Chapters
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PublishedJuly 8, 2014
The Eastport sting: Tribe’s attorney comes home to cuffs
March 10, 1968 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer A woman walks past the Eastport house that Don Gellers called home when he represented the Passamaquoddys in the 1960s. Gellers was arrested here in 1968, right after filing a $150 million land claims suit for the tribe, on […]
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PublishedJuly 7, 2014
‘All the Passamaquoddy want is what belongs to them’
March 8, 1968 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer A dirt road leads into the woods in Indian Township, one of two Passamaquoddy reservations in Washington County. After years of research, an attorney representing the tribe in the mid-1960s believed he had found the way forward in a […]
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PublishedJuly 6, 2014
Against police, in court, tribe’s stuck on losing side
September 3, 1967 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer An image created with a pinhole camera shows the shoreline off Pleasant Point in Down East Maine. Late in the summer of 1967, a routine traffic stop on the causeway leading to the reservation escalated into a violent conflict […]
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PublishedJuly 5, 2014
The Passamaquoddy’s land claim case takes shape
1967 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer A stand of trees is captured by a pinhole camera at Indian Township in eastern Maine. A 1794 treaty with Massachusetts deeded thousands of acres to the Passamaquoddy people. This treaty would serve as the foundation of the land claims case […]
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PublishedJuly 4, 2014
Passamaquoddy’s legal champion becomes a target
1964 to 1966 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer An antique truck steers past the Custom House in Eastport early on April 30. Some leaders and residents of the nation’s easternmost city – and elsewhere in Maine – took steps to retaliate against a young attorney when he […]
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PublishedJuly 3, 2014
‘Beaten before we started’ at a controversial trial
March 1, 1966 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer Michael-Corey Francis Hinton, a Passamaquoddy Indian living and working as a lawyer in Washington, D.C., visits the spot in eastern Maine where his great-grandfather, Peter Francis, was killed in 1965. Hinton has been lobbying the Department of Justice to […]
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PublishedJuly 2, 2014
Tepid response from authorities leaves tribe furious
November 16, 1965 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer The headstone for Peter Francis sits in a small graveyard on the Pleasant Point reservation Down East. When his slaying in 1965 failed to result in any murder warrants being served, it became “a turning point in … Indian […]
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PublishedJuly 1, 2014
A simmering conflict, stoked by alcohol, erupts
November 14, 1965 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer Violence broke out in November 1965 in the yard outside Christy Altvater’s house, above, located just outside the Pleasant Point reservation. Two Passamaquoddy Indians were left badly beaten, one of them fatally. Photo by Gabe Souza/Staff Photographer The Altvater […]
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PublishedJune 30, 2014
White men from out of state come hunting for girls
November 14, 1965 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer Captured in the early morning through the aperture of a pinhole camera recently, this stretch of road leads into Pleasant Point Indian Reservation, where a menacing situation developed late in 1965, when out-of-state hunters clashed with the native residents. […]
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PublishedJune 29, 2014
An unlikely handshake alters the course of Maine’s history
May 19, 1964 Story by Colin Woodard, Staff Writer Photos by Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer Traditions and trials have been a part of Indian life in Maine for as long as members of the Passamaquoddy tribe, like this elder at Indian Township, can remember. Their ancestors found sustenance in this corner of the world […]