Bask in the Glow

i’m from maine. i’ve lived here my whole life. i am also native american, and in community with other native people here (wabanaki people— passamaquoddy, penobscot, mi’kmaq and maliseet). i have been to mount desert island and bar harbor (you may know as far harbor) countless times throughout my life. i am also a native studies minor in a wabanaki-led program.

mount desert island, or pesamkuk (passamaquoddy name) has been a gathering place for wabanaki people since time immemorial. indigenous presence on the island has shaped what it is today. tourism and white settlement (summer homes, a coast guard base, a national park, and myriad other tourist businesses in places such as bar harbor) during the “rusticator period” (1840s-1920s) all but pushed major seasonal camps off the island. in fact, today most average-income people will have a difficult time living on MDI now. the crisis of affordable housing on the island was at one point so bad that teachers and firemen were traveling upwards of an hour to get to work. not great!

but that does not mean that indigenous people are simply gone from the island (or maine in general!)

in maine, the major wabanaki communities are: penobscot nation on indian island, motahkomikuk (passamaquoddy), qonasqamkuk (passamaquoddy), and sipayik (passamaquoddy). the houlton band of maliseets and mi’kmaq nation are both in aroostook county and do not have formal reservations in the same way. indigenous lands in maine are subject to some very interesting and frustrating legislation. for more info, look into the maine indian claims settlement act (MICSA).

image: wabanaki alliance

today, the abbe museum is in the middle of the tourist district in bar harbor— it is dedicated to wabanaki history and is largely wabanaki-run. efforts into restoring traditional harvesting are ongoing (such as picking sweetgrass)!

indigenous people are still very much here and deserve much, much better than complete erasure for the kitsch aesthetic of the game. wabanaki presence COULD HAVE BEEN integrated into the game. bethesda could have made an effort to reach out to wabanaki peoples to work on representation in some way or another. the history of the place could have been mentioned. it was not.

why is this?

i think a lot of it boils down to laziness. companies do not want to pay for cultural consultation. they don’t want to take a risk at either seeming “too woke” or, on the other side, not socially aware enough.

so indigenous people continue to be written out. because it is easier to pretend we are all dead.

for more information about wabanaki presence on pesamkuk:

https://abbemuseum.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/4b8da-namingthedawnlandgeorgeneptune_web.pdf (written by a passamaquoddy knowledge keeper— i have met them, very cool person!)

indians in eden by bunny mcbride and harald prins: https://ppld.overdrive.com/media/1239742

some discussion of suzanne greenlaw (maliseet) and her work around sweetgrass harvest: https://www.abbemuseum.org/blog/2018/6/21/a8ox8s8wxde6nenklfm77gayl60h87

The rep in NV plays into a lot of the worst stereotypes— noble savages, white saviors, and positioning of ‘native adoption’ in the worst and most stereotypical way. I really deeply recommend reading Tuck & Yang’s ‘Decolonization is not a metaphor’ for a more in-depth analysis of some of those problems (as part of a broader and systemic conversation around Anti-Native racism)

New Vegas nearly starts to have an interesting conversation about Indigenous positionally, but fails miserably. Mormons and Anthropologists both (who are represented by Joshua Graham and Caesar) have extremely loaded histories with Indigenous people. From an essay I wrote last year (About Twilight, but still relevant):

Mormons and Indigenous people have a long, bloody, and contemptuous history. From the start, The Book of Mormon states that both Jewish and Indigenous Americans are “scattered Israelites,” descendants of an ancient family of Jews who came across the sea from Israel and settled in America. Indigenous people are believed by Mormons to be “Lamanites,” sons and daughters of the wicked “Laman,” and at the top of a hierarchy of cursed lineages, “cursed with redness” or “marked skin” for turning away from God.

[…]

Mormons believe that ancient Lamanites slaughtered Nephites (pale-skinned, righteous God warriors and descendants of Nephi), despite the fact that there is no archaeological evidence or oral tradition from any Indigenous group to suggest this ever happened, and there is no genetic link between ancient Jewish populations and ancient Indigenous populations.

As a result, Mormons (like many other Christian organizations in America) took part in the brutal and paternalistic residential school system, believing that Natives needed to be “saved.” Of all the residential schools in the U.S., one third were run by Mormon missionaries. Beyond residential schools, Mormons also operated the “Indian Placement Program” from 1954 to 2000, responsible for sending up to fifty thousand Native children to live with Mormon foster families. Both residential schools and the Indian Placement Program were rife with every kind of abuse imaginable. The last student within the program graduated in the year 2000, five years before Twilight was published. Mormons also took part in colonial expansion, believing their cause of slaughtering and converting “Lamanites” to be righteous retribution. Along with the U.S. government, Mormons were responsible for the Bear River Massacre of 1863, in which Shoshone women and children were raped, and more than four hundred and fifty Shoshone were slaughtered.

For context around the issues with Anthropologists and Native people, refer to Vine Deloria Jr.’s collection of essays: https://archive.org/details/indiansanthropol0000unse

New Vegas falls short. It does not do a successful political critique of Indigenous treatment by simply acknowledging our existence (in the most offensive, stereotypical light). Even for a piece created in the 2000s, it is beyond egregious.