Word: indianized
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...TINY ISLAND in the middle of the Penobscot River in northern Maine lives a band of four hundred Native Americans. The island, dubbed Indian Island to notify the tourists, is a picturesque spot for a Sunday drive. But behind the plywood wigwams that advertise "REAL MOCCASINS" and "REST ROOMS" the Penobscot Indians subsist in tattered shelters that the tourists never manage to discover. For the Penobscot are among the poorest of the Native American tribes...
Poor, that is, until a federal judge awarded the Penobscot Indians 180 years back rent on two-thirds of the state of Maine. Indian Island has been the sparse, rocky home of the Indians for many generations--but not forever. Before 1794, the Penobscot roamed the Maine woods freely from the Canadian border down to what is now Massachusetts. In that year the Indians, fearing loss of their land as white settlements encroached on their territory, petitioned Massachusetts, which then included Maine, for a title to their land. Massachusetts generously obliged with a title to a 23,000-acre region...
...collateral might not even belong to them. Several state and federal agencies ceased financial transactions in the area claimed by the tribes. The size of the settlement, and prospects for recapture of the land itself, drew thousands of Penobscots and Passamaquoddies out of anonymity. Letters deluged the Bureau of Indian Affairs from people requesting certification of genealogical ties to the tribes. Even the Department of State received inquiries from overseas...
...precedents spread with the speed of earthquake tremors. The validating of the Nonintercourse Act cracked open a floodgate that had bottled up dozens of similar Indian land suits. Last month, descendants of the 90 Wampanoag Indians who provided five deer for the first Thanksgiving feast in Plymouth contested the ownership of the entire town of Mashpee, Mass., a total of 16,000 acres of developed and undeveloped land. Within days, real estate sales stopped, building came to a halt, and supermarket sales plummeted as buyers wondered whether the courts would allow them to keep items purchased within city limits. Officials...
...magnitude of this sum that jolted Maine Governor James Longley into action. (Maine's annual budget averages about half a billion dollars.) Or it may have been the realization that the contested land splits the state into two distinct regions--areas that, if separated, could communicate only through the Indian territory, Canada, or the sea. Whatever the reason, Longley became scared enough to contact members of the state's Congressional delegation, to see what could be done. In response, several legislators introduced a resolution that would have limited the Indian's potential award to a cash settlement. But Congress adjourned...