Our People

The Passamaquoddy Tribe, having two locations, is represented by the Joint Tribal Council which consists of the individual Tribal Councils of Indian Township, in Princeton, and at the the Pleasant Point Reservation (Sipayik) in Perry, Maine. 

A total of 3,369 tribal members are listed on the tribal census rolls with 1,364 on the Indian Township census and 2,005 listed on Pleasant Point census.
The St. Croix River (previously known as the Passamaquoddy River) serves as the USA/Canada International boundary. The boundary cuts through the middle of the Passamaquoddy Tribes homeland. The Passamaquoddy have occupied this watershed region for at least the past 600+ generations (12,000+ years). This new USA-Canada boundary line was created about 200 years ago and was imposed on the Passamaquoddy by the Jay Treaty 0f 1794.(Aboriginal Rights for the good stuff)…Interestingly, in 1974, the Jay Treaty was revisited when a group of eight Wabanaki (including Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes people) challenged US immigration officials and committed an “illegal” border crossing. The officials claimed that Indians born in Canada required visas and needed to register when they entered the US. The protesters argued they only had to demonstrate Indian status. They argued a case which became known as Akins vs. Saxbe that the 1794 Jay Treaty and the 1928 immigration law were guarantees “to preserve the aboriginal right of American Indians to move freely through the territories originally occupied by them on either side of the American-Canadian border.” Maine federal judge Gignoux, who presided over this case, ruled that he agreed with the plaintiffs, noting that “the Micmac, Maliseet, Penobscot, and Passamaquoddy Tribes constituted the Wabanaki Confederacy” and that the international boundary created in 1783 “ran through the middle of their territory,” concluding that he had “no dispute” with this aboriginal rights claim.” To this day, there are many Passamaquoddy Tribal members still living, in the Country of Canada, separated only by the St. Croix river. These Passamaquoddy also possess a Tribal Chief and Council known as the “St. Croix/Schoodic Band of Passamaquoddies”.

Peskotomuhkati Motahkomikuk