By Susan Young, Of the NEWS Staff                                                                                                        Bangor Daily News  4/17/01

ROCKPORT — Wayne Newell gets a little irked when he reads school history books that refer to Maine’s Indian tribes in the past tense as if they have all disappeared.

At a conference of tribal representatives from across New England, Newell, an elder of the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Indian Township, urged his fellow American Indians to remind the state and the world that they are still here. And they want clean air and clean water like they had centuries ago before the arrival of Europeans.

"To look at our heritage in the past tense is truly a mistake," Newell said Monday during a gathering of tribal elders at the start of the three-day tribal environmental conference at the Samoset Resort.

Newell and other tribal officials shared stories of growing up along Passamaquoddy Bay and the Penobscot River and catching fish that were so plentiful they could be scooped from the water in pans. Others talked of gathering medicinal plants in the woods and water.

The fish and plants are gone, they said, because of air and water pollution. The culprit pointed to most often was the paper companies that dot rivers throughout the state. The Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes are now involved in a protracted legal battle with three paper companies over tribal records and water regulation. Three tribal governors were sentenced to jail as part of the battle.

John Stevens, also a Passamaquoddy, told of catching four or five fish for breakfast. Now, he said, you can fish for months without catching anything.

He said this is because of pollution from paper companies.

"I’m not saying we need to stop making paper," Stevens said. "But we need to look at how we do it."

He said he doesn’t want to put people out of work by shutting down mills, but believes that paper can be made without using toxic chemicals that end up in the water.

"If we can do better, let’s do better," Stevens said.

He was adamant that he and his fellow American Indians did not sign away their culture, which includes sustenance fishing, hunting and gathering of plants, when they signed the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act. The 1980 document supposedly resolved long-standing disputes over how much land the tribes owned and what rights they maintained. It turns out, the act didn’t settle anything.

"I didn’t give up anything," Stevens said. "I’m going to fight like hell. I’m going to fight like hell for survival, for the survival of my grandchildren."

Although other speakers only made passing references to it, the tribes are engaged in a fight with the paper companies.

When the state applied two years ago for the authority to issue federal wastewater discharge permits under the Clean Water Act, as 44 other states do, the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes contested the application. The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency should regulate discharges into waters that flow through Indian territory, because the state is too beholden to paper companies, the tribes argued.

In states where the EPA has delegated authority to state agencies to issue such permits, the federal government retains the authority in Indian lands.

Three paper companies – Champion International, Great Northern and Georgia Pacific – then asked the tribes for all their documents relating to water quality issues. The tribes refused, saying water quality is an internal tribal matter.

The companies then filed a formal request for the documents under the Maine Freedom of Access law. The tribes said the law did not cover internal tribal documents. The paper companies went to court and a state court judge late last year sentenced three tribal governors to jail for not turning over the documents.

Rather than go to jail, the governors appealed to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, which has heard the case and will issue a ruling any time now. A similar case is also pending before the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which also may rule at any time. The state intervened in the lawsuits on behalf of the paper companies.

In the meantime, the EPA ruled that it was delegating permitting authority to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection in the majority of the states. However, the agency said it needed more guidance before deciding how to deal with the issue in Indian territory, which in this case means along the Penobscot and St. Croix rivers, and asked the U.S. Department of Justice for advice. That advice has yet to be given.

One thing the paper companies said they are seeking is "secret" agreements that were signed by the tribes and the EPA. Such agreements were signed at a similar conference two years ago.

Bob Goetzl, the manager of state grants and Indian programs for the EPA, said Monday that such agreements are part of a national program and are far from being secret. The agency has tried to negotiate the agreements, which deal with federal grant money and environmental monitoring programs, with all the country’s federally recognized Indian tribes.

Goetzl said the EPA could have tried harder to make the state aware of the agreements, but the fact they were signed at a gathering of hundreds of people show they are not covert.

No such agreements were to be signed at this conference, he said.

The purpose of this gathering, the fourth of its kind funded largely by the EPA, was to enable tribes from the New England states to share information about the environmental monitoring efforts.

Asked what his agency intended to do to address concerns over the loss of fish and plants because of pollution, Goetzl said the EPA was "at the stage of trying to understand the threats better."

He said the EPA was analyzing the situation and seeing if there was anything the agency should do.

While tribal elders admitted the situation was better than it had been in recent years, there was still a long way to go, they said. But they are far from giving up their battle for a cleaner environment.

"If we don’t win, you don’t win either," Newell said.