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During their Academic Intensive trip to Hyde's north campus the Lennox Outdoor Leadership Center in Eustis, ME, the AP US History students engaged deeply with the history of Wabanaki-Maine relations, exploring ongoing legal battles over water rights and the broader struggles of the Native American community. Under the guidance of Director of Outdoor Education, Megan-Mack Nicholson, students lived in heated yurts and participated in hands-on learning experiences, such as canoeing and discussions about the environmental impacts of damming and historical logging practices. They watched documentaries on water rights and the execution of Dakota Indians, fostering rich discussions on topics like American Manifest Destiny and the historical injustices faced by First Nations. This immersive experience not only provided a break before exams but also enriched the students' understanding of complex historical narratives, ensuring lasting educational impact.

During their Academic Intensive on the Hyde School’s North Campus on the northern shore of Flagstaff Lake, overlooking the Bigelow Mountain preserve, the students of AP US History course took a deep dive into a complex, ongoing history of Wabanaki-Maine relations, ongoing legal battles over usufruct (right to 

use) rights to rivers and waterways, and the enduring pain and struggles over history and memory in the wider Native American community. Beginning on the weekend from Sunday leading into the start of the week on Tuesday, November 12th, Director of Outdoor Education, Megan-Mack Nicholson took our students on a tour through a unique landscape in what the First Nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy have long called the Dawnland. Over the course of three days, students learned to take to heart Amherst College historian Lisa Brooks’ call for us to consider Native American history not just as a story of change over time, but a story tethered to changes to a particular space. 

During the week preceding this excursion, students were introduced to the history of colonial New England and Native American struggles to maintain their access to ancestral hands and cycles of dispossession going back hundreds of years. Arriving up at Eustis, ME, students first went into their heated yurts, a necessity for the cold winter nights for the past several years students have used this property. The weather this weekend 

was unseasonably warm, perhaps a sign of environmental changes still to come. After setting up their living quarters for the weekend retreat, and then came together to watch the first of two documentary films they viewed during the trip about the ever shifting battle over water-rights to the Penobscot River, the ancestral homeland and source of the Penobscot nation. In 1755, Chief Polin complained to the Maine legislature of 

fishers taking away the resources of the river. Since 2012, students learned, the Penobscot have again faced a legal battle over sustainable fishing rights to the river, a modern-day twist in the long story of Euro-American expropriation of resources from First Nations people. 

The following morning, students awoke and readied for a day of hands-on learning to understand the importance of canoeing as culture and mode of transportation. As the students paddled behind Megan-Mack in her canoe, we passed by the industrial ruins of the flash-dams jutting out of Flagstaff Lake, dating from the early twentieth century when industrial loggers swarmed this northernmost corner of Maine back before the flooding of the Dead River was undertaken to supply power for the Kennebec River plant. It was hard for all of us to collectively imagine an entire town had once been deliberately submerged to create this seemingly pristine Lake, stocked with salmon and brook trout. Our location for the retreat made for particularly fruitful discussions about the role we play in the transformation of the environment we live in. 

After our outdoor excursion, we returned to the Lennox Outdoor Center Lodge for some UNO, trivia, and monopoly, a much needed reprieve from the stress of impending exams and their phones. For three square meals a day, students prepared and served dishes using ingredients they learned were a part of the rich, intertwined culinary histories of the Dawnland, and later New England’s settler-colonial past, from maple syrup and blueberry pancakes, a crowd favorite, to my personal favorite dish of the trip, the “Indian Pudding,” slow-cooked cornmeal and molasses with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.

These discussions continued during our final evening program, in which students viewed the documentary detailing the Dec. 26, 1862 execution of 38 Dakota Indians by the U.S. government, amidst the turmoil of the American Civil War during the less well-known U.S.-Dakota War. Students learned of the life-histories and experiences of the living descendants of these 38 hanged warriors who today have organized commemorative, spiritual horseback rides across the Great Plains to remember and to make reconciliation with the people of those states, now living on this bloodsoaked terrain. As our history class moves into our next unit on western expansion and the Civil War, this documentary will no doubt fuel some interesting and provocative class discussions on the history of American Manifest Destiny, Abraham Lincoln’s duel historical persona as Emancipator and Executioner, and the ongoing dispossession of First Nations people from coast to coast. 

The Hyde North Campus has seen several groups of students over the past few months take a Thoreauvian jaunt in the woods, to ponder and reflect on their place in the Hyde community and wider world. Thanks to the efforts of Megan-Mack Nicholson, my APUSH class trip to Eustis will serve as a basis for class discussions for weeks to come. Back when the property was first purchased for the Hyde School’s outdoor programming in 1996, then Headmaster Malcolm Gauld made the farsighted observation that “if you put a family in a boat, they will have plenty to talk about at the end of the day,” and in short, that is exactly the experience our class had. Indeed, thanks in part to Megan-Mack’s leadership, Malcolm Gauld’s original goal of getting every Hyde student “out in the woods for a three or four-day period every year,” whether for academic enrichment or experiential learning, has finally been realized. While this trip presented many of our students with a chance to recharge, take a cold plunge into northern Maine’s lake water, and rest up for exam week, it has also set up our class for a unique educational experience I know these students will remember for years to come.

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