On Indigenous Peoples Day (Monday 10/11) please join us for a sunrise gathering (6:30 – 7:00) at the Chief Polin Memorial (on the Conant Trail next to Ernie's Bicycles on Conant Street in Westbrook. We will then walk to the Saccarappa Falls. It will be a time to remember the people who cared for and lived by this land for a millennium. To remember Chief Polin and his walks to Boston, and respect the waters that they belonged to.

The Chief Polin Memorial was erected by the Friends of the Presumpscot River and is dedicated to Chief Polin and the Abenaki People that lived along the Presumpscot for a millennium prior to the European expansionism into these lands. An expansion that decimated and displaced a people and destroyed a land and that so many of us are now the beneficiaries of.

We will walk to Saccarappa Falls on the Presumpscot River. (Presumpscot being the Wabenaki Word for “many falls” or “many rough places”. And Saccarappa being Wabanaki for “falling toward the rising Sun”)

Saccarappa Falls have been one of the primary fishing grounds of the Abenaki that lived on the Presumpscot. Near it were Abenaki settlements and planting grounds. The river held vast runs of sea-run fish which were easily caught for food and fertilizer and the primary food source of the Abenaki of the Presumpscot. At one point between the European Settlers and the Abenaki Saccarappa Falls were an agreed upon dividing point. Lands up river being for the Abenaki and the settler’s lands downriver. That agreement was soon broken but the remnants of it exist to this day.

After the walk, please join us for some tending, weeding and mulching at the Memorial at 10:00 AM. Please join us if can.