Dear fellow Rotarians,
I hope you all are enjoying these summer days! The world around us seems a little less daunting when we can experience nature’s bounty and beauty. We are indeed lucky to call MDI home.
This breathtaking MDI scenery has long been a backdrop to creative and innovative people, and this week we will have the opportunity to learn more about the museum dedicated to telling the stories of those who call this special place “Dawnland”. Our speaker on July 15th will be Chris Newell, the Executive Director and Senior Partner to Wabanaki Nations at the Abbe Museum.
Chris, a lifetime educator, was born and raised in Motahkmikuhk (Indian Township, ME) and is a proud citizen of the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Indian Township. He's a long time member of the Mystic River singers, an internationally acclaimed and award-winning inter-tribal pow wow drum group based out of Connecticut. For over two decades, Chris devoted much of his time to Mystic River, traveling all over the US and Canada singing at community pow wows. He also served for six years as the Education Supervisor for the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research in Connecticut. Out of the museum, Chris and his museum colleagues co-founded the Akomawt Educational Initiative in response to observations of the public school system regarding the lack of representation of Native history in social studies.
Chris has also appeared in feature films and was the Senior Adviser on the Emmy winning documentary Dawnland, chronicling the historic first-ever government-sanctioned Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the State of Maine. When speaking to Chris last week, he shared that he firmly believes “education is a path to making the world a better place for all people and looks forward to a better, well-informed future for us all.”
We will continue opening doors to education and dialogue with our speaker on Wednesday, July 29th. Steve Kassels, M.D. is the award winning author of the fiction book Addiction on Trial. If you would like a copy of the book, either before or after his Zoom visit, please reach out to me. Dr. Kassels has generously donated signed copies to our Club.
Finally, I am very excited to share that we will have an opportunity to gather in person at the Seal Cove Auto Museum on Wednesday, August 5th at 5 p.m. for Happy Hour. More details to come and thank you Barbara Fox for the invitation!
Please watch your email for the Zoom information for this week’s meeting. I hope many of you will join in to hear the latest updates from the Abbe Museum, Maine’s only Smithsonian Affiliate.
Yours in service,
Stefanie
Stefanie Joy Muscat
President, Bar Harbor (MDI) Rotary Club
