BANGOR DAILY NEWS • March 11, 2026
The state of Maine and the tribes came out of the 1980 Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act (MICSA) with opposite understandings of what the state’s Maine Implementing Act said. Multiple actions by the state have since interfered with tribes’ attempts to independently run their affairs — and, in the tribes’ minds, denied them the core aspects of sovereignty they had negotiated in the Implementing Act. Things have gone downhill since. The best way forward is to adopt LD 785 now before the Legislature to implement the recommendations of the Task Force on Changes to the Maine Implementing Act. That will finally give internal matters the meaning long encoded in the canons of federal Indian law. ~ Evan Richert, former member of the Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission; Roger Milliken, board chair, Baskahegan Company