Micah Pawling
Associate Professor of History & Native American Studies
Ph.D., University of Maine, 2010
M.A., University of Maine, 1999
B.A., University of Delaware, 1996
Courses taught:
HTY 103: Creating America to 1877
HTY 220 / NAS 220: North American Indian History
HTY 222 / NAS 230: Maine Indian History in the Twentieth Century
HTY 311 / NAS 201: Junior history seminar on Native American History
HTY 464: America at the Crossroads: The Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction, 1840-1877
HTY 481 / NAS 401: Amerindians of the Northeast: A History
HTY 498: Senior history major seminar on Native American History
HTY 550: Readings in Indigenous Legal History
HTY 599: Ethnohistory of Native North America
HTY 599: Native American History & the Environment
As an ethnohistorian of the far Northeast, my research focuses on the Wabanaki people of “the dawnland,” including the Passamaquoddy (Peskotomuhkati), Penobscot, Maliseet (Wəlastəkwiyik), and Mi’kmaq in the nineteenth century. Wabanaki homeland encompasses present-day northern New England and eastern Canada. My first edited book, Wabanaki Homeland and the New State of Maine: The 1820 Journal and Plans of Survey by Joseph Treat (University of Massachusetts Press and the Penobscot Nation, 2007, paperback 2017), was a cross-cultural collaborative project with the Penobscot Nation. The book reproduces the journal of a survey expedition across Wabanaki homeland where Indigenous cultural practices and knowledge of their lands and waters prevailed.
My work has appeared in American Indian Quarterly, Acadiensis, Ethnohistory, and the Historical Atlas of Maine. The 2017 article received the 2018 Canadian Historical Association’s prize for the best article in Indigenous history. As a recipient of the Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship, I work with the Passamaquoddy Tribe of Indian Township (Motahkomikuk) on community history. My forthcoming book is on Wabanaki waterscapes in the nineteenth century.
Selected Publications from the CV:
BOOK PUBLICATIONS
Micah Pawling, ed., with an introduction, Wabanaki Homeland and the New State of Maine: The 1820 Journal and Plans of Survey of Joseph Treat (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007, paperback 2017) a volume in the series Native Americans of the Northeast: Culture, History, and the Contemporary, edited by Colin G. Calloway and Barry O’Connell, in conjunction with the Penobscot Indian Nation, Indian Island, Maine.
ARTICLE PUBLICATIONS
Micah Pawling, “‘A labyrinth of uncertainties’: Penobscot River Islands, Assignments, and Indigenous Women Proprietors in Nineteenth-Century Maine,” American Indian Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 4 (Fall 2018): 454-487.
*Micah Pawling, “Wəlastəkwey (Maliseet) Homeland: Waterscapes and Continuity within the Lower St. John River Valley, 1784-1900,” Acadiensis, vol. XLVI, no 2 (Summer/Autumn 2017): 1-30. (*2018 Canadian Historical Association prize for best Indigenous history article in 2017)
Micah Pawling, “Wabanaki Homeland and Mobility: Concepts of Home in Nineteenth-Century Maine,” Ethnohistory, vol. 63, no. 4 (October 2016): 621-643.
BOOK CHAPTERS:
Micah A. Pawling and Donald G. Soctomah, “The Wabanaki Encampment at the 1920 Maine Centennial: Historical Commemoration in Indigenous Homelands,” chapter in Maine at 200, edited by Liam Riordan and Richard W. Judd, (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press) (submitted and under review).
