Kuwesuwi Monihq (Pine Island)

Kuwesuwi Monihq (Pine Island)

Passamaquoddy

140 acres

As Wayne Newell describes in the Sunlight Media documentary on Kuwesuwi Monihq, Big Lake is a life-giving place, and the return of this island brings back part of that life. This land has always been retained in treaties but that changed when the island was renamed on the map and eventually sold to non-indigenous buyers, who subsequently prevented Passamaquoddy from accessing their relative, Kusewusi Monihq. When the island went up for sale, Chief Nicholas contacted First Light who worked closely with The Nature Conservancy to reacquire the stolen property. Once returned, the Passamaquoddy were able to gather with their relatives again and held a ceremony to honor the return to the land and the reconnection to the ancestors. If you want to learn more about this, see Kuwesuwi Monihq link in the first sentence and also a subsequent lecture was done with Micah Pawling, Associate Professor of History and Native American studies and Donald Soctomah, Passamaquoddy Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, that describes some of the underlying research that supported the return of this land.