Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Rena Newell, center, chief of the Passamaquoddy at Sipayik, watches Thursday as votes are tabulated in the Maine House of Representatives. Lawmakers sustained Gov. Mills’ veto of a bill that would have expanded tribal rights in Maine. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer
The old T.S. Eliot line came to mind last week as the Maine Legislature finally brought its protracted session to an end.
“The biggest drama was limited to the House,” one of our news reports noted, “which tried to override the governor’s veto of a tribal rights bill but fell 10 votes shy.”
In response to this latest revolution of the merry-go-round of attempts at reform for Maine tribes, Gov. Mills said, again, that the better way forward is to negotiate.
If that’s the case, Maine needs to see it start happening immediately.
The House ultimately voted 84-57 for the override, but that fell short of the two-thirds support needed to overturn Mills’ veto of L.D. 2004, An Act to Restore Access to Federal Laws Beneficial to the Wabanaki Nations, sponsored by House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross.
The fate of the bill, the subject of both mounting tribal hopes and considerable political and public pressure, was ultimately in the hands of the single Democrat and 12 Republican representatives who voted in favor of it in June (when it passed by a comfortable 100-47 in the House and 26-8 in the Senate) and subsequently, for reasons that have not been particularly well explained, chose not to push past the veto.
In the short term, Gov. Mills has succeeded in averting this proposed legislative change and must be feeling relieved. In the long term, however, relief seems to be a very distant prospect; tribes in Maine are arguably more organized and more vocal about gaining sovereignty than ever.
The findings of a Harvard Kennedy School report released late last year – identifying Maine tribes as being “at the bottom of the barrel” economically and wielded many times since by supporters of tribal sovereignty – followed in March by an emotional, rallying State of the Tribes address before a joint session of the Legislature, unattended by the governor because of a scheduling conflict, both sharpened public interest in the concept of tribal sovereignty denied.
“I do not wish to have a confrontation,” Mills said last year after opposing a previous tribal sovereignty bill. “It would serve no constructive purpose and only inflame emotions on all sides of the discussion, while likely harming the positive and constructive relationship we have worked so hard to build.”
The furious reactions of tribal leaders and advocates last week does not suggest there is an easy road ahead. If anything, the successful veto of L.D. 2004 risks having further corroded relations and trust – both of which will have to be carefully restored before any of the visualized “line by line” negotiation between the parties is achievable. At least once last week the governor was called a “tyrant” and “out of touch.”
“Waiting a few more years for a new governor is what we will do if we must,” said Ambassador Maulian Bryant of the Penobscot Nation in one of the most forceful statements. “We were here long before Gov. Mills, and we will be here long after she leaves office.”
If a collaborative, respectful approach has been successful in the past, as the governor says, it patently has not been successful enough. There’s no reason the Penobscot Nation and its three federally recognized counterparts should have to wait in the wings for years to pursue the change they so fervently desire.
As this editorial board wrote earlier this year, among the first steps in the direction of negotiation must be the adoption of a far more open and direct style of communication by the governor and her office on this subject. “Responding in legal terms to cultural and symbolic calls sends its own message,” we wrote. Little has changed since March; indeed, the spare characterization or rationale for opposition has not really evolved since Mills became governor.
No doubt, this is a sensitive matter. It is also exceedingly complex; even those opposed to recent legislative efforts say they are not fighting for the status quo to be maintained, Mills’ chief legal counsel Gerald Reid among them (“None of this is to say that the Settlement Act should not be changed,” Reid acknowledged in a Press Herald op-ed.) At the moment, though, it’s hard for most of us to interpret what opponents are doing as anything other than fighting the tribes.
What might be considered standing offers and invitations to start or restart dialogue on federal laws and legislative opportunities should be reissued now, in light of recent events, and taken seriously by all parties: the tribes, the state and, critically, Maine’s congressional delegation. The alternative to an approach powered by sincerity and humility is sustained inaction and tension. It’s clear we’ve had more than enough of both already.
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