Wabanaki Confederacy

The Wabanaki Confederacy (Wabenaki, Wobanaki - translated roughly as 'People of the First Light' or 'Dawnland') are a native American confederation of five principal Nations: the Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Abenaki and Penobscot.

Members of the Wabanaki Confederacy — the Wabanaki peoples — are located in, and named for, the area they call Wabanaki ('Dawnland'), generally known to European settlers as Acadia. It is now most of Maine, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, plus some of Quebec south of the St. Lawrence River. The Western Abenaki are located in New Hampshire, Vermont, and into Massachusetts.^[1]

In its most recent official communications the confederacy has emphasized common cause, and acceptance of alliances, with environmental activists allied with its goal of protecting the land and waters, powers gained under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and related treaties major powers have signed.^[2]

History [edit]

Historically, the confederacy has united five North American Algonquian language-speaking First Nations Peoples. It played a key role in the American Revolution via the Treaty of Watertown signed in 1776, by two of its constituent Peoples, the Mi'kmaq and Passamaquoddy. Wabanaki soldiers from Canada are still permitted, due to this treaty, to join the US military, and have done so in the recent conflicts the US has engaged in, including the Afghanistan war and the Iraq War.

Members of the Wabanaki Confederacy are:

(Western) Abenaki
(Eastern) Abenaki, or Penawapskewi (Penobscot)
Míkmaq (Mi'kmaq or Micmac)
Pestomuhkati (Passamaquoddy)
Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet or Malicite)

Nations in the Confederacy are also closely allied with the Innu and Algonquin, and with the Iroquoian-speaking Wyandot. Historically, Wabanaki were also allies of the Huron and with them jointly invited the colonization of Quebec City and LaHave and the formation of New France in 1603, to put French guns, ships and forts between themselves and the Mohawk people. Today the only remaining Huron First Nation is in the suburbs of Quebec City itself, a legacy of this protective alliance.

The Wabanaki ancestral homeland stretches from Newfoundland, Canada, to the Merrimack River valley in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Following the European invasion in the early 17th century, this became a hotly contested borderland between colonial New England and French Acadia. Beginning with King William's War in 1688, members of the Wabanaki Confederacy of Acadia participated in six major wars before the British defeated the French in North America:

King William's War (1688–1697)
Queen Anne's War (1702–1713)
Father Rale's War (1722–1725)
King George's War (1744–1748)
Father Le Loutre's War (1749–1755)
French and Indian War (1754–1763)

During this period, their population was not only radically decimated due to many decades of warfare, but also because of famines and devastating epidemics.^[3]

Wabanaki people freely intermarried with French Catholics in Acadia starting in 1610 after the conversion of Membertou. After 1783 Black settlers, refugees from the US, began to settle in the historical territory and many intermarriages between these peoples occurred, especially in southwest Nova Scotia from Yarmouth to Halifax. Suppression of Acadian, Black, Mi'kmaq and Irish people under British rule tended to force these peoples together as allies of necessity. Mixed-race children were commonly abandoned on reserves to be raised in Wabanaki tradition, as late as the 1970s.

The Wabanaki Confederacy was forcibly disbanded in 1862, but the five Wabanaki nations still exist, and they remain friends and allies - in part because all peoples claiming Wabanaki heritage have forebears from multiple Wabanaki and colonial ancestries.

Contemporary Wabanaki Confederacy [edit]

In 1993 the confederacy meetings were revived and the first reconstituted confederacy conference was hosted by the Penobscots; the sacred Council fire was lit again, and embers from the fire have been kept burning continually since then.^[1] This gathering was held in Listuguj. The Listuguj community hosted this event and witnessed the rebirth of the Wabanaki Confederacy which brought together the Passamaquoddy Nation, Penobscot Nation, Maliseet Nation, the Mi'kmaq Nation and the Abenaki Nation.^[2]

In September 2012, at St. Mary's First Nation, "Unceded Wabanaki Territory (New Brunswick)", non-Indigenous peoples were invited to participate, especially environmental activists.^[2] The leadership emphasized the ongoing role of the Confederacy in protecting natural capital. Some key quotes from leading participants:

"When we talk about Wabanaki people, we're also talking about Wabanaki people being the land, being the trees, being the animals, because in that cultural perspective, we're all related...The Wabanaki are in a far better position to defend the land," says gkisedtanamoogk. "No land was ever ceded, and that's acknowledged by both the province and the federal government. So on the basis of the treaties, what we're suggesting is that you and I have a common responsibility to the land under those treaties." - gkisedtanamoogk, the Gathering's fire keeper.^[2]

"Within the Wabanaki territory we're looking for allies that are going to stand against the total annihilation of our land and water and air. We're looking for allies who will help us to put our nation back together, and put it back in order. And we're asking our allies to help us empower that. And in the process of doing that, they will be decolonizing us and they will be decolonizing themselves." - jeaba-weay-quay (roughly translated from Obijway to 'The woman whose voice pierces').^[2]

"We're going to rebuild the Wabanaki Confederacy," says LaPorte. "We also invited some non-Natives...to come and be with us and to help us build an alliance, so that when we...come into conflict with the government and some of their decisions and policies...to have them stand beside us and to let their government know that it's not only Native people who are worried about the water, the land, the air. But it's also people from their nation that are concerned." - Harry LaPorte, grand chief of the Maliseet First Nation^[2]

The final press release indicated that "the grandmothers" would decide the next step in reconstructing the confederacy as a legal and sovereign entity. The structure resembles that of indigenous peoples in Chiapas, especially the recognition of the authority of the 'comandantes' (older native women) by Subcomandante Marcos and other political and military leaders better known to the public.^[2]