“The frontier” has played a huge role in the American imagination, a place where civilization and savagery supposedly met and the former — with allegedly heroic intent and deeds —… Read more »
Article Topic: American Indian Affairs
Penobscot elder Donna Loring on the future of Maine-tribal relations
Donna Loring has for decades been a major figure in Maine-tribal relations: legislator, tribal council member, aide to two governors, author and public intellectual. Now, fresh off her time… Read more »
Racist names banned by Maine law decades ago still on official registry
Based on a reader’s tip, last week I discovered that Maine’s official registry of coastal islands still contained several with names banned by law decades ago, including three with the… Read more »
Colony, the Press Herald Maine Bicentennial series, concludes
With the world facing the biggest social, economic, and epidemiological crisis in at least two generations, I neglected to post the final two installments of “Colony,” my six part Maine… Read more »
Colony, Chapter 3: Massachusetts’ conquest of Maine
Maine is celebrating the bicentennial of its statehood this year, but the story of our beginnings lies in the millennia and centuries that preceded March 15th, 1820, the day we… Read more »
Colony, Chapter 2: Maine and Massachusetts were different from the start
Maine is celebrating the bicentennial of its statehood this year, but the story of our beginnings lies in the millennia and centuries that preceded March 15th, 1820, the day we… Read more »
Colony, a six-part series on Maine’s long path to statehood
Maine is celebrating the bicentennial of its statehood this year, but the story of our beginnings lies in the millennia and centuries that preceded March 15th, 1820, the day we… Read more »
Speaking on history of immigration in Maine, Portland, Jan. 18
Portland Ovations is convening a panel discussion on the history of immigration in Maine on January 18th at the Maine Historical Society in Portland, and I’m pleased to be taking… Read more »
Talking about the Don Gellers pardon with NPR
Late last fall my plane touched down at National Airport in Washington, I turned on my phone and there was an interview request from a reporter at NPR interested in… Read more »
Don Gellers, victim of state sponsored conspiracy, receives full, posthumous pardon in Maine
In a 31-part Portland Press Herald series on the Passamaquoddy tribe’s epic struggles with Maine, “Unsettled,” I told the story of Donald Gellers, the idealistic young attorney who, in the… Read more »
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist. He is the author of six books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently State and National Affairs Writer at the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram, where he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2016. He is a contributing editor at POLITICO and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.