We Are The Warriors
Searching for Common Ground
Mali Obomsawin, by Sam Kisserer
For almost sixty years, the profile of a Native American head with braids and a feathered headband identified the Wells High School Warriors. The appropriateness of the image was occasionally questioned throughout the years, but it was generally accepted as a tribute to the town’s indigenous people, the Abenaki.
Megan Grumbling, an educator, writer, and literary editor, and David Camlin, film maker, editor, and producer, both graduated from Wells High School. As active members in sports and extracurriculars, Megan and David embraced school spirit without questioning it. “You go along with the crowd and celebrate,” David says. “It’s part of the community’s connection to the school.”
In fall of 2017, after a home football game, a local paper reported that Warrior fans had mocked Native culture, citing the use of war paint and whooping calls. The primary witness was the mother of a player on the visiting team, herself an Abegweit Mi’kmaq from one of the five sovereign Wabanaki Tribal Nations. Other news outlets began to pick up the story, and many community members were shocked at the allegations of racism. Compelled to respond and take action, the town formed a committee to investigate the incident and decide the fate of their long-standing mascot.
Megan was living in Portland at the time, David had recently moved back to Maine, and they were looking for a collaborative project centered around hard conversations. As Wells assembled a Mascot Advisory Committee, the filmmakers began documenting, attending meetings and interviewing people close to the process. “We were expanding our own understanding of the issues, and we came to the project in a similar place to the people of Wells,” Megan says. “We were educating ourselves, learning and listening.”
The duo immediately identified the need to include Abenaki voices and reached out to film maker and video editor Joanna Weaver. Joanna is also a grant writer for Sunlight Media Collective, an organization that documents stories affecting Wabanaki people, highlighting the intersection between environmental issues and indigenous rights. “We came into this with a clear sense of the importance of showing both sides sensitively and respectfully on a polarizing topic,” Joanna says. She asked Sunlight Media coworker Mali Obomsawin, a citizen of the Odanak (Abenaki) First Nation and an accomplished musician, to score the film and advise on including Abenaki perspectives.
The film captures the raw emotion felt by committee and community members as they grapple with their ingrained narratives. Like those on the committee, viewers watch as people from the Wabanaki Nation share how their modern lives contrast sharply and collide painfully with the colonial narrative of the Native American experience. As these truths are shared and the impacts of the mascot on their indigenous neighbors become humanized, opinions within the committee begin to shift. “We were told we were honoring [the Abenaki] and remembering the colonial narrative,” David says. “During this project, we all realized we didn’t have a full picture of what had been happening.”
The Ranco family, members of the Penobscot Nation, play an important and prominent role in the film. Leslie and Val Ranco moved to Wells from Indian Island in the 1940’s and opened the Indian Moccasin Shop, still operating today. The Ranco’s have been active community members, and many have attended Wells High School. As the Mascot Advisory Committee worked through their inquiry, many looked to the Ranco family for validation. It was widely accepted that the family—particularly the respected late patriarch, Leslie Ranco—were in support of the mascot.
Late in the filming process, Johnny Gagnon, grandson of Leslie and Val Ranco, joined the team as an associate producer. Johnny was able to share ancestral material and work as a go-between with the Ranco family and the filmmakers. As a result, a much more nuanced story came to light around Leslie Ranco’s presumed support of the mascot. The family’s approval was likely rooted in Leslie’s desire to keep peaceful relationships with the Wells community, a place he loved and called home. His children remember being told not to draw attention to themselves or to the family, and the fear of discrimination was real. “[The Ranco’s] story is so important and vital,” Megan says. “It has to be accurate to fully understand the mythology of Leslie Ranco.”
Although the filmmaking team was privately rooting for the committee to retire the image, Megan says her understanding of the impact of the Warrior mascot became much deeper, and she also grew empathy for those who wanted to keep the image. “On a neurological level it feels threatening to have your identity questioned,” she says. The committee created a safe space for conversation, a place where everyone had an opportunity to share, ask questions, and process information. The film was edited to replicate this. “We wanted it to be very chronological,” Joanna says. “It was important to preserve the experience the committee had.”
The story is told through a point/counterpoint style, which helped the team hold on to the emotional impact of the process. They wove together the linear narrative of the committee with the historical story of the town, and included both the modern and historic perspectives of those who embraced the mascot and the Wabanaki who challenged it. One of the biggest takeaways, David says, is a shift in thinking about indigenous people in a current context, not a historical one. “The film gives a broader understanding of a group of people who have been generalized by an image and connected to a narrative from 100 years ago,” he says.
Mali scored the film with music from the indigenous community, using traditional songs and instruments. “For Wabanaki audiences, they will recognize [the songs] and will hear our voice and perspective,” Mali says. “The hidden messages and meanings in the songs will deepen their response to the content.” She hopes non-indigenous people will connect to the feeling of the music, even if they don’t understand the words.
So far, the response to the film has been extremely positive. We Are The Warriors won The Tourmaline Prize for best feature made in Maine at the Maine International Film Festival and has been accepted into several other festivals. Funding is secured to develop an online curriculum for educators, and plans for an hour-long version of the film for public television are underway. “We went in [to this] with big thinking about the impact of these hard conversations and the importance of indigenous rights,” Megan says. “The response has been so gratifying. People are picking up on the things we really cared about.”
At the time the film was made, approximately 1200 schools across the country were still using American Indian names and mascots. Although the Wells Mascot Advisory Committee ultimately voted to keep the Warriors name and drop the mascot imagery, Mali doesn’t feel the issue is resolved. “I hope [viewers] will pay close attention to the stories being told by the Wabanaki people,” Mali says. “There is still a lot of work to be done educating people on the real history and experience of the Wabanaki.”
In 2001, Maine passed a law requiring all schools to teach Wabanaki history, but funding was limited and the commission created to develop the curriculum eventually dissolved. A study published in 2022 by the joint efforts of the Wabanaki Alliance, Abbe Museum, the ACLU of Maine, and the Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission found that several school districts still referred to Wabanaki people in the past tense and focused only on colonization. This inaccurate history plays into the misconception that Wabanaki people are either invisible or a thing of the past, the report said. The school districts who have achieved some successes—most notably Old Town, Portland, Bangor, and Lewiston—all partnered with Wabanaki experts to develop programming and curriculum.
“School is the best place to learn to talk about uncomfortable history,” Mali says. “A systemic approach reaches everyone at a young age. I’d like to see the state fund the program they voted on.” Mali is optimistic about the educational component of the film and hopes the programming will be shared widely in schools. She believes though conversation and teaching truth, healing can begin.
In 2019, Maine was the first state in the nation to ban indigenous mascots in public schools and colleges, and some other states are moving in the same direction. The filmmakers hope We Are The Warriors might serve as a broad blueprint for dialogue, open mindedness, and compassion as other communities tackle similar challenges. “The ability to listen and not immediately take offense, and to have a willingness to be wrong and practice empathy, that’s a mature thing to take on,” David says.
To learn more about the We Are The Warriors film and learning curriculum, visit www.wearethewarriorsfilm.com
Place Justice Project
Place Justice is a joint project of the State of Maine’s Permanent Commission for Racial, Indigenous and Tribal Populations and The Atlantic Black Box Project, a public history project that researches and reckons with New England’s role in the slave trade. Place Justice takes its mandate from LD 1934, a bill sponsored by Representative Rachel Talbot Ross and passed in April 2022. The bill’s purpose is to eradicate offensive place names in Maine.
Meadow Dibble, Public History and Education Consultant and Project Lead, says the mission of Place Justice is broader even than the mandate. “It’s really about supporting communities in developing more inclusive commemorative practices,” Meadow says. The project has conducted an inventory and analysis of all place names in Maine and found an overwhelming majority of places are commemorated by the names of white men. This contrasts sharply with indigenous naming practices, which indicate what happens in a place. For example, what one can find or experience in a place, a description of the natural environment, or a conveyance of knowledge, as opposed to imposing human identity on a place.
Place Justice Project's main focus in the coming months will be policy work, developing recommendations for legislation that would restructure and overhaul the place names regulatory system in Maine. They are also working on ways to help communities develop the skills needed to observe and analyze the commemorative landscape around us, which Meadow refers to as the memoryscape. “Often we take names for granted, and we fail to notice all the elements and subtle or overt messages about who is worthy of being remembered and which stories matter,” Meadow says.
As they continue with research and analysis, Place Project will make their findings available to the public. “We’re building a dynamic online platform to help people across Maine and Wabanaki territories read their landscapes,” Meadow says. The goal is to build a State Names Authority with a clear mandate and resources to address problematic names and place markers as communities bring them forward. Working with tribes, government agencies, and community members, Place Project will address existing issues and streamline a system that is easy for all Maine residents to navigate. “The point of this work is systemic and societal change,” says Meadow, “and for people to grow more aware of what’s around us.”
Sarah Holman is a writer, artist, and Registered Maine Guide living in Portland. When she's not working creatively, you can find her hiking, rock climbing, and paddling somewhere in Maine. To follow Sarah on her adventures visit www.shehikesmountains.com.
