Penobscot

 ( Algonquian Peoples ) 

In 2005, Penobscot Nation began a relationship with Venezuela's government led by Hugo Chavez. It accepted aid in the form of heating oil. Tribal chief Kirk Francis traveled to New York City to meet with Chavez.

People on the present-day Maine coast practiced some agriculture, but not to the same extent as that of Indigenous peoples in southern New England, where the climate was more temperate. Food was potentially scarce only toward the end of the winter, in February and March. For the rest of the year, the Penobscot and other Wabanaki likely had little difficulty surviving because the land and ocean waters offered much bounty, and the number of people was sustainable. The bands moved seasonally, following the patterns of game and fish.

The Europeans carried endemic infectious diseases of Eurasia to the Americas, and the Penobscot had no acquired immunity. Their fatality rates from the introduction of measles, smallpox and other infectious diseases was high. The population also declined due to further encroachment by settlers who cut off access to the Penobscot's main food source of running fish through the process of damming the Penobscot River, the loss of big game through the process of clear cutting of forests for the logging industry and through massacres carried out by settlers. This catastrophic population depletion may have contributed to Christian conversion (among other factors); the people could see that the European priests did not suffer from the pandemics. The latter said that the Penobscot had died because they did not believe in Jesus Christ.

At the beginning of the 17th century, Europeans began to live year-round in Wabanaki territory. At this time, there were probably about 10,000 Penobscot (a number which fell to below 500 by the early 19th century). "History", Penobscot Nation. As contact became more permanent, after about 1675, conflicts arose through differences in cultures, conceptions of property, and competition for resources. Along the Atlantic Coast in present-day Canada, most settlers were French; in New England they were generally English speaking.

The Penobscot sided with the French during the French and Indian War in the mid-18th century (the North American front of the Seven Years' War) after British colonists demanded the Penobscot join their side or be considered hostile. In 1755, governor of Massachusetts Spencer Phips placed a Scalping bounty on Penobscot. Phips Bounty Proclamation With a smaller population and greater acceptance of intermarriage, the French posed a lesser threat to the Penobscots' land and way of life.

After the French defeat in the Battle of Quebec in 1759, the Penobscot were left in a weakened position as they had lost their main European ally. During the American Revolution, the Penobscot sided with the Patriots and played an important role in the conflicts which occurred around the border between British Canada and the United States. Despite this the new American government did not seem to recognize their contributions. Anglo-American settlers continued to encroach on Penobscot lands.

In the following centuries, the Penobscot attempted to make treaties in order to hold on to some form of land, but, because they had no power of enforcement in Massachusetts or Maine, Americans kept encroaching on their lands. From about 1800 onward, the Penobscot lived on reservations, specifically, Indian Island, which is an island in the Penobscot River near Old Town, Maine. The Maine state government appointed a Indian agent to oversee the tribe. The government believed that they were helping the Penobscot, as stated in 1824 by the highest court in Maine that "...imbecility on their parts, and the dictates of humanity on ours, have necessarily prescribed to them their subjection to our paternal control." This sentiment of "imbecility" set up a power dynamic in which the government treated the Penobscot as wards of the state and decided how their affairs would be managed. The government treated as charitable payments those Penobscot funds derived from land treaties and trusts, which the state had control over and used as it saw fit.

In the 1970s, at a time of increasing assertions of sovereignty by Native Americans, the Penobscot Nation sued the state of Maine for land claims, calling for some sort of compensation in the form of land, money, and autonomy for the state's violation of the Nonintercourse Act in the 19th century. The disputed land accounted for 60% of all of the land in Maine, and 35,000 people (the vast majority of whom were not tribal members) lived in the disputed territory.

The Penobscot and the state reached a settlement, Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act (MICSA), in 1980, resulting in an $81.5-million-dollar settlement that the Penobscot could use to acquire more tribal land. The terms of the settlement provided for such acquisition, after which the federal government would hold some of this land in trust for the tribe, as is done for reservation land. The tribe could also purchase other lands in the regular manner. The act established the Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission, whose function was to oversee the effectiveness of the Act and to intervene in certain areas such as fishing rights, etc. in order to settle disputes between the state and the Penobscot or Passamaquoddy.

Because it is a federally recognized sovereign nation with direct relations with the federal government, the Penobscot have disagreed with state assertions that it has the power to regulate hunting and fishing by tribal members. The Nation filed suit against the state in August 2012, contending in Penobscot Nation v. State of Maine, that the 1980 MICSA settlement gave the Nation jurisdiction and regulatory authority over hunting and fishing in the "Main Stem" of the Penobscot River as well as on its reservation. Gale Courey Toensing, "Congress Members Support 'Penobscot v. Maine' in Unprecedented Court Filing.", Indian Country Today, 5 May 2015, accessed 5 May 2015

At the request of the Nation, the US Department of Justice has joined the suit on behalf of the tribe. In addition, in an unprecedented step, five members of the Congressional Native American Caucus representing other jurisdictions filed an Amicus curiae brief in support of the Penobscot in this case. In addition to its reservation, the Nation owns islands in the river extending upriver; it also acquired hundreds of thousands of acres of land elsewhere in the state, as a result of the 1980 settlement of its land claim. Some analysts predict that this case will be as significant to Indian law and sovereignty as the fishing rights cases of Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s, which resulted in the 1974 Boldt decision affirming their rights to fishing and hunting in their former territories. The five members of the Congressional Native American Caucus who filed are Betty McCollum (D-MN), co-chair of the Congressional Native American Caucus with Tom Cole (R-OK) (Chickasaw); Raúl Grijalva, (D-AZ), vice chair of the Congressional Native American Caucus; Ron Kind (D-WI), vice chair of the Congressional Native American Caucus; and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), vice chair of the Congressional Native American Caucus.