Visit the PMA on Indigenous People’s Day with FREE admission for all!
Take a self-guided tour of the galleries: In honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we invite you to consider multiple perspectives and narratives in the following artworks with curiosity and wonder. While some of these artworks ask us to dream up imagined lands and people, many have strong ties to the people and places of what we now know as “Maine”. The concept of Maine is relatively new, considering Wabanaki peoples have lived on these lands for millennia and continue to hold a deep understanding of these lands and waters. Wabanaki, “People of the Dawn,” is a regional identity including members of the Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Maliseet/Wolastoq, Mi’kmaq, and Abenaki. The Dawnland refers to the entire Wabanaki home territory, which includes the lands and waters in what we now call “Maine”. A self-guided exploration handout will be available and is intended to provide us all with new ways to engage with artworks that relate in some way to the people and places around us.
Join us for a special performance, “The Firefly Experience,” in the Selma Wolf Black Great Hall from 4:30-5:30 p.m.: Musician Firefly seeks to illuminate the beauty and healing power of his ancient indigenous culture through music, visuals and creativity. As a member of the Penobscot Nation, Firefly is helping to place Indigenous people in a modern context. Firefly believes that through creative frequencies, we can begin to heal humanity and evolve to new levels of love, compassion and wellness.
Catch a free screening of Bounty: The film, part of the Dawnland film series, reveals the hidden story of the Phips Proclamation, one of many scalp-bounty proclamations used to exterminate Native people in order to take their land in what is now New England. In the film, Penobscot parents and children resist erasure and commemorate survival by reading and reacting to the government-issued Phips Proclamation’s call for colonial settlers to hunt, scalp, and murder Penobscot people. The film will screen in full every 10 minutes between 2 pm and 4:30 pm. These screenings are free and open to the public, and tickets are not required.
For Jason Brown, Firefly is a music keeper of the Penobscot Nation whose goal is to “use music to both entertain people and educate them about racial injustice, historical trauma, and collective healing.” Wabanaki people, including the Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, and Abenaki nations, have inhabited the Land of the Dawn, or what is now northern New England, the Canadian Maritimes, and Quebec, since time immemorial according to oral histories, and for at least 13,000 years according to archaeological records.
