Wabanaki Community Analysis

The Wabanaki communities have been a major factor in the past, present and future of our state of Maine. Observing how they structured their communities, their values and traditions could improve our present day communities greatly. Learning their communities perspectives on wealth and what they believed it means to be rich could cause less clashes and disagreements between individuals within a community. Living more simply like the early Wabanaki and abandoning the superfluous elements of our modern life would help solve classism in communities. Finally changing our clouded perspective on climate change to model the Wabanaki idea of environmental stability. By leading a more simplistic, community focused lifestyle, like the early Native Americans of Maine, we can continue to progress into a successful community of the future.

Firstly, communities would benefit and have less disagreements by learning the Wabanaki perspective on what it means to be “rich” or what their idea of “wealth” meant. The abundance of material objects has been an ambition of many people and current day communities. The early Native Americans of Maine believed your wealth was measured in the amount of relationships with your tribe members or acquaintances you had.

Living off of what you are given from nature is demonstrated by the early Wabanaki in many ways. Their beliefs of wealth have ties with the topic of simplifying. Many months had an abundance of natural resources that the Wabanaki could easily take advantage of. All individuals of the tribe were able collect only what was necessary sustaining their environment and also strengthening their ethical code. Simplifying and creating more equal communities would contest the segregation based on class or financial status, which still plagues our society and many communities