Dear Cobscook Community,

I write to you today as a Cobscook Institute Board Member of 7 years, a Washington County community resident living in Pembroke, a citizen of the Passamaquoddy tribe and a professor of linguistics.

Our roles in life should not be viewed as separate from each other. Everything we do in our lives can be understood in a sense of relationship where each part makes up the whole. If you’ve ever been in a canoe on a river in the forest you understand; at a certain point your body and the canoe become one with the river and the forest is also part of you, cradling and even guiding you.

We were so pleased to be able to safely offer in-person craft programming this summer after so many months of only being able to offer online programming due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

2021 was our ninth summer offering River Camp in partnership with Downeast Salmon Federation. As usual, teens interested in conservation careers engaged in Atlantic salmon habitat improvement projects and recreation improvement projects on Downeast Salmon Federation’s public access sites. They also collected water quality data on the Orange River and practiced whitewater canoeing skills on the Machias River.

In 1999, a group of community members from the Passamaquoddy Tribe, the Euro-American community, and our neighbors from nearby New Brunswick, Canada, asked the question, “What would improve life in our rural region?”

Cobscook Institute was born from community co-creation. Such creation is made possible by the gifts of wisdom and dreaming of many people.

Since 2011, Colin has been involved with Cobscook Institute as a program participant, leader, and partner. He became familiar with us early on by guiding intergenerational Road Scholar trips based on campus, then co-led an outdoor adventure club. For the last eight years, he has been a key volunteer for the Downeast Spring Birding Festival, including serving on the planning committee.

“My childhood years were spent at Sipayik and I later followed my heart to our sister reservation, Motahkomikuk,” Stephanie said. “Living at Motahkomikuk, I woke to the harsh world of how badly the 1980 Land Act has fractured us deeply and quickly so I began volunteering to write a newsletter and hand deliver them to help get information out and to teach.”

Since 2012, Regina’s involvement with Cobscook Institute has primarily centered upon apples. She helped lead and coordinate pruning and grafting workshops, bringing in apple experts from around the state, and later partnered with us to coordinate Downeast Apple Day in 2019 which welcomed over 200 people to learn about and celebrate apples. Regina’s son also attended the high school program for two years and he and Regina’s daughter attended River Camp.

You might be surprised to learn that of the $471 billion in US charity last year, households with income below 50,000 gave the most, second only to the wealthiest 1%. Or you may be surprised that one in six households practices charity. Or that Moms between the ages of 35-44 volunteer more hours than any other demographic.

On the theme of season change and possibility, I have a more personal story to share…

I first learned of Cobscook Institute (then Cobscook Community Learning Center) in 2015 when I was wrapping up my Master’s program at Antioch University New England. At the time, my partner Joe Horn and I were finalizing plans to incorporate Maine Outdoor School, L3C (MOS) in Milbridge, just an hour away from Cobscook.