MPBN: Penobscot Nation upset about state inspection of buses

Thursday, September 15, 2011  

"For members of the Penobscot Indian Nation, few provisions of the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act of 1980 are as sacred as the sections of the document that acknowledge the tribe's inherent sovereignty as a nation within a nation. So when members of the Maine State Police crossed the bridge from Old Town onto the Indian Island reservation last Saturday, tribal chief Kirk Francis expected that the visit involved something more important than a traffic check.

"This has just created a lot of tension in the community--a lot of animosity in the community," Francis says.

On this particular Saturday, 15 buses had traveled to the island from out-of-state. They were transporting 1,000 people who showed up to play in the tribe's High-Stakes Beano Game.

But the state troopers who arrived at the island were not members of the department's games of chance division. Instead they were from the traffic safety unit and were there to check to see that the buses and their drivers were operating legally--something that Francis could have been done anywhere between the time they crossed into Maine and before they entered Penobscot Nation territory."

Get the Story:
Maine's Penobscot Nation Protests State Bus Inspections (Maine Public Broadcasting Network 9/14)