The Abenaki are an Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States. They are an Algonquian-speaking people and part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The Eastern Abenaki language was predominantly spoken in Maine, while the Western Abenaki language was spoken in Quebec, Vermont, and New Hampshire.
The Penobscot are an Indigenous people in North America from the Northeastern Woodlands region. They are organized as a federally recognized tribe in Maine and as a First Nations band government in the Atlantic provinces and Quebec.
The Passamaquoddy are a Native American/First Nations people who live in northeastern North America. Their traditional homeland, Peskotomuhkatik, straddles the Canadian province of New Brunswick and the U.S. state of Maine in a region called Dawnland. They are one of the constituent nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy.
In Canada, the Indian residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples. The network was funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by Christian churches. The school system was created to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture. Over the course of the system's more than hundred-year existence, around 150,000 children were placed in residential schools nationally. By the 1930s, about 30 percent of Indigenous children were attending residential schools. The number of school-related deaths remains unknown due to incomplete records. Estimates range from 3,200 to over 30,000, mostly from disease.
The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA) is a United States federal law that governs jurisdiction over the removal of American Indian children from their families in custody, foster care and adoption cases.
Calvin Murray Sinclair, is a former member of the Canadian Senate and First Nations lawyer who served as chairman of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 2009 to 2015. He previously served as a judge in Manitoba from 1988 to 2009, being the first Indigenous judge appointed in the province. Sinclair was appointed to the Senate of Canada on April 2, 2016. In November 2020, he announced his retirement from the Senate effective January 31, 2021.
The Wabanaki Confederacy is a North American First Nations and Native American confederation of four principal Eastern Algonquian nations: the Miꞌkmaq, Maliseet (Wolastoqey), Passamaquoddy (Peskotomahkati) and Penobscot. The Western Abenaki are also considered members, being a loose identity for a number of allied tribal peoples such as the Sokoki, Cowasuck, Missiquoi, and Arsigantegok, among others.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was a truth and reconciliation commission active in Canada from 2008 to 2015, organized by the parties of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
The Association on American Indian Affairs is a nonprofit human rights charity located in Rockville, Maryland. Founded in 1922, it is dedicated to protecting the rights of Native Americans.
Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians v. Holyfield, 490 U.S. 30 (1989), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Indian Child Welfare Act governed adoptions of Indian children. It ruled that a tribal court had jurisdiction over a state court, regardless of the location of birth of the child, if the child or the natural parents resided on the reservation.
The Sixties Scoop was a period in which a series of policies were enacted in Canada that enabled child welfare authorities to take, or "scoop up," Indigenous children from their families and communities for placement in foster homes, from which they would be adopted by white families. Despite its name referencing the 1960s, the Sixties Scoop began in the mid-to-late 1950s and persisted into the 1980s.
Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, 570 U.S. 637 (2013), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that held that several sections of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) do not apply to Native American biological fathers who are not custodians of a Native American child. The court held that the procedures required by the ICWA to end parental rights do not apply when the child has never lived with the father. Additionally, the requirement to make extra efforts to preserve the Native American family also does not apply, nor is the preferred placement of the child in another Native American family required when no other party has formally sought to adopt the child.
Mihku Paul is a First Nations poet, visual artist, storyteller, and activist. She was born into the Maliseet Nation and she is a member of Kingsclear First Nation in New Brunswick, Canada. Mihku Paul currently resides in Portland, Maine where she teaches creative writing at the Maine Women Writers Collection at the University of New England.
Sherri L. Mitchell - Weh'na Ha'mu Kwasset is a Native American lawyer, author, teacher and activist from Maine. Mitchell is the author of Sacred Instructions; Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change, a narrative of 'Indigenous Wisdom' that provides "a road map for the spirit and a compass of compassion for humanity."
Donald Soctomah is a Native American author, filmmaker, historian, and politician. He serves as the tribal historic preservation officer for the Passamaquoddy tribe, where he works with both the U.S. and Canadian governments on the protection of culturally significant sites, artifacts and knowledge. Soctomah has written several books about Passamaquoddy history, as well as a children's book, Remember Me: Tomah Joseph's Gift to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and The Canoe Maker.
The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement is an agreement between the government of Canada and approximately 86,000 Indigenous peoples in Canada who at some point were enrolled as children in the Canadian Indian residential school system, a system which was in place between 1879 and 1997. The IRSSA recognized the damage inflicted by the residential schools and established a C$1.9-billion compensation package called CEP for all former IRS students. The agreement, announced in 2006, was the largest class action settlement in Canadian history.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation is the archival repository for all of the material collected by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, purposed to compile the complete history and legacy of Canada's residential school system.
Rebecca Sockbeson is a Wabanaki scholar and activist in the field of Indigenous Peoples' education.
Haaland v. Brackeen is a pending Supreme Court of the United States case brought by the states of Texas, Louisiana, and Indiana, and individual plaintiffs, that seeks to declare the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) unconstitutional. In addition to Haaland v. Brackeen, three additional cases have been consolidated to be heard at the same time. Those cases are Cherokee Nation v. Brackeen, Texas v. Haaland, and Brackeen v. Haaland.
