The Passamaquoddy's
purchase of Pine Island for $355,000 is the latest in a series of
successful 'land back' campaigns for indigenous people in the US
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Pine Island. Photograph:
Courtesy the writer
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The advert painted an idyllic picture of White's Island.
For $449,000 you could buy 143 acres of forests with sweeping views
of the rugged shoreline of Big Lake in Maine, on the east coast
of the United States. "[It's] a unique property
steeped in
history
with only two owners in the last 95 years," wrote
the real estate agent from privateislandsonline.com.
In fact, Kuwesuwi Monihq, or Pine Island, is its original name,
and it technically has just one true "caretaker"; the Passamaquoddy:
a small tribe of 3,700 Native
Americans who had lived there for at least 10,000 years.
It's a spiritually important place for the tribe, filled with graves
from devastating smallpox, cholera and measles outbreaks caused
by white settlers.
In 1794 it was officially granted to the tribe by Massachusetts
for their
service during the revolutionary war. But after 1820, when Maine
became its own state, colonialists changed its title, voiding the
treaty. In the 1851 census there were 20 Passamaquoddy living there,
in 1861 there were none.
By 2021, they had not only lost all but 130,000 acres of their
original 3m. They hadn't stepped foot on Pine Island in 160 years.
"The land was stolen from us and it's been every chief's goal ever
since to return it," said chief William Nicholas, 51, leader of
the tribe's Indian township reservation for the last 11 years, who
spotted the advert on a shop noticeboard on 4 July last year.
In March, with a grant from conservation charities, the tribe raised
$355,000, and finally bought the island back.
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Chief William Nicholas,
51, leader of the Passamaquoddy's Indian township reservation.
Photograph: The Guardian
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Donald Soctomah, the tribe's historic preservation officer, added:
"Our concept of land ownership is that nobody 'owns' land. Instead,
we have a sacred duty to protect it. This is like finding a lost
relative."
The reclaiming of Pine Island is the latest successful "land back"
attempt by US indigenous groups following the loss of 1.5bn
acres since 1776, resulting in poverty, violence and cultural
apartheid.
In July last year, the formerly landless Esselen tribe purchased
1,200 acres in California's Big Sur for $4.5m, also donated by conservationists,
250 years after being forced into Christian missions.
In 2019, the Wiyot tribe won back the 280-acre Duluwat Island in
California, when the city of Eureka returned it for free, 159 years
after a massacre.
There's also a growing movement by many public and private institutions
to be more transparent, with Harvard University, the Metropolitan
Museum of Art and the Oscars announcing "land acknowledgements".
The Native Land app will even show you what territory your house
is built on.
Whilst critics call land acknowledgments "empty gestures", others
claim it paves the way for legal victories.
Dr Mishuana Goeman, a professor in American Indian Studies at the
University of California Los Angeles and member of New York's Tonawanda
Band of Seneca tribe, said acknowledgements are "a good start" but
that a big catalyst has been the pandemic and murder of George Floyd.
"It's like people suddenly woke up to centuries of atrocities against
indigenous and black communities, and are more open to dialogue,"
she said.
In July last year, amid global marches on racial injustice, protesters
and tribal citizens blocked roads around the tourist destination
of Mount Rushmore, in South Dakota, demanding the government hand
it back after it was taken from the Lakota in 1877, despite a treaty,
because gold was discovered.
In 1980 the supreme court granted the tribe compensation valued
at $1bn in 2011, but they want their home, not cash.
Dr Goeman said it was an example of "land back being about more
than justice for the indigenous and money".
"It's about having healthier relationships with the land for the
good of humanity," she said.
Increasingly, this is why conservation charities with deep pockets
are stepping in.
The Passamaquoddy bid was funded by First Light; a collective of
ecological groups founded in Maine
four years ago to return tribal lands.
"We have a role in the systemic injustice that was inflicted on
indigenous people and therefore a responsibility addressing that,"
said Mark Berry, a forest director for First Light member, The Nature
Conservancy, who donated the bulk of the island's funding, as well
as returning land it owned to tribes in Nebraska, Alaska and Oregon.
Peter Forbes, another First Light member, added: "This is about
keeping our heads down and centering tribal voices. If the land
hadn't been stolen, they wouldn't need to buy it back in the first
place."
For the Passamaquoddy, who lost members to Covid-19, reacquiring
Pine Island during a pandemic is significant.
It was during the "Great
Dying", when 90% died from European diseases between the 1500s-1800s,
that the island came to their rescue.
In an act of self-sacrifice, infected members quarantined on the
neighboring island of Muwinuwi Monihk, that was renamed "Gordon's
Island" by the colonialists who took it, but which was returned
by a paper company in 2003.
Corey Hinton, a young Passamaquoddy lawyer who has just welcomed
a new baby, told the Guardian: "It made me realise that my people
have lived and died on that island since time began. When the pandemic
is over, we will return to dance with our ancestors again."
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