Great Falls Forum with Maulian Bryant and Joseph Hall
The 2024-2025 season of the Great Falls Forum continues Thursday, March 20th, featuring Maulian Bryant, Executive Director of the Wabanaki Alliance, and Bates College history professor Joseph Hall with a talk entitled “Wabanakis Then and Now.” This free, public program will take place from 12 noon to 1 PM in Callahan Hall at the Lewiston Public Library.
Maulian Bryant (formally Maulian Dana) was named Executive Director of the Wabanaki Alliance in December 2024. She has been with the Alliance since its founding in 2020, serving for four years as President of the Wabanaki Alliance Board.
Bryant served as the first Penobscot Nation Tribal Ambassador from 2017-2024, having been appointed by Penobscot Nation Chief Kirk Francis. As Ambassador, Bryant acted as a representative of the Penobscot Nation and liaison for the Nation at the local, state, and federal levels of government in order to educate and advocate for policy and laws that impact and protect the Penobscot Nation’s sovereignty, culture, natural resources, and the general welfare of the Penobscot people.
Prior to her work as Ambassador, Bryant served as an elected member of the Penobscot Nation Tribal Council. She grew up on Indian Island within the Penobscot Nation’s Reservation and is the daughter of former Penobscot Nation Chief Barry Dana, who served from 2000-2004. Bryant graduated from the University of Maine in Orono with a degree in political science. In 2022, Colby College presented her with an honorary doctorate for her work on equity issues and policy.
Bryant is an outspoken advocate on the issue of derogatory mascots and imagery. Her advocacy resulted in the state of Maine enacting laws that changed the annual Columbus Day in October to Indigenous Peoples Day and prohibited public schools from using derogatory mascots. Her other passion is finding ways to strengthen and expand programs that help to preserve and teach the customs and traditions of the Penobscot people. She is a loving mother to three daughters and centers them in much of her work making the state and country a safer and more equitable place for her children and all tribal people. She believes in leading with love and making progress by finding shared humanity.
Joseph Hall teach courses about colonial North America, the United States’ War for Independence, environmental history, and Native American history. His favorite class is a Short Term course on the history of Wabanakis, the collective term for the Penobscots, Passamaquoddies, Mi’kmaqs, and Maliseets of Maine but also New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and eastern Quebec.
Professor Hall’s principal scholarly interests focus on Native American interactions with Europeans during the colonial period. He has written a book exploring how European and Native American understandings of trade and gift-giving shaped the history of the Southeast between 1350 and 1740, but more recently his interests have shifted north. He is currently developing a research project around the question of how Wabanakis cultivated their ties to their homelands even as European-American colonists dispossessed them of most of that territory. It is inspired by a longstanding curiosity about the contemporary place of our colonial past and a developing desire to collaborating with Wabanaki historians on questions of common interest.
Join Maulian Bryant, in conversation with Bates College history professor Joseph Hall, as they discuss the past, present, and future of indigenous peoples in Maine.
Admission is free to all Forum events and reservations are only required if attending via Zoom. Click here to register for the event: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_zl0skVfLRmOBBQl0_9Aazg . This program is a bring-your-own, brown-bag lunch event. Coffee, tea and bottled water will be available on site at the library.
The Great Falls Forum speaker series is co-sponsored by Bates College, Lewiston Public Library, and the Sun Journal. The Lewiston Public Library is located downtown at 200 Lisbon Street at the corner of Pine Street. More information on Thursday’s lecture is available by contacting the Lewiston Public Library at 513-3135 or LPLReference@lewistonmaine.gov.
