Kittery adopts land acknowledgement to honor Pennacook-Abenaki people
KITTERY, Maine — A land acknowledgement has been adopted by the town’s governing leaders to regularly honor the Pennacook-Abenaki peoples’ roots in Maine’s oldest town.
The acknowledgement, approved unanimously by the seven-member Town Council on Monday night, will be read at the start of each council meeting.
“Kittery is located on land of Pennacook and Abenaki Peoples of the Wabanaki Confederacy, who have ongoing cultural and spiritual connections to this land,” the statement reads. “We acknowledge and honor with gratitude the land and the peoples who have stewarded it through the generations and recognize Kittery’s ongoing responsibility to maintain and protect these homelands for our future generations to come.”
Denise and Paul Pouliot, head speakers of the Alton, New Hampshire-based Cowasuck Band of Pennacook-Abenaki people, presented Town Manager Kendra Amaral and the Town Council with a tribal flag on Monday night. The gift was erected next to the state flag and the American flag in the council chambers.
The dark green flag contains a central image of a white pine tree with three roots meant to represent the three major watersheds of the tribe’s region- the Connecticut, Merrimack and Piscataqua rivers.
“It signifies us,” said Paul Pouliot. “We are the people of the white pines. ‘Cowasuck’ means ‘people of the white pines.’”
Behind the flag’s depiction of the white pine tree is a sunrise with 13 rays of light beaming outward, representing the Indigenous year cycle with 13 lunar phases. Underneath the tree and sunrise is wavy water and two canoes - one right side up and the other upside down - that form a “wisdom curl.”
“The four corners of the design are modified wisdom curls, which represent family units,” Paul Pouliot said. “Each one of these is shown in harmony, peace and living in balance throughout the N’dakinna, kind of like a yin and yang symbol. It represents the balance between man and woman through the family unit, and whole thing represents N’dakinna, or our homelands.”
“We wanted to thank you all once again for taking the time to make the connection with us and with the community to establish a bond moving forward,” Denise Pouliot said to the Town Council.
Local towns and cities throughout the Seacoast and southern Maine have adopted land acknowledgements in recent years to note their region’s Indigenous history.
The land acknowledgement was a recommendation from the town’s ad hoc committee on diversity, equity and inclusion, according to Councilor Mary Gibbons Stevens, one of three Town Council representatives on the committee.
“The committee thought about having an acknowledgement that the town could recite in recognition of our Native American and Indigenous people history and our connections to the people,” Stevens said. “We recognize that this land acknowledgement is just a beginning to our work in both the stewardship of our land but also recognizing the history here of our Indigenous people.”
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Kittery ME adopts land acknowledgement
