Out of the Woods: The Making of the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act

Abstract

“Maine appears out of the woods,” the editor of the Lewiston Evening Journal opined, after President Jimmy Carter signed the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act in 1980.1 That sigh of relief was heartfelt. During the 1970s, two Native American tribes, the Passamaquoddies and Penobscots, had sparked a long, statewide nightmare when they asserted claim to more than twelve million acres of land in the Pine Tree State. To the Indians, their claim and the ensuing settlement represented long-delayed justice. For privateproperty owners, however, the controversy unleashed great anxiety about the future of Maine’s economy. To leaders in the Maine statehouse, Congress, and the White House, the matter was a conundrum pitting the demands of an aggrieved racial minority against the ire of an aroused white majority. When Congress, in 1980, granted the Passamaquoddies and Penobscots federal recognition and $81.5 million in cash, from which they could purchase up to three hundred thousand acres of land, all sides breathed easier. The land claims of these tribes form a compelling, albeit overlooked (by historians), story that illustrates three larger themes.2 The first involves the Native American rights movement, whose leadership and tactics proved quite diverse. Along with elected leaders located on federal reservations and urban-based “Red Power” radicals—the founders of the American Indian Movement (AIM)—it included a new generation of university-educated activists who worked with tribal officials to reclaim Indian land, fishing, and water rights through lawsuits.3 One columnist noted that “the trend among most of the Western tribes seems to be toward organizing for court action and away from violent protest.”4 It was a similar story in the East, where Indians, lacking both federal recognition and extensive reservations, had little to lose by suing in court.5