PORTLAND, Maine — The city sits on unceded Wabanaki land. No treaty ever gave this territory to European settlers.
That fact was recently acknowledged in a preamble passage added to Portland’s city charter in 2022.
Now, the University of Southern Maine is giving a small nod to the same truth, funding a wall-sized mural created by Maine Mi’kmaq artist and alumna Marissa Joly.
The vibrant design is in an upstairs atrium inside USM’s gleaming, new McGoldrick Center for Career & Student Success. Joly is finishing the mural this week. The building will officially open in September.
Joly, 25, grew up in Auburn and earned an art degree from USM in 2021. She is a member of the Listuguj Mi’gmaq First Nation, whose tribal land sits on the Restigouche River in Quebec. She won the roughly $10,000 commission to create the mural in the spring after submitting a proposal in response to a call for art ideas.
Joly’s design features a large, purple turtle swimming through stylized, azure waves dotted with lighter blue bubbles. On the animal’s back is a circular medicine wheel, decorated with looping symbols.
The graceful curlicues represent secret designs invented by Native American children sent away to abusive boarding schools in Maine and all across North America.
“The turtle represents the land. In traditional creation stories, North America is considered Turtle Island — the Dawn Land,” Joly said, taking a break from painting on Monday.
That Dawn Land, often refers to what is now thought of as Maine, where the sun first strikes the East Coast each morning.
“Wabanaki means ‘People of the Dawn,’” Joly said. “And here, we’re all on Turtle Island. This is a recognition that we’re on Native land.”
The closest Europeans ever got to legalizing their permanent settlements around Portland came with the Treaty of Casco in 1678.
The agreement came after two years of bloodshed during King Philip’s War. New York-based English officials then in charge of Maine made the agreement with local Native Americans here.
According to its terms, the Wabanaki recognized settlers’ property rights but also retained sovereignty over all of Maine. This was symbolized by annual land use taxes which English families paid the Wabanaki in the form of corn. The treaty also guaranteed more equality in the fur-trading business.
But the English in Maine refused to abide by the Treaty of Casco’s terms.
According to the Maine Historical Society, fur traders continued their unfair practices and settlers placed nets across the Saco River, preventing fish from migrating upriver to Wabanaki villages.
Soon, it was all out war again.
The next local conflict ended with the destruction of Portland in 1690. French and Wabanaki forces attacked the town, killed nearly every inhabitant and left their bones bleaching in the sun. No English person dared return for years.
When they eventually did, they placed a 40-pound bounty on Wabanaki scalps.
Over the ensuing years, as Native American populations shrank and moved north — and the French withdrew to Canada — Portland grew into an important colonial shipping port.
The Treaty of Casco was eventually forgotten.
The USM mural is not Joly’s first Native American-themed piece of public art. Last year, she created similar murals at two Portland public schools.
Joly’s mural at Lyman Moore Middle School, completed last fall, includes a turtle representing the land, as well as fish standing in for local tribes. Also, a canoe represents travel and culture while a double curve along the border stands for unity among all nations.
Joly’s other Portland mural graces Amanda C. Row Elementary School.
Being chosen by USM to represent painful historic facts with art is a large responsibility, Joly said. But it’s also a point of pride.
“I feel immense honor to have been chosen, to be able to put my design up here, to honor my ancestors, and the people of the land, and the future generations to come,” she said.
Eventually, the university plans to install an informational kiosk nearby that will point Native American students toward campus resources they might not otherwise know about.
Joly formed an Indigenous peoples student group while she earned her degree at USM and is excited about the potentially unifying nature of her art. She hopes it brings other Native American students together.
“I wanted to find other Indigenous people when I came to college, and that was a struggle,” Joly said. “There are a lot of Indigenous people in Portland but they’re often invisible, even to each other. I want them to know we are here.”
