Some of it was rural, such as the easy familiarity of small town life. In all of it is a bond with a past that is hard to recapture in contemporary life. The issue is whether the tribes have sovereignty over what they consider internal matters, or whether outsiders can wrest from them what they believe is only theirs. It is a classic confrontation, and given that the system in which the tribes will be judged is not theirs and that the state is taking the side of the paper companies, an improvement in relations appears remote. As Dana explains in this week's Cover Story, the Penobscot River is the tribe's lifeblood, its ancestral home, the key to a distinctive culture.
Tribal members take personally the many affronts to the river.
How much better it would be to join them in restoring the river rather than standing in opposition, branches and leaves instead of a unified trunk, parsing words in a courtroom. The reaction was swift and persistent, and it slowly took hold. The trio came close but never quite got to a mea culpa - not for the specifics of the changes, either December's or last week's, but for the flawed process that led to the uproar in the first place. Maine Public Radio failed to take its middle name seriously when it changed its programming priorities without checking in with its listeners who, among other things, fund the largest percentage of its budget. In an interview with Maine Times in January, program director Beck defended the original changes by citing responses during pledge drives, Arbitron ratings, even comments in checkout lines.