I want to thank Maine Millennial columnist Victoria Hugo-Vidal for making us aware of the letter signed by our representatives, Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden, regarding travel nurses and the staffing agencies that employ them (“Don’t blame nurses’ pay for ills of health care,” Feb. 20, Page D1). I wish they could shadow a nurse […]

I enjoy serious discussion and once found it in political debate, serious consideration of issues about which there was substantive disagreement.  I remember, as a kid, listening to an exchange between Sen. Ed Muskie and my grandfather, who was the midcoast representative in the Maine Legislature.  Muskie had come out to the island (Vinalhaven) for […]

We ask that God be merciful to us when we fall short, as I was reminded during Ash Wednesday’s service. That caused me to reflect that it is also appropriate to ask for God’s mercy when one courageously joins the good fight. It is fair to pray that God be merciful and not allow the […]

I support the passage of L.D. 1626 to restore the Wabanaki tribes’ inherent rights to self-governance. When the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act was passed in 1980, I was beginning my law practice, focused on civil rights. Before passage, I read newspaper articles and had discussions with friends and colleagues about a potential settlement between […]

As a parent with children in elementary and middle school in the Portland school district, I was dismayed to read about the Portland school board’s decision to mask its students indefinitely (“Portland schools not ready to lift mask mandate despite change in guidelines,” March 3). This decision, combined with a failure to provide criteria that […]

Now is the moment for the Native tribes of Maine. Now is the moment for members of the legislative and executive branches of Maine state government. Do they want to be remembered as leaders, who finally granted full sovereignty to our Native peoples? Or do they want their names added to the list of those […]

When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I heard about the Maine Indian land claims suit and naively assumed things would work out well for the Indians. Years later (after I’d moved away and then come back again), I still had not learned that Maine’s Native American communities were missing out on essential federal […]