Adele Wise: I’m Adele Wise and you’re listening to Agri[Culture], a podcast that explores how culture and traditions are preserved through land, labor, and farming in communities across Maine. Produced in partnership with Maine Farmland Trust, this podcast series is part of my senior project at College of the Atlantic. 

 

To begin this series, it seemed essential to me to start with the perspectives of the people who first occupied the land we know as Maine. The people belonging to the Wabanaki confederation have lived, foraged, and farmed this land for thousands of years. Despite years of violent exploitation of these people, their ancestral homeland, and their culture, many Wabanaki folks remain strong on the land today. 

 

I had the privilege to share an afternoon with and collaborate with several members from the Wabanaki Confederation. This is a collection of interviews to share some of the history and the continued presence of MicMac, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot people who are working on the land today. 

 

Thankfully, John Dennis, the cultural director for the Aroostook band of MicMacs was gracious enough to sit down with me over zoom to share how foodways have changed, and more specifically the lives of fish. 
 

John Dennis: My name is John Dennis, I am the cultural coordinator and interim tribal historic probation officer for the Aroostook band of MicMacs. We were hunter-gatherers, our people gathered. Whatever that they gathered was still within the area. They would only pick so much of the berries, and they knew exactly where everything was. So they would have berries, they would call them Indian potatoes or something like that. There’s a lot of vegetables that are out there as well as medicine. The way that they would hunt also a long time ago would be traps for fowl or fauna. There was this contraption that was made, and it looks like a cone. It's a basket, and so when the fish come upstream, they get tired and they go into the smaller ponds. So from there, they would go into this cone, but they can’t come back out. So they would be in this pond, so from there you can kind of get whatever that you want. But if you get too many, you get rid of the cones so that the fish can keep on going. The women would do this so when the eel, salmon, trout or whatever would come up, upstream it would be able to hunt the fish without going into their waters. They can just grab it and...

 

Adele Wise: Times have changed, and mismanagement of the ecosystem and development of different industries have ultimately diminished the types of fish that live in these areas as well as significantly impacting these traditional trapping practices. 

 

John Dennis: We still go out and we still get the berries and so on. So the only difference we have some fishermen that are out there and then there’s commercial fishermen through the tribe. As far as naturally goes, the array of fish is not as it was a long time ago, because of the dams that were built and the lack of ladders utilized. I mean if you were to go in the Aroostook river, there used to be eel, and salmon, and trout and all of that. Now you have to really be a good fisherman to catch anything. 

 

Adele Wise: Like John has learned from his ancestors, thousands of years ago fish used to swim freely up and down the streams of Maine. However, with the introduction of the logging industry formed in the 1800s, the river was physically transformed by the hundreds of floating logs being transported down the river. Dams have also had a big impact, as many lack fish ladders, which are built to help migrating fish get over dams to spawn. To address this destruction of lost resources from both ecological and cultural standpoints, the tribe and those working within the community have had to adapt. 

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John Dennis: The form of aquaculture has changed. We have a farm today, the Aroostook band of MicMacs do. We do have a trout hatchery there as well, for the trout to feed the people. 
 

Adele Wise: I was intrigued to learn more about this community and farm, so I took a trip up to Caribou Maine, just miles away from the Canadian border to see MicMac Farms and specifically the trout hatchery. 

 

Dave Macek: Hi I’m Dave Macek, how are you? 

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Adele Wise: Hi, how are you? I’m Adele. 

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Dave Macek: Alright, so you want to see the hatchery? 

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Adele Wise: Yeah I’d love to. 

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Dave Macek: Come on this direction

 

Adele Wise: Here I met Dave Macek, the fish farm manager of Micmac Farm’s trout hatchery.  He is not a member of the tribe but was hired as the tribe’s environmental specialist and hatchery manager. 

Dave ushered me through the back of the farmstand into a large garage containing massive tubs full of swirling Brook Trout. 43,000 of which were just born in January of 2021. 

 

Adele Wise: These ones were no bigger than an inch in length. 43,000!  

 

Are they all trout? 

 

Dave Macek: They’re all Brook Trout, native Maine.

 

 Because they’re native to Maine, tribally, culturally important, food for the tribe, really good tasting fish

 

Adele Wise: Dave explained to me that in addition to being a really tasty fish, they are also culturally important to the tribe. Instead of competing with Salmon growers, they had decided to produce only trout. 

Brook trout are a native species to Maine and in addition, the farm doesn’t use any chemicals or antibiotics that would otherwise harm the environment. However, there is still a significant amount of effort that goes into raising them. Dave told me each day they had to scrub down both of the giant tubs which each hold 17,000 gallons of water. 

One of the hatchery employees, Ben, a member of the MicMac tribe, demonstrated to me how to feed the fish, widely tossing out the pellets to avoid too much competition. 

 

We watched their splashing bodies for a while before going to a quieter space to talk about the farm. 

 

Adele Wise: So was the farm here before the aquaculture system? 

 

Dave Macek: Yes it was. The farm I think we started was probably in 2008 as a community garden over at our property over couple miles called Spruce Haven. The second year we operated it we had it right here, no buildings at the time. We had a tent that we put at the mouth of the driveway and we sold vegetables from there. Most of what we produced, we were taking to the tribal community, and giving it away. We sort of started the whole project for that purpose. We build the stores, the buildings we’ve been operating it with retail sales to try to help it be sustainable. 

 

Adele Wise: Started for the purpose of providing fresh, quality food for the tribal community, this project has made large steps towards agency and access over their food, and achieving food sovereignty. 

This hatchery is just one small way that an ecologically and culturally important species has remained in Maine despite years of disruption and changes to the local ecosystems. Here’s John Dennis again. 

 

John Dennis: There’s a term called Netukulimk. Netukulimk is in a way, renewable resources, but you utilize every aspect of everything. You only take as much as you need. Obviously we’ve adapted in different ways. You can’t turn back. There’s some things you just can’t turn back, like the wideness of the river. You can turn it back as much as you can but it’s not natural. We do, do some presentations in that format, I’ve spoken to ATV clubs about respecting the land, respecting animals. And they do. They respect it and that’s why they felt so happy to hear me speaking about respecting it. I told them that humans are not in the middle, and the animals around us, we are with the animals. So if anything happens to the animals, slowly something will happen to us. We’re all equal. In the language we call it Msit No'kmaq means all my relations. You’re related to everything, even the earth and so on.

 

Adele Wise: The two ideas that John shared-  having awareness to respect renewable resources as well as fostering deep connections with the earth really resonated with me as central pieces to growing your own food and sustainably living. 

 

Besides hunting and foraging, I was curious whether acquiring food through cultivated gardens played a role in John’s community today. 

 

John Dennis: Because we are in a community there are some people that grow in their gardens, but it’s more of a flower garden, some really just grow whatever that they like to eat, like jalepeños, something that's very more structured to their lifestyle. The majority of the food that we get is from the farm so they’ll have  carrots, they’ll have potatoes, they’ll have our fruits. They had planted apple trees as well, so hopefully in the near future we’ll get apples. 

 

It’s a huge dynamic, but as far as having gardens...we’ve got children that are around. Children are children so if you are growing berries, of course, animals and the kids they’ll go and eat them. Cherry tomatoes– I had 6 of them, and next day they were all gone. I was upset, but at the same time, well at least they’re eating healthy. And we don’t discourage our children from being like that, but at the same time its about respect, respecting and asking before you take. 

 

Adele Wise: I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to connect with Dave Macek at Micmac Farms as well as with John Dennis from the MicMac tribe and for his trust in me to share his stories. We will now hear from some other incredible Wabanaki folks working with the land. 

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Break 

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Adele Wise: After visiting this large operation up in Caribou I was curious to see how culture and land might be connected on a smaller scale. I came across the instagram page of Sikwani and Nathan Dana’s homestead and was immediately interested. It wasn’t until after that I realized I had actually met Sikwani’s parents Barry and Lori Dana on a backpacking trip with the Maine Youth Wilderness Program where they spent a day with us sharing the cultural history of the Penobscot. Like my dad always says, Maine is a small town.  Zooming in from Solon Maine here are the two homesteaders. 

 

Sikwani Dana: I am Sikwani Dana, and I am a highschool teacher. 

 

Nathan Dana: I’m Nathan Dana I am a high school industrial arts teacher. 

 

Sikwani Dana: Oh yeah I should probably say, science teacher. 

 

Adele Wise: Sikwani is a member of the Penobscot tribe and Nathan is a descendent of the Passamaquoddy. In this interview, they shared with me how Sikwani’s upbringing and both their cultural values and have shaped their lifestyle today as homesteaders and their thoughts towards the future. 

 

Sikwani Dana: Ever since I was a sophomore in high school I have wanted to live off-grid. I can remember when I was a sophomore, designing the cabin that I was going to build. 

I would describe our homestead as a baby homestead. We’re still kind of getting started where this is our third winter. The most that has changed within the last year probably. We have chickens which we got this summer, which was kind of a surprise. We also got bees this past spring, which those were planned and we were super excited for. One of the coolest things about our homestead is that it is off-grid. We are not grid-tied at all. Completely solar-powered. We also have our garden. 

 

Nathan Dana: This is really our third winter. Last year was our second summer, but we aren’t even close to where we want to be with how self-sufficient we are. Ideally as much, or as close to being completely self-sufficient as possible, however, both of us are full-time teachers and we are starting with a forest floor that doesn’t have a whole lot of nutrients. It’s not quite where we want it to be yet. Ultimately I would love to be as self-sufficient as possible.

 

Sikwani Dana: I don’t even remember what we had in our garden the past summer, but it wasn’t much. It was just something to say that we had a garden. But this year we really tried to fill all the space in the garden. We had more kale than we could eat, so we fed that to the chickens. 

 

Adele Wise: In their journey as becoming homesteaders, many experiences and people informed their lifestyle and values, including their family and community’s lived experiences. One of these foundational pieces for Sikwani and her family was food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is a movement that aims to counter the dominant food system to ensure people the right to sufficient, healthy, and culturally appropriate foods. Food sovereignty is not just about accessing this food, but about communities having agency and power, to determine and address their food-related needs.

 

Sikwani Dana: My dad’s motivation for growing food is for food sovereignty. He had a heart attack when I was in high school. Even before that he was starting to get into “I want to provide my own food because I know what goes into it” and he has tried to spread that message to other tribe members. He grew up on the reservation, so he grew up on government commodities. Commodities are really like food that they couldn’t get nonnatives to buy and were going to go bad so they said they were going to bring it to the reservation and give it to them for super cheap or even free. But that food was always really awful, but that's what they had. Tribes were put on these tiny pieces of land that weren’t necessarily great to be growing gardens in. Growing and population-wise they are so dense that they didn’t have a ton of space to grow gardens or resources for traditional gardening so they started relying on cheap food which I think in general just across the United States, doesn’t matter what skin color you are, if you are in poverty, you don’t have the resources to provide food for yourself, so you’re going to go to Walmart and you’re going to buy the cheapest off-brand options and those are typically the ones that are not healthy, although black and brown people are definitely more at risk for being in those situations, and so that’s going to lead to higher rates for diabetes and cardiac conditions. 

 

Adele Wise: In the U.S,  Native Americans suffer from some of the highest rates of food insecurity, poverty, and diet-related diseases. 1 out of every 4 indigenous people experiences food insecurity compared to 1 in 9 Americans overall. 

 

Sikwani Dana: As a whole, I don’t think the tribe is necessarily doing stuff, but I have been hearing more and more people from my tribe that are starting to do more things. I have a cousin who has sort of started to put together an apothecary so anyone in the tribe can message her and be like hey I’m sick or this is what’s wrong with me.  

   

Adele Wise: Sikwani’s advocacy for justice and equity grew from a set of values instilled in her as a child 

 

Sikwani Dana: All of that really stems from being raised Penobscot, looking forward to the future, so all of those choices that I am making is, “ok, how can I limit my impact in the climate?”

 

In kind of the grand scheme of things, there’s this thing in native culture where you look seven generations into the future and you want to make sure that for the next seven generations there’s going to be enough to survive, and not only survive, but thrive and be comfortable in your living. 

 

The way that I see our world going right now is that you’re not going to have enough resources for the next seven generations.

 

Adele Wise: Going back to their homestead, I was curious to hear how much of Sikwani and Nathan’s decision-making for what they grew each year was tied to traditional foods and growing practices. 

 

Sikwani Dana: When I was little and my parents were growing their garden they definitely didn’t have traditional seeds, but over the years people have been like “oh! You’re traditionally gardening? Here have these seeds! Or have these seeds!”

 

Nathan Dana: They have a lot of traditional seed. 

 

Sikwani Dana: Yeah my parents at this point have been given so much that each year they pick and choose what kind they want to grow, or rotate it through. They haven’t even had a chance to grow all of it. This year really the only thing that we grew that would’ve been old-time traditional would be the Vermont cranberry beans which are beautiful pink and reds. 

 

Nathan Dana: The traditional seed that Barry and Laury have across the street is like in this massive basket just full of little baggies of this and that and what not. It’s really incredible to see some of what they’ve got. Its also really cool to eat some of the food that was growing right here for a really long time. 

 

Sikwani Dana: Thousands of years. 

 

Obviously, pigs and cows and chickens and even bees are not really traditional foods for Penobscot that’s for sure, so it's sort of an adaptive lifestyle because I’m trying to essentially blend the European way of getting food and the native way of getting food. In our garden, we grow things that are definitely not necessarily traditional to this area, but eventually, we absolutely want to. So my parents grow all of their corn for an entire year and they dry it and that is amazing and I'm very jealous. We definitely want to try to move towards more traditional food growing practices like in a lot of gardens nowadays, people grow all of their food in straight lines, whereas in a traditional way you don’t have it row after row after row. You’ve got like a little cluster of .. here, you’ve got a couple of rows here, maybe a cluster here. There’s corn and beans and squash, and the fourth sister often left out is the sunflower.

 

Adele Wise: Being educators and teachers on top of running their homestead, Sikwani and Nathan shared their perceived role and cautions in sharing their knowledge and lifestyle.

 

Sikwani Dana: It’s definitely important to share a lot of this information. I think a lot of times when I share this information I don’t necessarily put a cultural spin on it just because I’m very sensitive to other people taking it and appropriating it, which has very much happened. Right now something that a lot of native people are pointing out in the media, is calling out people that do primitive skills stuff, or even big groups that try to teach outdoor survival stuff. They all have to put their own spin on it, but essentially they are just appropriating our culture. 

 

The educating piece, or sharing piece is in the beginning phase I mean we are still kind of figuring out this lifestyle. But I mean we’re teachers, we love teaching and sharing knowledge so the more ways we can do that the better I think. 

 

We recently started a TikTok account, and we also started a youtube account. We also have an instagram account for The Dana Homestead. Part of our creating these social media platforms is to educate more people about this type of lifestyle. 

 

Nathan Dana: I feel like it would sort of be irresponsible to not share some of the knowledge that we have to some other young folks looking to do the same thing. There are a lot of different ways that folks can go about trying to finagle a system a little bit so even at a younger age they can start to have something like a homestead and try to live more environmentally friendly, and essentially try and address this climate change issue that we’ve got going on. 

 

Adele Wise: Homesteading in Maine is not a new phenomenon, nor is it going away anytime soon. Sikwani and Nathan’s enthusiasm and stories about homesteading instilled the importance of connecting with the land, increasing health and the joy of growing your own food!

 

Sikwani Dana: When I look towards what I hope this homestead is going to be like- our house is going to be done being renovated and we’ll have an addition on that adds on more living space and a couple of bedrooms, and a much bigger garden with tons of herbs and medicine. A little way through the woods where we typically do our firewood, have a barn there, maybe have some pigs, maybe a couple fuzzy cows.  

 

Food is just like so important to living. 

 

Nathan Dana: That's like just food. I mean there are so many other things when you’re talking about having the land to live off of to. I know you briefly mentioned medicine, there's also cultural things that you really need the land for,

 

Adele Wise: As Sikwani said, food is so important to living in so many ways. Thank you for embarking on this journey of learning with me. Whether it’s fish or food, industrial or self sufficient- farming is a significant part of preserving Wabanaki culture in Maine.  

 

 I am very grateful to the folks I interviewed in this project for entrusting me to share their stories. For non-native folks,  I encourage you to become a more active ally and accomplice to those who first occupied this land and continue to inhabit it today.   

 

For more information please check out my blog in the description for resources about the Wabanaki confederation, decolonizing our food system, food sovereignty and more. Don’t forget to check out MicMac farms on Facebook, and follow @thedanahomestead on Instagram as well as Tiktok. 

 

Thank you to my project advisors Kourtney Collum and Galen Koch for editing countless drafts, 

To the Oshima Brothers for the music you heard 

And to College of the Atlantic. 

 

Thank you so much for listening.