Overview

Four years of negotiations led to a settlement out of court and the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act of 1980.  The Passamaquoddy Tribe, Penobscot Indian Nation, and the Houlton Band of Maliseets received $81.5 million, the largest settlement of its kind and the first to include provisions for the reacquisition of land.  To get this award, the tribes had to give up their claim to 12.5 million acres and give back some of the powers of self-government that recently had been recognized in the courts.  

The settlement included neither Maliseet People outside of the Houlton Band nor any Micmac People.  They  also claimed title to parts of what is now Maine, but by the terms of the settlement, under which they received no land or money, their claims were extinguished. 


Basic Elements

The Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Agreement consisted of three basic elements:

An agreement between the State and the Indian Tribes, called the Maine Implementing Act, that was enacted by the Maine Legislature.  This specifies the laws that are applicable to Indians and Indian lands in Maine.

Purchase options running from certain landowners to the Maine Indians in which the landowners agreed to sell at fair market value 300,000 acres of land to the Tribes.

A bill that was enacted by Congress, called The Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act, extinguishing the land claims, compensating the Indians for their claim, and ratifying the Maine Implementing Act.