Island Journal
Nurturing Native Knowledge
Like most kids growing up on the Penobscot Reservation at Indian Island, just north of Bangor, Donna Loring traveled across the river to Old Town to attend high school. She didn’t like it.
In those days, the Old Town High School mascot was an Indian. “I would be made fun of and discriminated against,” recalls Loring, now a Penobscot Elder. She eventually secured a scholarship to the now-closed Glen Cove Christian Academy in Rockport. In neither school did her education include one word about the Wabanaki—the People of the Dawn—who have lived for more than 12,000 years in what is today called Maine. SEE MORE