Welcome to the MITSC library. We are building a comprehensive collection of documents relating to Tribal-State relations in the state of Maine.
Browse by category, topic, or by searching for specific documents below. Having trouble finding something? Please be in touch.
MITSC has recently completed and published a new special report, Sea Run, which addresses the impact of Maine policies and activity on the quality and quantity of traditional tribal fish stocks and sustenance lifeways practices, spanning from the time of first contact between Europeans and the Wabanaki Nations to the present day. This report provides a broad overview of actions and inactions by the State of Maine, whether those actions/inactions were based on express policy, informal policy, or on decisions simply not to have any policy at all. The report includes specific recommendations for implementation that are intended to promote discussion and cooperative action.
Twenty-one years after the Maine Legislature passed a groundbreaking law requiring all schools to teach Maine K-12 students about Wabanaki territories, economic systems, cultural systems, governments and political systems, as well as the Wabanaki tribes’ relationships with local, state, national and international governments, four organizations are releasing a report analyzing the law’s implementation thus far and suggesting ways to improve compliance at the state and local level.
Brief History and Current Status of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.
This is the final report (in PDF format) from the Task Force on Changes to the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Implementing Act.
Research Report on the 1876 Removal of Article X (10), Section 5 from Printed Copies of the Maine Constitution (2021). For Maine to become a state, Massachusetts first had to pass legislation called the Articles of Separation. That legislation divided and allocated public property and certain obligations as between Maine and Massachusetts once they became separate states. As part of that division, Maine assumed all the “duties and obligations” Massachusetts had as regards the “Indians within said District of Maine.” The Articles also required that its terms and conditions “be incorporated into, and become and be a part of any Constitution, provisional or other, under which the Government of the said proposed State, shall, at any time hereafter, be administered; subject however, to be modified, or annulled by the agreement of the Legislature of both the said States; but by no other power or body whatsoever." The Articles of Separation were included in the Maine Constitution as Section 5 of Article X. This was one of the Sections redacted from printed copies in 1876. Sections 1 and 2 of Article X were also redacted in 1876. They covered when the first Maine legislature would meet, when initial elections would be held, how Senate and House seats would be allocated as between the counties and towns, and what the initial terms of Maine’s elected and appointed officers would be.
