Passamaquoddy Tribe

Tribal Citizens of Sipayik,

I hope that you had a beautiful Christmas and have started this new year off to a great start. I was honored to host our 3rd annual elders Christmas party. Over 130 elders were able to attend, we ate, danced and just caught up. I haven’t seen so many smiling people in a long time. To all of our staff that helped put this together, kci woliwon.

I’ve been nervous this week, knowing that Governor Janet Mills had to make a decision to either veto our internet gaming bill (LD 1164) or let it become law and I’m excited to share that she let it become law. I’ve been able to meet with her a few times recently and she has been a great help with items I’ve needed to bring forward for the Tribe. One of those was a retirement system for our employees, the Governor and I spoke about Maine State Retirement and we made that become a reality for the tribe along with this historic gaming law for our tribe.

What does the internet gaming bill mean? Let me start by telling you how this came to be. About a year ago, Chief William Nicholas and I decided to focus on one tribal bill that we had asked to be submitted (along with other bills) and with our Tribal Representative Aaron Dana and our friends in Augusta we did just that. Our manager for Passamaquoddy Gaming Craig Francis and Tribal Attorney Corey Hinton, hit the ground in Augusta and did what they were hired to do but they always take their job to the next level and go above and beyond because they are both Passamaquoddy men with a deep love of our home and who we are, they want to see all of us succeed. They are great role models for our communities and show that anything is possible. Chief Nicholas, Vice Chief Joseph Socobasin and I traveled back and forth from home to Augusta for meetings and to explain to the representatives of the people of Maine why the Tribes in Maine deserve a fair shake.

We were told this would get voted down; we were told that it’ll never happen. By sharing who we are, as the first people of these lands and that we are still here, we were able to push this right to the governor’s desk because siding with the Tribes is the right thing to do. We will need to do a lot of planning around internet gaming and how we can be successful to improve the quality of life we all deserve. This will be a game changer to all tribal communities in Maine so we’ll need to make the best decisions moving forward in these prosperous times.

This has made me think a lot of how we share information about our own finances with the people. I’m pushing forward a resolution at our next regular council meeting that will establish a revenue and expense book to be issued each year recapping the previous year and it will be mailed out to each tribal household that is on the census of Sipayik. This will show you our ending balances of each program, revenue received and what those funds had been spent on.

My primary focus for our community has been just that, our community. Building it up to be healthy and successful. Figuring out the broken areas or areas that need attention, getting our finances stable and up to date. One recent small push that I wanted was to gain interest off of the millions of federal BIA and IHS funds sitting in our accounts. We have now made that a reality. For decades money sat in accounts accruing zero interest. Though the interest that is now gained can only be spent on the programs from which they are derived from, but this will be able to fund other areas that are in need of more funding. This equates to nearly $200,000.00 this year alone if done right. Another endeavor we are pursuing is development of an 8A company so we can leverage governmental contracts, we are ready to expand, many other tribes have been extremely successful in this field, so now is the time to act.

Yesterday, a kick off meeting on the land use plan happened, this will enable us to have a clear vision of use for each plot of land in our area to help promote growth in homes, infrastructure, agriculture, and economic development.

I believe our focus and our path is working for our community. There is no question that it may take a few times to get things right and we will upset people along the way, but only in good conscience we try to make the right decisions for the people. I thank our staff and the tribal council for pursuing a better quality of life for our tribal citizens. We were able to hold 24 council meetings in 2025 and that doesn’t include all the workshops and countless side meetings with other partners that the council and I attend.

Tahu,
Chief Amkuwiposohehs Bassett