We Commit: If you are Wabanaki and you are reading this, this sign means you are home. It means the organization is partnered with our We Commit program to provide access to walk the land, just as your ancestors did. What lands? When!? Currently, we are working primarily with Maine Coast Heritage Trust to pilot this effort on seven of their properties for 2025 and they are eager to expand. One quick aspect to clarify, we are not determining what lands to include for cultural access, these seven lands are offerings meant to demonstrate a commitment to this program and we are eager to expand based on where Wabanaki people want to go so reach out! 

Where did this idea come from? The idea for this program came from our deep collaboration with Land Trusts and learning how a majority of land trusts or organizations use similar funds, like the North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) to acquire lands that become what land trusts call ‘preserves’ or ‘conservation lands’. Funding sources often come with restrictions for the land acquired, and some can be complex and not a good fit for cultural access, unless there was something very specific and or culturally significant to offer for cultural access. For most lands that used a source like NAWCA, this focuses protections primarily on migratory birds so that means for cultural access, there are many opportunities to do this while protecting those birds. Likewise, we want We Commit to provide as many opportunities for cultural access as possible, to continue to grow our network by being guided by Wabanaki interests and offerings from the land trust community. There is a lot going on here so we wanted to provide some explanations on some of the areas below: 

Why Wabanaki Cultural Access? So-called voluntary conservation work in Maine began in the early 1900s and was largely designed for non-indigenous access to hunting, fishing, and experiences on the land, like hiking. This means that in the time conservation has existed, it has not devoted significant energy to Wabanaki Cultural Access but has developed a number of other focuses for public activities, such as support and creation of ATV and Snowmobile Trails, which supports winter outdoor recreation economies. To the coast, walk-in access is a priority for the clam fishery and coastal real estate sales can impact walk-in access for clammers. Maine Coast Heritage Trust provides an example of how a land trust acquires land to develop a program specific for this population to create access to support their livelihoods as well. These represent powerful offerings that support the public and also community wellbeing, which should expect to increase given The State of Maine has goals to increase lands under conservation from 20% to 30% by 2030. This means that opportunities for outdoor experiences will expand significantly, and the creation of a Wabanaki Cultural Access program would fit into any other program land trusts or other groups create to enhance the well-being of the public and communities.

Ecological and Legal Terrain: Cultural access is complex. In what is called Maine, about 20% of land is under some form of conservation and who “owns” or ‘holds title to’ that land is an important factor, as some are federal lands, public lands, state lands, conservation lands and so on. Even within that, each one can be broken down further, for instance there are some public lands you can gather plants on that have restrictions on hunting and there are some public lands where you can hunt but have restrictions on harvesting plants. All of these different entities come with different policy restrictions too, such as federal lands tend to have authority in intertidal spaces but land trusts do not. We Commit works primarily with Land Trusts because the legal structures are much easier to create access since they are entities already managing places for public interest. See here for more information about Land Trusts. Lastly, we do engage with some of these other groups as well, like we want people to be aware that public lands there are hunting and plant gathering opportunities but anything changing those structures is much more difficult. 

Business as Usual Cultural Access: Typically, cultural access agreements are completed by individual tribal citizens, groups, or nations with a specific land group to provide access for cultural-based activities that are allowed within the land-groups easements. In the best case scenario, access is created and minimal time is spent by Wabanaki people advocating for access. The major issue is that land groups are still in control of defining how access occurs and with over 80+ (check) land groups, that means there is potential for dozens of different ways access becomes defined by land groups and no common mechanism to provide information about access across organizations. With the few access conversations we have been part of, we have noticed a few patterns: 

• They can be very time intensive, both with the volume of work and the time it takes for people to get on the land, which means that any seasonal harvesting will likely have to occur in the following year.  
• Resources or information to support land access are not well organized and will exist in different forms across land-based entities.  
• Land-based entities have boards that center science over indigenous knowledge, which means surveillance and reporting of activities can become a requirement.
• Land managers can have a very mixed understanding of Wabanaki gathering practices. 
• Overall power dynamics are not balanced, not only do Wabanaki people have to advocate for relations in their homeland, they have to prove their stewardship, and also adhere to any and all rules created by land-based entities. 

A Relational Pathway Forward: Key elements of ‘we commit’ are recentering power dynamics in this agreement, redistributing the work of access on conservation groups, and creating a platform for consistent forms of access and information sharing. Starting at the beginning, instead of tribal citizens, groups, or nations signing an agreement to the terms of access, we are stating what the terms of access are, which is simply the ability to walk the land, period. This means land groups are recognizing Wabanaki never gave up their rights to walk the land as their ancestors and want them to feel welcome and safe in their homeland. It redistributes work because rather than Wabanaki people having to prove their stewardship or provide education about their activities, land trusts or title holders or holder organizations will be providing information to support Wabanaki access. Here are some examples of that

• Contact information for regional land stewards
• Natural resource inventories that can help inform trips to land parcels
• Current restrictions for harvesting, like from funding sources (e.g. birds and NAWCA) or presence of endangered species protected by state or federal laws.
• Information about the boundaries of the parcel (a map, or GIS shapefile if available)
• Lastly, by providing access and information in consistent ways, now we can work across organizations and provide this information through a future private website to Wabanaki people.