The Maine Humanities Council organizes an annual statewide community read program — Read ME — with two titles chosen by a Maine author. It was my honor and privilege to… Read more »
Article Topic: American Indian Affairs
Where things stand for Electoral Count Act reform, Maine tribal sovereignty bill
I cover Congress for The Portland Press Herald and have updates on where matters stand with two bills, one with national implications and spearheaded by Maine’s U.S. Senators, the other… Read more »
Maine’s congressional delegation brings home bacon
Earmarks are back and — as I cover Maine’s congressional delegation for the Portland Press Herald — I’ve been tracking how the requests for the Pine Tree State have progressed… Read more »
Talking with Penobscot Nation Ambassador Maulian Dana about tribal sovereignty in Maine
As readers of my 30-part Portland Press Herald series “Unsettled” know, Maine has treated the state’s Indian tribes horrifically within living memory, denying tribal people the right to vote, serve… Read more »
Reviewing Matthew Pearl’s “Taking of Jemima Boone” in Washington Monthly
“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 »
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 »
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 Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram 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.