Niweskok’s Seeds of Hope
Redistributing Power by Rematriating Land
Rebuilding fractured connections to land can only occur when land is safe, healthy, and secure. Photo courtesy of Niweskok
Editor’s Note: Niweskok is a collaboration of Wabanaki food and medicine providers who began as the Eastern Woodlands Rematriation Collective in 2018. Last year, Niweskok acquired a 250-acre farm, unencumbered by a conservation easement, in partnership with several Maine-based conservation organizations. Alex Redfield identifies key lessons for partners, highlighting how trust is an essential prerequisite for successfully integrating justice and equity into land protection projects. – Liz Thompson
The history of the last five centuries of Swanville, Maine, is not unusual. The small town, a few miles from where the Penobscot River meets the North Atlantic, sits squarely in the territory of the Penobscot people. In 1630, the English crown granted two Massachusetts colonists the authority to settle and conduct trade within a 36-mile region of coastal Maine via the “Muscongus Patent,” beginning a period of land claims, title disputes, settlement expansions, and other colonial machinations that lasted nearly 150 years and contributed to the expulsion of Native people and subsequent incorporation, by white settlers, of Swanville and 30 other nearby towns. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Swanville and neighboring communities flourished on the bounty of the sea, their advantageous location near the logging runs of the Penobscot River, and the various natural resource-based enterprises powered by, at a peak of industrial development, 33 different dams built to harvest energy along the 10-mile run of the Goose River that flows from Swan Lake to Belfast Bay.
Though the names of the local rivers or the colonial documents may differ from one corner of the region to another, the story of Swanville’s lands, waters, and people—and the trajectory of the community—is repeated across much of New England’s landscape.
However, there is now one important distinction that sets Swanville apart from most other rural communities of the Northeast. After its initial theft from the Penobscot people, and 500 years of their separation from it, a small but important piece of land has been returned to its original inhabitants. This land, witness to every minute of colonial history within its imposed boundaries, has been reconnected with the communities that cared for it for 12,500 years.
Throughout 2024, a group of conservation organizations rallied to support the Wabanaki-led purchase of the property in question, 250-acre livestock farm with open fields, a sizable forest, river frontage, several outbuildings, and a large farmhouse, all within minutes of the coast. The real estate had significant value on the open market, with an initial list price of $2.4 million. With a final negotiated price of nearly $1.9 million, acquiring the farm was neither cheap nor easy, but there are at least two essential elements of this project that create incalculable value, and that deserve further exploration. First, the processes that identified the property for acquisition and drove the fundraising efforts were led not by conservation partners or any formal conservation blueprint, but rather by Niweskok, the collective of Wabanaki food and medicine providers, who, after closing on the property in late 2024, now own the land themselves. Second, the farm was acquired by Niweskok without deed restrictions, conservation easements, or other encumbrances of any kind: The title is held outright by Niweskok free and clear.
“There is now one important distinction that sets Swanville apart from most other rural communities of the Northeast. After its initial theft from the Penobscot people, and 500 years of their separation from it, a small but important piece of land has been returned to its original inhabitants.”
To fully understand the relevance and value of this land return project, it’s important to introduce Niweskok’s work, their approach, and the relationships they cultivated in support of their mission. Niweskok, named for a Penobscot word that translates to “dried seeds for planting,” is best described as a Wabanaki lifeways rematriation non-profit: a collaborative effort to create opportunity for Wabanaki peoples to reconnect with traditional ways of feeding and healing each other, to reproduce the cultural knowledge and heritage that has been cultivated and shared for thousands of years, and to reclaim traditional foods and tribal food sovereignty. The projects, workshops, and community that coalesce under the banner of Niweskok are intentionally described as “rematriation.” Whereas the separation of land, people, animals, and plants reflect a colonial understanding of “human vs. Nature” or “savage vs. civilized,” Wabanaki relations cut across these false distinctions and recognize all as kin. Bringing these elements of spirit and surroundings back to the family, so to speak, is at the core of Niweskok’s work and encompasses Niweskok’s approach to the transformation and repair of land and food systems.
Niweskok: From Stars to Seeds - An Introduction.
These efforts absolutely require connection to land. Niweskok’s work to reconnect Wabanaki peoples with the activities and experiences of harvest, cultivation, and healing must be rooted in a physical place. How can you teach others how to harvest fiddleheads without a riverbank? How can you maintain the supply of cherished seed and plant varieties without space to grow, tend, and propagate them? How can you share the techniques and skills necessary to harvest clams without a mudflat? And beyond that, how can you facilitate the sheer joy that blossoms from inviting your community together to steam those clams “over seaweed in a traditional beach clambake, sharing stories, language, good food, and a day by the ocean” without a place on the coast where your community feels welcome? These opportunities for sharing, rebuilding, and nurturing knowledge, community, culture, and care can truly take place only if the land is available, healthy, and safe.
“Taking stock of the areas of access, relationships, and skills that people can leverage in support of justice and equity is critical. We cannot wait for someone else to do [the work] just because we perceive them as having more power or more responsibility. All we can control is ourselves and our choices. Will we make choices that lead toward transformation?”
With a demonstrated need for stable land tenure, Niweskok’s team began to call in some of the existing conservation and land protection organizations across Maine. Conservation organizations and land trusts, both small and large, had begun earnest attempts to repair and reconcile relationships with Indigenous neighbors and Tribal governments after years of strained relations rooted in, among other issues, previous opposition to tribal sovereignty reforms in the state. The technical expertise and donor relationships already in place for Maine’s land trust community would prove to be a useful tool in Niweskok’s search.
This search, lasting nearly two years and involving four conservation partner organizations—with their varying goals, missions, boards, governance structures, skills, and expertise, and each at a different point in their reflections on how conservation and land protection could more tangibly support equitable outcomes for Indigenous communities—was complicated. Tensions and progress ebbed and flowed throughout the process, with setbacks primarily rooted in divergent expectations of the roles and responsibilities of involved parties, and the absolute need for Niweskok’s team to lead the way, set the parameters, and do the work.
With the ink dry on the deed transfers, we now have an opportunity to identify which elements of this process can be distilled and used more widely across the region and beyond farmland access projects.
Niweskok’s strategy was clear: To achieve their broader goals of building cultural connection and rematriating Indigenous foodways, a piece of land needed to be acquired. It needed to be safe, welcoming, and suitable for traditional cultivation and harvesting. It needed to be big enough to accommodate the variety of dreams and initiatives that had emerged from community members over time. It also needed to be under the care of Wabanaki people, without restrictions imposed by other organizations or deed restrictions. Tactically, the collaborative decided to leverage the connections and power accumulated within white-led conservation organizations in Maine as a way to both secure the necessary resources and call in a broader community of support.
“To fully understand the relevance and value of this land return project, it’s important to introduce Niweskok’s work, their approach, and the relationships they cultivated in support of their mission. ”
What were the ultimate shared goals that allowed donors and partner organizations to contribute dollars and staff hours to Niweskok’s search? Without a conservation easement in place, the legal and lasting protection of any property transferred to Niweskok’s stewardship didn’t count toward the traditional metrics of success for land protection organizations. Any acreage transferred to Niweskok wouldn’t contribute to any 30 percent by 2030 goals or show up in any protected open space database. The 250 acres in Swanville isn’t uniquely well suited to become a spectacular carbon sink or habitat for endangered species. In fact, with Niweskok’s explicit focus on supporting Wabanaki people rather than supporting the broader local community, identifying and purchasing this land wouldn’t directly impact a huge number of people or contribute to a bigger landscape protection initiative. So—what’s the value to the “conservation movement” here?
Though the folks at Niweskok may or may not frame it in such blunt terms, their artful stewardship of this process could be distilled into a request for partners to “show up, listen, trust us, and follow through.” The ask is for us all to leverage our privileges and resources in service of what communities and people who have suffered are calling for. This roadmap offers a pathway toward the achievement of stewardship and land protection goals, while directly building a foundation for transformational change.
A key challenge for any forward-thinking conservation organization is prioritization—strategic thinking on where and how to deploy limited assets. The Niweskok project called a different and more expansive set of priorities to the surface: Investing $2 million to protect any property can prevent development on an important natural resource, but the same investment can also do so much more. The same investment can contribute directly to food security efforts; fill an essential need for space to teach and share knowledge, heritage, and history; and offer a rare opportunity to build the exact type of relationship across difference that leads to future collaboration and community organizing.
Photo courtesy of Niweskok
To acquire the Swanville property, land trust partners were asked to do things differently. Niweskok knew that the legal restrictions included in any conservation easement would reinforce two unacceptable relationships in future land use decisions.
Even the most flexible deed restrictions could, and frequently do, limit Indigenous landowners’ ability to steward the land following traditional practices. Dreams of meaningful programs and community-building efforts could blossom if the property could be home to new residences, infrastructure, or outbuildings. Even if the current group of partners involved in the project were willing to work hand in hand with Niweskok, a conservation easement recorded in the deed registry offers no guarantee of equivalent flexibility in perpetuity.
Second, an easement holder with legal authority to approve or deny Niweskok’s ability to shape the future of the land represents yet another manifestation of colonialism. Placing an easement on the property would perpetuate the conception of land as a commodity to be sold, owned, and governed by actors born from the very legal system that continues to deny Tribes the basic rights of sovereignty and self-determination. Supporting any effort that would result in white-led organizations controlling how Indigenous land stewards can or can’t relate to the land was a non-starter. This requirement, presented and held fast by Niweskok throughout a long and arduous process, necessitated a consensus understanding of the current and historic harms of conservation work and a unanimous willingness to contribute to the project, even if it didn’t directly contribute to metrics and outcomes typically used to evaluate successful conservation. Without any encumbrances on the property, there is technically no mechanism to ensure that Niweskok upholds the conservation practices and outcomes typically identified in an easement. Instead, external partners were asked to trust in the indelible, generational history of Indigenous land stewardship and the underlying ethos of considering land as kin.
This trust was challenged several times throughout the acquisition process—with board members and legal advisors expressing hesitation at (or opposition to) the idea of investing in a type of “permanent protection” that relied on history and relationship instead of easements and deeds. Some organizations that had committed to supporting Niweskok’s search hedged on previous commitments for fundraising support, or continued to push for a more familiar, “easier” model for access and transfer. But time, patience, and commitment prevailed, with new relationships and new funding sources ultimately resulting in the successful acquisition of the land.
Niweskok is working to restore the forests, farms, and fisheries of Penobscot Bay as a Wabanaki food hub. Photo courtesy of Niweskok
In a moment where “business as usual” in conservation circles is being upended in new and unsettling ways on a seemingly daily basis, and where traditional funding sources have been disrupted or dismantled, it is exceedingly important that our collective resources be allocated tactically. The federal turmoil that draws our attention today cannot distract from our baseline need to build community power and create alternative futures. Alivia Moore, one of Niweskok’s co-directors, shared their perspective: “Too often folks are looking to the government to address injustices to Indigenous & Black communities. [However,] we all have responsibility. Taking stock of the areas of access, relationships, and skills that people can leverage in support of justice and equity is critical. We cannot wait for someone else to do [the work] just because we perceive them as having more power or more responsibility. All we can control is ourselves and our choices. Will we make choices that lead toward transformation?”
Let us control what we can control and keep our eyes open to the need for transformative change. The status quo is insufficient in our shared goals of creating a just and equitable landscape and building communities centered on care and respect for each other and our surroundings. To achieve structural and systemic reform, our tactics need to respond to the disappearance of federal funding by digging into projects that optimize overlapping and intersecting values, even if they depart from a standard operating procedure.
The process and partnerships developed in Niweskok’s search for stable land tenure are not revolutionary in their nature—any organization can leverage its resources to support land return—but they are revolutionary in their impact. Facilitating opportunities for all of us to enjoy, create, or repair relationships with Nature is an important goal on its own, but creating those opportunities for neighbors with a deep and indelible understanding of what being actively and intentionally severed from Nature means, what it feels like, and how it hurts accomplishes much more.
“The ask is for us all to leverage our privileges and resources in service of what communities and people who have suffered are calling for. This roadmap offers a pathway toward the achievement of stewardship and land protection goals, while directly building a foundation for transformational change.”
The application of this transformative work could be done in any corner of the region and could support the return of farmland, forests, or fisheries—all of which have borne witness to the history of expulsion and genocide. To reclaim those broken bonds and foster the development of collective power and knowledge—the process is simple enough, but not necessarily easy. We must learn, listen, and examine our own roles and approaches, and ultimately redistribute power to communities who have had it taken from them. Doing so requires trust and relationships that may not yet exist, but it results in immediate benefits for all communities involved, and at the same time provides a new generation of leaders, allies, and champions with the relationships, power, and networks of support and sustenance they will need to pick up the pieces and build a better tomorrow.
Alex Redfield is the Policy Director for Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities. On the farm, in state government, and in conservation policy circles, his work for the past 20 years has centered on supporting a just transition of New England’s landscape towards an equitable future. He lives in South Portland, Maine.