The working draft of Harpswell’s 2024 comprehensive plan includes a statement known as a land acknowledgment, recognizing that what is now Harpswell once belonged to Indigenous people whose land was taken by European settlers.
The acknowledgment, on Page 2 of the draft, reads: “Harpswell begins this plan by recognizing the stewardship of the Abenaki people, part of the Wabanaki Confederation, who lived in what is now Harpswell before the arrival of Europeans. We acknowledge that these lands are the unceded territory of the Abenaki people. We are dedicated to developing a deeper understanding of those who came before us and to repairing our relationship with this land.”
Land acknowledgments date back to 1970s Australia but have become more widely used in Canada and the United States over the past decade, according to a March 2023 report by NPR.
Canada sparked renewed interest in them with a 2015 report by its Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It documented the history and lasting impacts of Canada’s residential school system, which forcibly removed Indigenous children from their families.
Native American scholars and leaders have expressed mixed opinions about land acknowledgments, Wyoming Public Radio reported in June 2023. While some see them as a positive step in recognizing the histories of Indigenous peoples, others caution against symbolic gestures that don’t lead to meaningful change.
Some Native leaders have suggested that in addition to acknowledging the past, concrete actions should follow to address ongoing inequities.
“It does show that people went beyond to look into that research,” historical preservationist Yufna Soldier Wolf, of the Northern Arapaho Tribe, told the Wyoming radio station. “But that shouldn’t be the stopping point. It should be the fact that we should all be doing something to accept and acknowledge Indigenous people back to the land that they once belonged to.”
Writing for research-based news outlet The Conversation in October 2022, Native American anthropologists Elisa J. Sobo and Michael and Valerie Lambert cautioned that land acknowledgments not be used to “erase Indigenous people and sanitize history.”
“In most cases these statements fail to acknowledge the violent trauma of land being stolen from Indigenous people — the death, dispossession and displacement of countless individuals and much collective suffering,” the authors wrote. “The afterlives of these traumas are deeply felt and experienced in Indigenous communities.”
A section of Harpswell’s draft comprehensive plan called “Historic and Archeological Resources” explains that Harpswell was once part of a region called Pejepscot by the Abenaki people known as the Anasagunticooks, who lived in the area. They likely used Harpswell as a summer fishing camp, it says.
“The first permanent European settler in the area was Thomas Purchase, who arrived in the 1620s,” the draft says. “More European settlers followed, intending to trade with the Anasagunticooks, but this caused increased conflict with the local Native Americans.”
After a series of wars between the Native Americans and Europeans in the 1700s, it explains, the Europeans established a more permanent settlement in Harpswell. The town was incorporated in 1758 and became a center of fishing, farming and shipbuilding.
Al LeGrow, who leads Harpswell’s Comprehensive Plan Task Force, said a consultant who previously worked with the group suggested the inclusion of a land acknowledgment, and members of the task force agreed.
“Most people thought that it fit with a couple of the town’s major objectives,” LeGrow said, “one of which was to preserve natural resources in the town, be aware of the fragility of those resources, and to acknowledge that preserving the rural character and open space were important things for the people that lived here.”
