people who helped the 13 colonies in their struggle for sovereignty and who continue to fight for America are still the poorest of the poor. Across the country, they suffer from racism and continue to be looked upon as wards of state and/or of the federal government. Maine tribes never relinquished their sovereignty in 1980.

In terms of Question 3, the coalition supports the right of Native Americans in Maine to establish commerce for themselves. We will be voting yes because a yes vote is a vote for the sovereignty that these people earned long before our ancestors every came to these shores.

Dr. John C. Frachella is the chairman for the Maine Coalition for Tribal Sovereignty.