Global Courant
Maine lawmakers support a proposal to include language about the state’s obligations to Native American tribes in future printings of the state’s constitution.
The Maine legislature voted Wednesday to advance the proposal, which would restore the language that requires Maine to honor treaties the state inherited when it broke away from Massachusetts and became its own state more than 200 years ago.
While the treaty language still technically applies, it was removed from printed versions of the constitution later in the 19th century. It is also absent from the official online version of the Constitution.
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Democratic House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross suggested reinstating the language, which she said should not be hidden from the state’s residents. Tribal groups agreed, but Democratic Gov. Janet Mills did not, underlining the ongoing discord between the governor and the tribes.
Both chambers of the legislature will have to vote again and pass the proposal by a two-thirds majority to send it to the state’s voters.
House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross speaks at the State House in Augusta, Maine. The printed version of Maine’s constitution must include language about the state’s obligations to Native American tribes, legislators decided on June 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, files)
“I don’t believe that in this effort anyone is trying to hold anyone accountable for past injustices, but instead we are trying to find ways to move forward together,” Maulian Dana, Penobscot Nation tribal ambassador, testified ahead of the vote. . “This is best achieved when truth is the touchstone of the work.”
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Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey said he supported the change because it would promote transparency in the state constitution.
Mills’ office opposed the change. Gerald Reid, the governor’s chief attorney, testified that the removal of the language was done in 1876 as part of an effort to make the constitution more concise and better organized. He said before the vote that returning the language to printed versions of the constitution would “not solve a real world problem, but instead create new confusion”.
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Mills has spent the last several years discussing the issue of tribal sovereignty with the tribes. A proposal to grant sovereignty was tabled last year when she threatened to veto it. Proponents of more tribal sovereignty are trying again this legislature.
Tribal groups in Maine have long argued that they are at a disadvantage compared to peers across the country because of the Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Act of 1980, which treats reservations as municipalities subject to state law.
