Growing up as a Black girl in Maine was never easy. Known as one of the whitest states in the nation the education system tended to reflect this as well. The only time we ever talked about black people, to my experience, was in US history when we briefly discussed the horrors of slavery. It was one of the most awkward times to be the only person of color in the room when the only narrative of black people was negative. And this became a recurring theme for me after hearing about the history of Malaga Island.
These narratives were especially damaging to me because this was what little I knew about my own place in Maine as a young Black girl. Knowing this was the way society viewed BIPOC (Black Indigenous, People of Color) also influenced how I viewed myself. However, I soon came to realize that these couldn’t be the only stories to come out of my community. This is why I argue for a shifting of narratives to also highlight the positive and liberating practices of these communities; we can change the view that BIPOC are always in battle to just them being.
In college, I gained more hope for talking about BIPOC in Maine that was more positive. When I finally got around to taking a course called environmental history of New England I learned about a whole island of BIPOC that had created a beautiful fishing community off the coast of Phippsburg called Malaga Island. Although what I had discovered instead was that through peak eugenics influence, the community was exiled from a space that they had created for themselves to prosper peacefully after slavery.
For centuries, the Maine community had ignored this history of Malaga Island, and eventually a narrative of Maine having no Black people had risen to the forefront of Maine’s story. Much of the media circulation of their history focused on this violence and displacement, however very few focus on the ways they interacted with each other and the land, and none of them highlight the placemaking and ability to find new homes after displacement. Kate McBrien presented a history of Malaga Island and the event leading to their forcible removal and claimed that, “A lot of Mainers have a vague understanding of what happened, but don’t know all the details”. Yet I’d say there are still parts that are missing.
For those who don’t know much about Malaga island it’s Benjamin Darling, the man who first inhabited Horse Island near Malaga, whose descendants grew to live there. Though, there was also a man named Henry Tripp and his family who were the only remaining family of color to come from the Island. The Griffins are also brought into this conversation but not nearly as much as the former. A majority of their stories end with displacement and reappear decades later through connections to Mainer’s like Marnie Darling Voter. In the 70’s she and her late husband discovered their connections to the mixed-race community while doing genealogy. This made me think there was a large gap in the history of these people that’s yet to be talked about.
When I did my own research of the people of Malaga Island I discovered that Henry Tripp actually held a great deal of ecological knowledge of Maine’s coastal environment due to his time fishing on the Island and also traveling the world. This knowledge led him to notice significant changes in the local lobster population which had begun declining after overfishing. He even had opinions about lobstering laws that any typical Maine lobsterman would have, showcasing that these people were more similar to the mainlanders than they thought. So I thought this sentiment would be true of many of the Islanders.
So my research brought me to another Island member named Lottie Marks, who I thought had a very different connection to the island than henry tripp but nonetheless interesting.
When it comes to thinking about the ways we see BIPOC interacting with the environment in predominantly white spaces, we often assume these connections to be far and few between. But after taking a deeper look at this island community I learned so much more about their knowledge of Maine’s coastal environment than I ever knew before. Henry Tripp was one of the few survivors of Pineland Farms otherwise known as Maine’s School for the Feeble Minded. There many of them were abused to the point of death while others survived the tortures of this prison like “school”.
He was actually one of the only people to have black descendants as well and actually held a great deal of ecological knowledge of Maine’s coastal environment due to his time fishing on the Island. This knowledge led him to notice significant changes in the local lobster population which had begun declining after overfishing. He even had opinions about lobsters that any typical Maine lobsterman would have, showcasing that these people were more similar to the mainlanders than they thought.
Another one of these survivors was Lottie Marks who, on the island, spent her time clam harvesting as many of the Island residents did. When I followed her life after Pineland through the US Census data, I noticed that she moved to Bath Maine around 1920 and eventually settled in Brunswick, Maine with Levi Blackwell who was also a fisherman. Marks lived a humble life clam shucking in Brunswick, which showed us her unique knowledge of the Maine coastal environment helped her to form a new home for herself amongst a community that clearly didn’t want her there. Her story, perhaps not profound, is one that is liberatory, and enhances the way I understand BIPOC’s connection to Maine.
Understanding stories of placemaking can be beneficial for BIPOC especially in knowing our connections to our communities. It’s a way of sharing stories, like the ones of Henry Tripp and Lottie Marks that connect us to our community and help us to find our own way in places like Maine that are so white. These narratives serve as a means of reclaiming and redefining the significance of places that have often been sites of historical oppression and marginalization.
Placemaking stories can shed light on the rich cultural heritage, resilience, and resistance of BIPOC communities, fostering a sense of belonging and pride. They challenge dominant narratives that have perpetuated systemic racism and discrimination, fostering empathy and understanding among broader society. By highlighting the injustices faced by BIPOC communities in various places, these stories can inspire collective action, policy change, and solidarity, ultimately contributing to the ongoing struggle for BIPOC liberation and social justice.
In highschools especially they can create a sense of belonging rather than those feelings similar to how I felt in my US history class. In the media today we see and hear too much about violence and displacement of people of color and as important as it is to discuss the prejudices, it’s equally important that we hear of BIPOC and their courage to fight against these struggles. Their stories actually can aid in the understanding of the Black history and also help BIPOC see themselves in certain spaces that may only be considered white ones. The history of Malaga Island is particularly violent, but how we speak of them and how we begin to uncover these histories makes all the difference in understanding BIPOC placemaking abilities and the fight for liberation.
