Penobscots oust Dana, elect new tribal chief

INDIAN ISLAND – The Penobscot Indian Nation will have a new leader as of Oct. 1.

The Penobscots voted not to re-elect Chief Barry Dana to a third term during Saturday’s election. The tribe holds elections every two years and after serving as chief for four years, Dana will step aside and James Sappier will take his place. Vice Chief Mike Bear was re-elected to his post.

“I was disappointed,” Dana said Monday of the election results. The chief lost by a slim margin – 276 to 245.

Sappier said Monday he is ready and eager to come back to the island to work for the tribe.

“What is good for the family is good for the tribe,” he said.

A former tribal governor involved with American Indian affairs since 1969, Sappier has been working for more than nine years in Boston as the Indian program manager for the Environmental Protection Agency. Sappier worked away from home during the week, but returned to the island on the weekends, he said.

His first big project will be to take “inventory of the human capital” on the island to define the demographics of the tribe based on occupations.

Sappier said he then plans to learn what skills tribal members already possess and to use those skills as the foundation for economic development projects.

“The Penobscots are capable of doing more than two or three things at once,” he said. “I really have extraordinary faith in our tribal members.”

In addition to a new chief, the Penobscots elected five new tribal council members. Of the six council members, Ronald Bear was the only member to be re-elected.

The new council members are Kirk Francis, Phillip Attean, Yvonne “Cookie” Francis, Martin Neptune and Chris “Charlie Brown” Francis.

With so many changes in leadership, Dana said, he is hopeful that the programs and projects he has worked to create during his time in office will carry on.

“We’ve got so many projects that are well on their own momentum,” the outgoing chief said. “My hope is that those projects will be realized and come to fruition on their own energy.”

“Chief Dana has been an eloquent spokesman for the tribe,” Lee Umphrey, spokesman for Gov. John Baldacci, said Monday. “His prominent role will probably continue.”

Umphrey said the governor looks forward to working closely with Sappier in the future as the new chief works to continue programs conceived by Dana, while beginning some new projects of his own.

The tribe has taken on some large and viable ventures for the island over the last few years under Dana’s leadership to create revenue for the island.

“If some of them were just ideas at this point, then ideas get lost in transition, and I’m hoping that does not happen,” Dana said. “I would ask anyone reading [this] article who was looking at partnering with the tribe to continue that thought.”

The chief also has some plans of his own.

“My plans now are to cut firewood and heat my house and keep an open mind to whatever opportunities knock on my door,” Dana said.

One of the opportunities the chief said he hopes to make for himself is the creation of a nonprofit cultural preservation entity that will raise money for cultural projects.

As for Sappier, he said Monday that he hadn’t even made the decision to run for chief until June after being asked by a few Penobscot elders and other families on the island to consider running for the position.

“Some of projects Chief Dana has are old and seem to have been stumbling along until only recently,” Sappier said Monday, noting that it was only in the last couple of months that he noticed anything moving forward.

“Some things have taken a back seat for a few months,” Sappier said. “They’ve got to move. They can’t just sit along the sidelines or they die.”

The newly elected chief noted that his biggest challenge will be asserting the importance of the Penobscot Nation to state officials.

“You can’t do the history of this state without including Penobscot Nation,” Sappier said. “We’ve always been here.”