Indigenous Peoples' Day Dinner 2021
In honor of Indigenous Peoples' Day, we are celebrating Maine's indigenous food producers and raising money for Wabanaki REACH at our first Indigenous People's Day Dinner at Luke's Lobster Portland Pier.
Wabanaki REACH is an organization led by Wabanaki people that supports the self-determination of Wabanaki people through education, truth-telling, restorative justice, and restorative practices in Wabanaki and Maine communities.
The menu will feature Maine's three indigenous food producers: Passamaquoddy Wild Blueberry Company, Passamaquoddy Maple, and MicMac Farms. We have developed a continuing partnership to buy from these businesses and support their expansion strategically and financially, as part of their commitment to work toward healing the trauma that colonization continues to cause to Maine’s Indigenous communities. Some items will continue to appear on the Luke’s Portland Pier menu through the fall and winter, and will generate continuing donations to Indigenous organizations, like Wabanaki REACH and Nibezun. This event will culminate with a reading our formal land acknowledgment statement, which will be shared on our website in perpetuity.
Join us for this special and important fundraising event on Monday, October 11 at 6p. Buy your tickets to our Indigenous Peoples' Day dinner.
Luke's Lobster's Land Acknowledgment
We acknowledge that the land that we occupy today is the traditional, unceded territory of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The lands and waters throughout this state that we call Maine, where the food that we serve at Luke’s Lobster is fished and farmed, is the traditional territory and remains the home of the sovereign peoples of the Confederacy: the Abenaki, Penobscot, Passamaquody, Maliseet, and Mi’kmaq.
We acknowledge that our presence here as non-Indigenous people is due to the forcible removal and genocide of the people of the Wabanaki Confederacy, the intentional erasure of their culture, and the trampling of their territorial rights. The harm of settler colonialism is not in the past; it continues today. At Luke's Lobster, we recognize, support, and advocate for Indigenous individuals and communities. By offering this Land Acknowledgement, we affirm Indigenous sovereignty and will work to hold ourselves more accountable to the needs of Indigenous peoples.
That begins with supporting organizations that speak the truth and work towards equity, healing, and positive change. As a food company, it’s also important to acknowledge the destruction or over-exploitation by colonizers of traditional Wabanaki food sources, such as wild rice, cod, and sea-run fisheries. We believe in the economic sovereignty of Indigenous peoples and their access to culturally appropriate foods, and will continue to support the farms and food businesses they operate on the path to achieving those goals. We are still at the start of a long road towards healing, but we are committed to this path forward.
