MAINE, USA — Voters across the state decided to approve a referendum question Tuesday night that will include three previously omitted sections Maine's tribal nations say will help restore gaps in history.
Question 6 read as follows on the Maine ballot:
"Do you favor amending the constitution of Maine to require that all of the provisions of the constitution be included in the official printed copies of the constitution prepared by the Secretary of State?"
Three sections from Article 10 in Maine's original state constitution—sections one, two, and five—were omitted from official printed copies after a statewide vote in 1875, creating a shortened form of the document.
The omitted sections detail the Acts of Separation that allowed Maine to become an independent state in 1820 and include language requiring Maine to follow treaties Massachusetts made with Indigenous tribes.
Wabanaki ambassadors say including the previously omitted sections in the printed version of Maine's constitution will help to restore the state's Indigenous history and create transparency between state government and its constituents.
In simpler terms, three sections from Article 10 in Maine’s original state constitution were omitted from official printed copies after a statewide vote in 1875, creating the short-form version of the document that is used today.
Those omitted sections include sections one, two and five, which detail the Acts of Separation that allowed Maine to become an independent state in 1820, separating from Massachusetts. The language in the sections is symbolic of a divorce between the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and what is now Maine.
Section five in particular includes language that requires Maine to honor the same treaties that Massachusetts made with indigenous tribes in the 1770s before Maine declared its statehood.
Those three sections have not appeared in official printed copies of the constitution since 1876. By voting yes on Question 6 voters are agreeing to have those three sections restored to the official printed copies of the document.
Ambassadors from Maine's tribal Wabanaki Nations said reinstating the three sections in article 10 that were omitted from the historic document can create transparency between the state government and its constituents and restore parts of Maine's indigenous population's history.
"Wabanaki people are just as much a part of Maine’s constitutional heritage as anyone else," tribal ambassador of the Houlton Band of Maliseets Osihkiyol Crofton-Macdonald said.