Researched and written by Dr. Harald Prins and Bunny McBride, Asticou’s Island Domain: Wabanaki Peoples at Mount Desert Island 1500-2000 commissioned by the Ethnography Program of the National Park Service in cooperation with Acadia National Park, the Abbe Museum and Maine’s four Wabanaki Indian nations.
Native Americans have inhabited Maine’s coast for over 10,000 years. Today the state's four indigenous tribal nations—Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Maliseet, and Micmac—are known collectively as the Wabanaki ("People of the Dawn"). Acadia National Park lies in the center of the Wabanaki ancestral homeland, which stretches from Newfoundland, Canada, to the Merrimac River valley in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
This 2-volume, 620-page document is based on extensive, in-depth scholarly research, with many hundreds of footnotes and a 37-page list of annotated references. Thick with new information that invites a thorough rethinking of cross-cultural relations in the contested borderlands between colonial New England and French Acadia, it relays the troubling but fascinating stories of the region’s indigenous peoples, their colonial friends and foes, fishermen, fur-traders, missionaries, privateers, militias, farmers, and visitors, from the time of first contact with European seafarers nearly 500 years ago, through today. It features a rich array of engravings, drawings, paintings, maps and photographs – many never before published and many others published with new identification and interpretation. A new coastal map and 12-page timeline provide geographical and historical overviews.
Of special note is the cover image. This 1627 copper engraving of Natives hunting moose on Mount Desert Island was based largely on a description by Sir Ferdinando Gorges in 1622. Because this English colonizer referred to the island as Mount Mansell, a name once briefly in use, the unique image escaped the radar of Maine scholars until now.
In the study's foreword, Passamaquoddy tribal historian and representative to the Maine state legislature Donald Soctomah writes: “Asticou’s Island Domain is a valuable piece of work that captures important segments of history that have been hidden under so many layers. It will serve as a reminder of the lifeways of the Wabanaki people—our deep connection to and religious convictions about the land, the rivers and ocean of this region. . . . The authors tracked every clue in search of the true story—in archives, libraries and firsthand recollections of Native peoples. They heard our stories and have brought them to life in a lasting way for present and future generations.”
Since its completion at the end of 2007, the National Park Service and Acadia National Park have distributed over 150 copies of Asticou’s Island Domain to various libraries, scholars, and other interested individuals, as well as to each of Maine’s tribal nations. And NPS has just published a digital version on its website. The full study can now be found and freely downloaded at: www.nps.gov/acad/historyculture/ethnography.htm
The authors:
Harald E.L. Prins, born and raised in the Netherlands, was trained in ethnography, history and archaeology, as well as filmmaking. Currently a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Kansas State University, he previously lectured at Bowdoin, Colby, the University of Maine-Orono and Radboud University (Netherlands). He has done extensive fieldwork among indigenous peoples in South and North America (including Maine’s four tribes). A multiple award-winning teaching scholar and documentary filmmaker, he has authored or co-authored over a hundred scholarly publications in six languages, including several books – most notably The Mi’kmaq: Resistance, Accommodation, and Cultural Survival (1996). His documentary film work includes Our Lives in Our Hands (1986) about Micmac basketmakers and their struggle for cultural survival. An advocacy anthropologist whose scholarship is tied to human rights, he has served as expert witness in the US Senate and Canadian courts. He also served as President of the Society for Visual Anthropology and as visual anthropology editor of the international professional journal American Anthropologist. Dr. Prins is a regular peer reviewer for many academic presses, international journals and scholarly foundations, serves on several editorial boards and has advised and consulted tribal nations, the Smithsonian, National Park Service, UNESCO and many other institutions. In 2006, the Carnegie Foundation honored him as Kansas Professor of the Year. See www.ksu.edu/sasw/anthro/prins.htm
Bunny McBride is an award-winning writer whose books include Women of the Dawn, Molly Spotted Elk: A Penobscot in Paris and Our Lives in Our Hands: Micmac Indian Basketmakers. From 1978-88, she wrote regularly for The Christian Science Monitor, publishing some 100 articles in this international newspaper from far-flung points around the globe. Since earning a Masters in anthropology at Columbia University in 1980, she has worked on a range of issues and projects with Maine tribes, and in 1999 the Maine state legislature gave her a special commendation for her research and writing on the history of Native women in the state. With a background in art, as well as journalism and anthropology, she has curated several museum exhibitions on Native American art. She is also co-author of The National Audubon Society Field Guide to African Wildlife (Knopf, 1995) and three major introductory anthropology textbooks. As a regular adjunct lecturer over the past three decades (Kansas State University, Principia College in Illinois, Salt Center for Documentary Field Studies in Maine), she has taught various anthropology courses, including Ethnographic Field Methods & Writing. McBride is an oral history advisor for the Kansas Humanities Council, and board member of the Women's World Summit Foundation, based in Geneva, Switzerland. See www.ksu.edu/sasw/anthro/mcbride.htm