The challenge

The Wabanaki, or “People of the Dawn,” live in Maine and Canada in an informal confederacy of four tribes: the Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Penobscot, and Passamaquoddy. Maine’s two largest reservations are located in one of the most remote and economically deprived areas in the United States. Washington County has a per capita income of $9,607 with an average annual income on the reservations of $6,654. The unemployment rate is typically 63 percent; nearly 30 percent of those living on the reservation live well below the poverty level. Forty percent of the Native American population in Maine is under the age of 18, the school dropout rate is 30 percent, and the average educational achievement is the eighth grade. Some young people have no permanent homes and move from house to house seeking shelter. One third to one half of Wabanaki ages 15-30 are abusers of alcohol or drugs. Suicide rates for all native people in Washington County are high.

Seeds of commitment

“I grew up on a remote reservation in Maine, and my story is as common today as it was 20 years ago,” says Altvater. “Isolation, poverty, violence and unthinkable abuse. Throughout those endless years I carried an image in my mind of someone special who would one day come along and save me from the despair and evil that surrounded me.” Altvater was taken from the reservation at age 10 and placed in non-native foster homes around the state. She felt desperate and trapped. “I tried out for cheerleading and was overwhelmed with joy that I had made the squad only to have a group of girls cut my uniform into pieces, drag me into the bathroom and cut off my long black hair.” Her healing began the day she sat at a drum ceremony with a group of young people and smudged herself with cedar and sage. Smudging, she explains, is a traditional cleansing done with sacred medicines and an eagle feather to prepare people to work to their potential and to let go of the negative influences and thoughts that keep them stuck. “Something magical happened when we began to drum. I could feel a connection to all that was around me and I knew that I had finally found the place where I belonged. I was ready to try to be a special person to at least one child. I may not ride a beautiful white horse, as the person in my childhood image did, but I can touch with a loving hand, teach with a knowledge that can't be learned in books and lead with a courage that has emerged from great fear.”


Achievements

In a region where people and communities have been isolated and often powerless for decades, Denise Altvater has created a supportive web of connection and communication, which she views as anessential step to improving Wabanaki conditions. Early in Altvaters’s tenure on the staff of the American Friends Service Committee, most programs were run independently by people from outside the native communities. She combined the youth programs of the five reservations, and worked with adults from the tribes to help Wabanaki young people develop a sense of cultural and personal pride. This, she believed, would serve as an antidote to the isolation and oppression they faced. In the process, she believed, the tribes would learn new ways of working together. Under her leadership, A.F.S.C.'s Wabanaki Program has grown to become a vital hub of activity for youth while working for the rights of all indigenous people. “Over the past ten years, youth work has moved from sports-centered activities that take place on isolated reservations between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., to a nurturing community of concerned people who work across vast geographic distances and at all hours of day and night to ensure that our young people are cared for and listened to,” Altvater reports. While young people are primary constituents of the Wabanaki Youth Program, Denise’s work improves the lives of entire communities. Some recent examples: • Altvater and other Wabanaki adults who had been placed in foster homes as children helped train more than 500 Maine Department of Human Services workers in how to comply with a 1978 federal law designed to reduce the high number of native children being sent to live with non-native families. The training included education in Wabanaki culture and methods of keeping native children within their communities. • She is one of the primary organizers of an annual Youth Wellness Institute and helped create the Wabanaki Youth Alliance, which trains youths from each community in topics chosen by the young people: internalized repression, racism, suicide prevention and sexuality. •Altvater and Wabanaki youth leaders helped organize the National A.F.S.C. Indigenous Youth Gathering held in August, 2000 in Lake Tahoe, Calif. • She helped Wabanaki youth leaders design projects aimed at challenging homophobia in the community. • To combat school violence and racism against native youths, Altvater developed cultural exchanges among schools in the Northeastern United States. • She provided anti-racism and cutural training for Washington County jail guards. • She was one of six founders of Silent Cry, a group for sexual abuse survivors, which transformed itself into an activist group called Screaming Eagle. • In March, she helped organize the Indigenous Women's Voices Gathering at the University of Southern Maine, a ground-breaking event providing women and girls with the opportunity to learn, drum and sing.


Her leadership style

Altvater integrates traditional spiritual and cultural practices into all of her work. She has woven Wabanaki traditions into the program, including talking circles (an approach to community problem-solving), healing rituals and lessons in Wabanaki history. She considers collaborative leadership particularly important to the tribes of Maine because “so many problems are rooted in the personal and cultural isolation that Wabanaki experience. Transformation depends on building healthy relationships among people and groups, and so my leadership style involves cultivating deeper respect and trust. This means sharing of leadership and a reconnection to our traditions.” In her work, she uses the teachings of the traditional Medicine Wheel, “which include the concepts of balance, harmony, interconnectedness and aligning spirit with intent. We embrace conflict as a guidance system and tool for growth.”


The future

The Wabanaki Program has developed a sustainable team of youth leaders, professional youth workers and volunteers. “We hold quarterly weekend gatherings on different reservations, bringing youth from these tribes together to build cultural awareness and bonds for the future,” she says. The program also nurtures greater understanding between native youth and non-native youth through cultural exchanges, hosting youth groups from Boston, Chicago and other cities and towns and sending Native youth to those cities. Altvater believes that something essential has returned to the people, and that the young will carry it forward. Long ago, she says, the Wabanaki people of the region that became Maine and Eastern Canada assembled in an annual gathering. “They would bring the Sacred Fire that bound all of the communities together. The Sacred Fire was entrusted to one community during the year and, at the end of that year, the community leaders would bring it - literally, run it – to the annual gathering. There, the fire would be transferred to the care of another Wabanaki community. This tradition and ritual bound the people together. One hundred years went by without the Sacred Fire ritual.” In recent years, as the Wabanaki have rediscovered their cohesion and traditions, the Sacred Fire ritual has returned.


More about Denise Altvater and the Wabanaki

“There are seven prophecies of the Wabanaki and we believe that we are currently in the time of the seventh fire. The first prophecy spoke of the chosen ground that is shaped like a turtle, which will begin and end our journey. The second speaks of our camps along the great waters and loss of the sacred shell of our direction. The third marks the time when the path is found to the chosen ground, where food grows upon water. The fourth fire told of the coming of the light skinned people and what to expect. The fifth told of a time of great struggle that will grip the lives of all Native people. The sixth tells of sickness and the loss of balance in our lives through the taking of our children and loss of the teachings, which would result in many losing their will to live. The seventh fire is upon us. New people will emerge to retrace the steps of our ancestors, find what was lost and light the eternal fire of peace. We were told of a great healing that would start in the east and move to the south during the seventh fire. We would know when that time has come because the heartbeat of our Mother, through the drum, would once again be heard. The drum was lost for many years. It was the youth who brought the drum back, and the youth who continue to honor it.”
– Denise Altvater