Chapters
-
PublishedJuly 18, 2014
With no constitution, ‘a community … without rules’
1986 to 1993 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer St. Ann Church, in the village of Peter Dana Point in Indian Township, stands under a gray sky recently. Repeated attempts to enact a tribal constitution – a document that would have provided a legal foundation for the Passamaquoddy […]
-
PublishedJuly 17, 2014
For some in tribe, no right to vote, nowhere to turn
September 1986 to June 1987 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer The Pleasant Point reservation is captured in the aperture of a pinhole camera. A legal challenge resulted after an unusual Passamaquoddy caucus initiative in 1986 left many members of the tribe stripped of their right to vote […]
-
PublishedJuly 16, 2014
Land claims settlement bears a powerful curse
1983 to 1986 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer A Passamaquoddy elder and a member of the joint tribal council sifts through stacks of petitions at Pleasant Point. in an unexpected development, an exception clause in the land claims settlement led to some uncertainty about which laws should […]
-
PublishedJuly 15, 2014
The Indians’ trusted adviser capitalizes on his role
1983 to 1990 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer The Passamaquoddy Wild Blueberry Co. in Columbia Falls on Route 1 in Down East Maine was among the investments made by tribe in the years after the land claims settlement of 1980. Attorney Tom Tureen’s firms brokered a series […]
-
PublishedJuly 14, 2014
Big question looms: ‘Where would we go from here?’
1980 to 1982 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer This Indian heirloom, depicting a man at “the end of the trail,” was given to Victoria Boston, a Passamaquoddy, after her father died in 2006. The populations on the tribe’s two reservations grew sharply in the wake of the […]
-
PublishedJuly 13, 2014
Bombshells, compromises greet an unfolding crisis
1976 to 1980 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer A Passamaquoddy Indian pauses in contemplation at the edge of Long Lake on Peter Dana Point in Indian Township recently. Stakes were high for Maine’s tribes and the state alike in the developments that preceded the historic Indian land […]
-
PublishedJuly 12, 2014
Tribe resists injustices, in and out of court settings
1968 to 1976 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer Just off Route 1 in Indian Township, this gravel pile, now a grass-covered mound, is where a group of Passamaquoddy sat in protest in 1964 to stop a white man from building a road on reservation land. The arrests […]
-
PublishedJuly 11, 2014
Convict goes, files stay, and land claims case advances
February 1971 to May 1976 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer An “open” flag flies above a storefront in Eastport, not far from where the Passamaquoddy’s attorney Don Gellers had his office in the early 1960s, before his former legal intern, Tom Tureen, took over as the tribe’s […]
-
PublishedJuly 10, 2014
Tribe’s attorney tries to appeal, but hurdles prove too high
March 1969 to May 1971 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer A pinhole camera captures vegetation growing from a basketball court at the Passamaquoddy’s Pleasant Point reservation in Washington County. Forty years ago, the tribe’s attorney, Don Gellers, faced an uphill fight as he tried to appeal his […]
-
PublishedJuly 9, 2014
Evidence emerges, lending credence to conspiracy
1969 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer A fallen leaf, captured by a pinhole camera, appears almost animal-like on a road through Peter Dana Point in Indian Township. In the late 1960s, the tribe’s attorney, Don Gellers, was appealing his conviction on the drug charge that had gotten […]