SERIES
Interview with Jim Mitchell
Identifier
NA 3798 (local)
Date
2011 (Date created)
Summary
Jim Mitchell interviewed by David Slagger on March 9, 2011 at the law offices of Jim Mitchell concerning the 1980 Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Act. Topics include what Mitchell did prior to the settlement act and what his role was; worked for Ken Curtis; asked by Curtis to be his staff liaison with the Native American community; nature of the relationship between the State and the Tribes; tribal land allocation and ownership; worked at the State Housing Authority; as director he implemented an Indian Mortgage Program; Passamaquoddy takeover of forestry building owned by the state on the Indian Township Reservation; candidate for United States Congress; went into private practice of law; hired by Molly Neptune at the Housing Authority at Indian Township; later hired by housing Authority at Penobscot Reservation; served as counsel for both authorities probably twenty years at each one; conflict between Rick Mitchell, the Director of the Housing Authority, and the Penobscot Tribal Council; relations between the State and the Tribes before the Settlement Act and afterwards; optimism when the Settlement Act went through and some lowering of expectations and excitement after the Act; also some personal hostility; wasn’t any major difference in attitude before and after the Act; still some issues that the Tribal state commission has not been able to resolve fully; Implementing Act prevents full tribal sovereignty; Right to Self Determination; best deal that could be worked out at the time; big backlash to having the Tribes claim two-thirds of the land in Maine; Tribes settled for $81,000,000; Clayton Cleaves, Joe Sockabasin, Kurt Francis, John Stevenson, Alan Sockabasin; reopening the Implementing Act; Mitchell’s wife Libby served on Joint Select Committee on Indian Land Claims. Transcript: 13 pp. Recording: CD2442 44 min
Language
Dialects)
Other Subject Headings
1980 Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Act. and more (Local)
