First Light Spring Happenings & Updates

Dear community, 

When I first came into this work, and heard the word return, what I immediately pictured was the return of land. I think many of us do, and with good reason. Returning land to Indigenous Peoples is decolonization in its least metaphorical sense, physically restoring what was taken. Land is something we can all understand, feel our feet on the ground, see, smell, touch, and hear in the rushing of water, the wind, and the sound of birds. Land is sustenance, the source of all life. Giving the land back to an Indigenous Nation is easy to understand as a return, especially for those of us in the land trust world – it’s visible on a map, enshrined in a deed, and backed by law. 

I’ve been reflecting on the practice of return a lot recently, as someone newer to this work, who, in all honesty, is learning alongside all of you readers, even as I am responsible for putting written things out into the world. I’m learning so much from my colleagues at the Wabanaki Commission on Land & Stewardship, and I want to share an image with you that was created by Frances Soctomah, their Collaborative Fund Manager. She made this image to show how the strands of the Commission’s work weave together. Seeing it, something clicked for me, a broadening and deepening of what it means to return.

In the image, the three strands of sweetgrass that make up the braid each represent different facets of the Commission’s work – Land Return, Cultural Access, and Wolankeyutomone Kisi Apaciyewik, a caretaking fund. I realized I had been thinking about return only from one perspective, as in, non-natives return land to Wabananaki Nations. This is real, and it’s happening, and it’s an essential part of the braid of return. And, another way of thinking about return is, Wabanaki return to their lands. The two strands of cultural access and caretaking are about the people. Through cultural access, Wabanaki return to places in their homelands to harvest, hold ceremonies, care for the land, practice their cultures. Wolankeyutomone Kisi Apaciyewik brings more resources into Wabanaki communities for taking good care of the land and passing knowledge and skills to the next generations. To hold together, any braid needs multiple strands. To be a true return, land return must go hand in hand with people reconnecting with the land. 

This made me understand the role of nonnative partners in this work a little differently than before. Our role is to return, but this return goes beyond the physical. Our work is absolutely to continue returning land, and our work is also about returning the resources and the access that make it possible for Wabanaki land and people to return to each other.

With love, 
Jesse

Spotlight on Mesgilg Maqamigew
By Otto Muller

This June, nearly 3,400 acres of woods and wetlands are being returned to the Mi’kmaq Nation, doubling their landbase. They are calling it Mesgilg Maqamigew, “the big land.” We visited the land with Mi’kmaq Commissioners Shannon Hill and Richard Silliboy in April and saw moose tracks, brown ash saplings, healthy woods, and plenty of great fishing spots along Whitney Brook. Before this return, the largest piece of land held by the Nation has been a 658 acre parcel of the former Loring Air Force Base, which is far too contaminated for many uses. Mesgilg Maqamigew truly creates new possibilities for the Mi’kmaq Nation’s land relationships.

This is the sixth of the eleven Tributary Land Returns to be fully funded and returned to a Wabanaki Tribe. The first of the Tributary Land Returns returned 100 acres to the Mi’kmaq Nation in December 2024, and since then there have been returns to the Houlton Band of Maliseets (the North Branch of the Meduxnekeag), the Passamaquoddy Tribe (Patten Pond), and the Penobscot Nation (Hungry Island, and the Barnard Woods return). The remaining projects continue to raise funds. These include the expansive Wáhsehtəkʷ return to the Penobscots, lands returning to the Passamaquoddy Tribe on the South Branch of the Penobscot and Rocky Lake, and the return of an island in the mouth of the Kennebec to the Wabanaki Commission itself. In total, these eleven projects will return over 50,000 acres, making this historic collaboration between the Wabanaki Tribes and numerous non-native organizations one of the largest returns of private land in the history of the United States. We are more than halfway done and have raised 60% of the funds to complete all of these returns. 

The return of Mesgilg Maqamigew is a great example of the collaboration that has made this scale of work possible. It would not have been possible without partner support from the Nature Conservancy, Maine Coast Heritage Trust, and The Conservation Fund, as well as support from the Sewall Foundation, Maine Community Foundation, and the Solidaire Network. We are deeply grateful to the Mi’kmaq Nation and all of our partners to have the opportunity to take part in such powerful work, and are in awe of what is possible when we work together toward return and repair.

The second year of grantmaking for Wolankeyutomone Kisi Apaciyewik ("let us take good care of what has been returned") is underway. Wolankeyutomone Kisi Apaciyewik is the community participatory grantmaking program of the Wabanaki Commission on Land & Stewardship. It funds a wide range of work centered on restoring Wabanaki access and caretaking to lands and waters, and is unique for funding individuals, as well as Tribal governments and NGOs. Stay tuned for updates on the 2026 grantees, coming soon! 

We extend our deep gratitude to the First Light community for your continued support of Wolankeyutomone Kisi Apaciyewik. First Light organizations were instrumental in fundraising the money that made it possible to create the Fund, and since then, have been continuing to support the Fund through ongoing annual gifts.

Behind the scenes of our relearning work

Learning journeys are labors of love, projects that take months of planning, and enormous investments of time, research, and resources from First Light staff, facilitators, catalysts and dozens of Wabanaki and nonnative partners. In the past, our rhythm has been to run a learning journey every 2 to 3 years, making space for rest and planning between. Last fall, the Confluence Learning Journey came to a close, and this year, we take a pause.

But we also recognize the ongoing need and desire for the non-native conservation community to engage in relearning work between learning journeys, especially as organizations continue to welcome new staff and board members. For many years we’ve offered a Self-Guided Curriculum for people to learn at their own pace.

This year, we’re embarking on a project to build a new, and vastly expanded Self-Guided Curriculum. This curriculum will take the form of an interactive online course that can be taken in cohorts or individually. It will feature a series of longform video lectures distilling the most important informational content from the Confluence Learning Journey. It will include a second series of video discussions, where we reflect on the places we continue to learn and be challenged. Alongside, there will be readings, activities, prompts for individual reflection and group discussions, and concrete ways to join in work of return.

We’re having fun dreaming, planning, and building, and we hope you’ll enjoy and be inspired by this offering when it’s complete. We’ll film all of the content this fall, and we hope to launch the new Self-Guided Curriculum in spring 2027. 

Ellie’s conservation easement research
By Ellie Oldach

As our partnership with the Wabanaki Commission has developed, we’ve heard more about the challenges conservation easements can pose for Wabanaki land relationship and return. Yet conservation easements have been a widely-used tool of this community for a few decades, and are supported today by conservation policy, funding, technical expertise, and general know-how. It’s a tangle. So what do we do? Fortunately ideas about how to move forward together are abundant in the First Light community.

Since January 2026, I have been spending time conducting interviews and crunching data to understand the ideas out there about how conservation easements can flex or evolve to hold open possibilities for Wabanaki land relationship and return. At the end of May, I had the chance to share a midpoint update with the First Light Community. There are many active changes to conservation easement policy, practice, and funding already underway – and many more that we can imagine, together. I’d welcome your thoughts on this topic, and you can share those here.

In the fall, I’ll share out a response to questions received here and throughout the course of this project.

By Otto Muller

In our last newsletter, we shared some of First Light’s evolution over the past nine years. First Light is in the midst of a slow and intentional process through which the organization becomes an entity independent of our parent nonprofit, New Learning Journey. Since the Fall, First Light’s core team (Brett, Ellie, & Otto) have been working in collaboration with Jasmine Sudarkasa, an experienced organizational consultant, to understand and articulate the responsibilities that First Light holds in this work and to develop an organizational structure that will help us to be an effective partner and catalyst for meaningful change in this landscape. As with all aspects of our work, we have been working in close conversation with the Wabanaki Commission and are excited for the possibilities that will emerge in 2027.

Regional Gatherings

In late March and early April, we hosted three regional gatherings in Southern, Central, and Northern/Downeast Maine. These gatherings offered a space for members of the First Light community to connect and reconnect with others in our regions, share the work happening locally, reflect on successes, challenges and learnings, and strengthen the bonds that help this work move forward collectively. Read more about the gatherings here. 

Mending Circle
By Otto Muller

In May, we gathered with a number of people whose individual support is helping to make Wolankeyutomone Kisi Apaciyewik, the Tributary Land Returns, and First Light itself possible. In Phippsburg, just miles from the 1607 Popham Colony – one of the first prototypes of the whole settler-colonial project – we reflected on ways that this 419-year history shapes the overlay of futures we live in and the repair that is needed. We sat in conversation with Wabanaki Commission staff, and then we took a short boat ride to the island that is being returned through the Tributary Land Returns. Within sight of that initial footprint of the British colonial project, a prototype for decolonization is in the works, an experiment in working together to return land to Wabanaki care and kinship. It was a powerful experience, and I am deeply grateful for Darrell Newell’s thoughtful words, Isaac Syliboy’s song, the space of those rocky shores, and the presence of people willing to commit their resources to the transformative power of return.