Politics, when achieved successfully, resembles a dance the place disparate companions create concord – or not less than one thing extra tuneful than what got here earlier than.
By that commonplace, a few of Gov. Janet Mills’s Democratic colleagues are more proficient on the delicate steps required to match the rising aspirations of Maine’s Indian tribes.
Admittedly, it’s not simple. Lengthy after the unique dispossession by means of relentless European growth, all now agree tribes are indirectly “sovereign” – however what does that imply?
Underneath federal legislation and treaties, tribes deal instantly with the federal authorities a lot as states do – besides in Maine.
Right here, the state’s 1980 Land Claims Settlement Act successfully reduces tribes to municipalities. One can argue, as all governors have since then, that tribes gave up rights in trade for $82 million to accumulate land.
However after 4 a long time it seems like – and is – an more and more unhealthy discount. Maine tribes proceed to fall farther behind tribes elsewhere, denied federal advantages they’d in any other case obtain.
Through the triumphant return to the Capitol final week of the State of the Tribes handle, Congressman Jared Golden, who flew again from Washington, was conspicuous on the podium. Gov. Mills, who works within the constructing, didn’t attend due to a “scheduling battle.”
There was the same contretemps final month when the Judiciary Committee heard a invoice from Home Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, LD 78, to revive to the printed state Structure an authentic part detailing the state’s tribal treaty obligations, inherited from Massachusetts upon statehood.
In 1876, for causes that stay obscure, voters authorised an modification that didn’t repeal the part however stopped printing it. Talbot Ross’s proposed modification would print it once more.
Everybody agrees this could haven’t any sensible impact; federal and state obligations had been subsumed within the 1980 settlement acts. The invoice is endorsed by each Lawyer Basic Aaron Frey and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, whose workplace proposes recodifications.
It’s opposed by the Governor’s workplace, nevertheless. Authorized Counsel Gerald Reid claims printing the part would “create new confusion” as a result of a naïve reader would possibly “wrongly imagine” that this “revitalizes 18th and nineteenth century treaty obligations.”
This appears Orwellian: The part remains to be a part of the Structure, however really printing it could “confuse” readers as a result of they’d leap to unwarranted conclusions. This might not be book-banning, however it’s shut.
As governor, Mills has supported the tribes, from the symbolic – renaming Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day – to the economically substantive – granting unique rights to on-line gaming proceeds.
But she takes positions that appear petty – the printed Structure invoice – or miss alternatives for reconciliation: skipping the State of the Tribes.
Different alternatives stay. One is perhaps an obvious impasse on the Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee over a invoice, LD 294, sponsored by Rep. Ben Collings (D-Portland) that might add a tribal member to the Baxter State Park Authority.
Within the well-known story, Gov. Percival Baxter gave Mt. Katahdin and 200,000 acres surrounding it to the state over a number of a long time after discovering no curiosity from the Legislature in buying it. He additionally endowed the park and included extremely particular deeds and covenants.
From the start, the three-member authority has been made up of the Commissioner of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, the Maine Forest Service director, and the Lawyer Basic. Including a tribal member, in keeping with present AG Aaron Frey, would violate the deeds of belief and presumably trigger the land to revert to Baxter’s heirs.
It’s severe enterprise. When the Division of Conservation was fashioned, incorporating the Forest Service, and the brand new commissioner was proposed as a substitute, it was nonetheless firmly rejected.
Mills served for eight years on the park authority, and like most who do developed a wholesome appreciation each for the park’s mission and its distinctive place in Maine’s historical past.
She additionally understands the Penobscot Tribe’s distinctive affinity for Katahdin, extending again to historical instances and ahead to former Chief Barry Dana, who initiated the Katahdin 100 – a “religious run” from the river to the mountain – within the fateful 12 months of 1980, and whose daughter Maulian is now tribal ambassador.
Even other than the authority, tribal members have little involvement within the park’s administration and advisory committees, and their participation is overdue. One notes that two of the three park authority members are Govt Department workers.
It might be greater than a gesture if Mills, who didn’t provide testimony on LD 294, had been to convene a working group exploring how the state and tribes may collaborate in celebrating and increasing Maine’s wilderness character, so magnificently exemplified by what Percival Baxter known as “the mountain of the folks of Maine.” All of the folks.
That might be a dance value watching.
Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, commentator and reporter since 1984, is the creator of three books, and is now researching the life and profession of a U.S. Chief Justice. He welcomes remark at [email protected]
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