Wabanaki Confederacy

The Wabanaki Confederacy is an alliance of five Eastern Algonquian nations of the far north-east of North America: the Abenaki, the Mi'kmaq, the Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet), the Passamaquoddy and the Penobscot. Formed in the 1680s to face Haudenosaunee pressure and English expansion, it fought in a long series of colonial wars as an ally of the French. Colonial authorities reportedly declared it disbanded in 1862, but its member nations endured, and the confederacy was revived in 1993.

Wabanaki means "Dawnland", the land of the east where the sun rises, from the Algonquian roots for light or east and for land. Its territory spans the American states of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, with parts of Quebec. Smaller groups such as the Pennacook and Sokoki were absorbed over time into the five larger nations. The member peoples had their own names for the alliance; the Penobscot, for example, called it "those united into one".

European fishermen came to these coasts in the early sixteenth century, and the encounters were often violent: in 1500 the Portuguese explorer Gaspar Corte-Real seized at least 57 people from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to sell in Europe. Trade grew alongside, and the French had permanent trading ties with the Wabanaki peoples by about 1581. Samuel de Champlain met the sakom Asticou of the Mawooshen Confederacy, an earlier alliance centred near today's Bangor, in 1604. French Acadia grew up within Wabanaki lands, the two coexisting as separate but allied societies. The fur trade unsettled old patterns: wars broke out between the Mi'kmaq and their allies and the Mawooshen from around 1607, and an epidemic in 1616–1619 killed a large part of the local population.

From the 1640s, French-backed Algonquian peoples joined against the expanding Haudenosaunee. After King Philip's War (1675–1676) and the First Abenaki War with English colonists, ended by the Treaty of Casco, the Eastern Algonquians formalised their union in the 1680s at the Caughnawaga Council, with Ottawa help. Passamaquoddy wampum records describe seven silent days of reflection before the council opened and laws were made. The member nations agreed to share hunting grounds, protect trade, allow free movement and marriage between villages, and defend one another.

The confederacy had no capital and no single ruler. Councils of sakoms, leaders valued more for eloquence than for command, met at council fires and decided by consensus after long debate. Wampum belts recorded agreements and carried messages, and elders kept a cross-checked oral record. Kinship terms set each nation's place: the Penobscot were the "elder brother", while the Passamaquoddy, Wolastoqiyik and Mi'kmaq were younger brothers. New sakoms were confirmed by delegations from allied nations in assemblies that could last weeks.

The Wabanaki fought in a long run of wars, from King Philip's War to the French and Indian War of 1754–1763, raiding English settlements along the Kennebec and Androscoggin rivers. War, famine and disease took a severe toll. After Britain's victory in 1763, colonial policy marginalised the Wabanaki peoples, and settlers from New England and Europe took over much of their land. In 1862 the colonial government reportedly declared the confederacy disbanded.

The five nations continued to meet, and in 1993 the confederacy was formally re-established at a gathering hosted by the Mi'kmaq community of Listuguj, where the council fire was relit. Since then it has asserted treaty rights and taken positions on land and water; in 2015 the Grandmothers' Declaration called for language revitalisation and free, prior and informed consent for development, and confederacy representatives have opposed oil pipelines and open-pit mines in their territory.

Our 1492 map labels this region "Wabanaki (Dawnland Confederacy)", an approximate outline of the five nations' homelands; the confederacy itself took formal shape in the 1680s. Neighbours include the Innu to the north; the French colony of New France was founded within and beside Wabanaki lands only in the early seventeenth century.