Mawte: Bound Together

Carl Little, Art New England, March 24, 2026

In its ongoing mission to highlight Wabanaki artists, the Colby College Museum of Art has filled its downtown Waterville venue—the Schmaltz Gallery in the Schupf Art Center—with a powerful and compelling display of work by Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Monacan, and Chaubunagungamaug Nipmuck artists. Penobscot basketmaker Sarah Sockbeson initiated the idea for the show and co-curated it with Kendall DeBoer, the museum’s assistant curator of modern and contemporary art.

The exhibition offers a range of media, including video, beads, bronze, clay, wood, and sweetgrass. To title her painted vintage metal US Route 1 sign, Sierra Autumn Henries (Chaubunagungamaug Nipmuck) turned to that Maine idiom, “You can’t get there from here.” In an accompanying statement Henries notes how the 2,370-mile interstate route that stretches from Florida to the Canadian border disrupts the environment, natural resources, communities and sacred grounds of indigenous peoples. The Route 1 sign signals her intent to research and gather knowledge about specific sites, rivers, and more, through and over which the highway crosses.

James Eric Francis, Sr.’s acrylic painting mάwαməwak commissioned by the museum furthers his visual explorations of the ecology and culture of the Penobscot Nation. Here, Francis employs his signature circular dots to relate the story of how the Wabanaki cultural hero Klooscap, depicted as a petroglyph, responded to the porcupine’s wish to be a fish by turning its quills inward and creating the bony shad. The painting is dazzling.

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