Donna Loring is a highly-esteemed Penobscot elder and the host of Wabanaki Windows, a public affairs program on WERU that addresses Native American issues, particularly locally. Recently the Portland Press Herald published an excellent profile of Donna and her work. Wabanaki Windows airs every fourth Tuesday, 4-5 p.m.

Search for Sovereignty

By Colin Woodard, Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald

In November, she announced she was stepping down as the tribal affairs adviser to Gov. Janet Mills, a position she held for 22 months during which many of the longstanding demands of Maine’s Wabanaki people first appeared on the verge of being addressed, only to be derailed, like so many things, by the global pandemic.

Loring, who says she left amicably to finish a long delayed book project on state-tribal relations, remains upbeat on the prospects for a substantive reset of the legal and diplomatic relationships between the state and Maine’s four federally recognized tribes. But she says ultimately it all comes down to sovereignty and Maine finally accepting that the tribes should have as much of it as tribes in other parts of the country do. (Read more.)