The Maine Women Writers Collection holds historical and contemporary materials related to Native people from Alaska, Greenland, and the homelands of the Abenaki and Wabanaki people. The narratives in many sources highlight the views of settlers or explorers about the Native people they encountered. More contemporary volumes and manuscript collections offer narratives of Native people from their own perspective. Situated as we are on the land of the Wabanaki people, we continue to build a more representative collection that highlights Native voices and honors the history of this place.
Archival Material
Donna M. Loring papers, 1956–2016, undated
Loring served as the Penobscot Tribal Representative in the Maine State Legislature from 1998-2003 and 2007-2008. Her papers offer an in-depth perspective into the work of Maine’s tribal representatives, and to her experience and work in the legislature. Also includes drafts of Loring’s autobiographical work In the Shadow of the Eagle: A Tribal Representative in Maine (2008) and materials related to the history of Maine’s tribes, the Maine Indian Land Claims settlement, and Native arts and culture.
Photojournalist at the Juneau Alaska Empire, and who covered crime and politics for the Fairbanks News Miner. Receipt of an Alicia Patterson fellowship and a Rockefeller Foundation grant in 1972 helped her to establish a national reputation reporting on Native Americans. From 1974 to 1987, she served as reporter and photographer for Alaska Northwest Publishing and was assigned to visit every Alaska village named in the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement. The collection contains clippings, notes and photographs documenting Alaska’s Native people and the land claims settlement.
Marie Ahnighito Peary papers, 1862-1995
Peary was born in 1893 in Greenland and wrote about the land and its people throughout her life. She collected clippings, memos and correspondence in multiple scrapbooks where she documented her activities and her family’s legacy of exploration. In 1932, she returned to Greenland to direct the building of a monument to her father. The scrapbook and diary of this expedition document her interactions with many Inuit people during the voyage and the construction of the monument.
Mary R. Calvert collection, 1975-1996
Mary Calvert was born in 1904 in Madison, Maine. Calvert and her husband built a home in East Boothbay, Maine and spent several years researching their region in Maine, developing expertise on the Abenaki Indians, French missionaries, and early economic development of the area. In 1975-1976 Calvert accompanied the Arnold Expedition reenactment and the last log drives down the Kennebec River; the photographic documentation of this trip formed the basis of her two-volume set on the subject. Dawn Over the Kennebec came out in 1983, and was followed by The Kennebec Wilderness Awakens in 1986.
