Wabanaki Place: Language and Landscape

Maine Historical Society - Programs Podcast

Recorded November 16, 2019 - Listen to historian James E. Francis Sr. (Penobscot) who shared stories about the origin and meaning of geographic place names in what is now known as Maine, from a Wabanaki perspective. Wabanaki, part of the Algonkian language group, is the first language of Maine, and each tribe has a distinct language that expresses worldview. The original words of this land – Casco, Katahdin, Kennebec, Androscoggin, Pemaquid – surround us. As settlers colonized Maine with a dominant English language system, they named towns after their founding fathers or English homelands, resulting in a situation where Wabanaki people are now living in a deeply familiar place populated with foreign words.