Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians
A nation today
Background
Maliseet villages once spanned what is now the border between Maine and New Brunswick, and the Jay Treaty of 1794 gave their people the right to cross between the two countries without being stopped. The Houlton Band is a smaller band of the larger Maliseet Nation of New Brunswick, and it calls the Meduxnekeag River home. It describes the Maliseet as river people who have traditionally hunted and gathered in the St. John River basin, of which the Meduxnekeag is a tributary, and it counts brook and brown trout in the river itself. The Band's own history dates the Association of Aroostook Indians to the early 1970s, when Maliseet and other tribal members with no recognized reservation formed it together. The Band has been federally recognized since October 1980. It counts about 1,700 members. It is led by a Tribal Chief alongside a six-member Tribal Council whose members serve staggered four-year terms, and its service area runs thirty miles from Littleton, Maine.
Visit and learn
Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians's own site
Tribal lands have their own laws. Check the nation's site before you visit.
Parks on its homelands
Acadia National ParkMaliseet people occupied much of what is now the eastern border of the United States and Canada in northern New England before European contact, and the Jay Treaty of 1794 won them free crossing rights between the two countries because their villages spanned both. The Band counts some 1,700 members, has held federal recognition since October 1980, and calls the Meduxnekeag River home. Source
Programs
Maliseet and Wolastoqey language work
In September 2021 the Band took an $82,000 Native Language Project grant from the federal Administration for Children and Families under the American Rescue Plan, aimed at Maliseet and Wolastoqey Latuwewakon. What the money paid for includes a daily Maliseet and Wolastoqey word-of-the-day audio recording and a Wolastoqey Latuwewakon website. Online classes turned traditional songs into music sheets and language puzzles. The project also drew on 1983 field notes from Karl V. Teeter of Harvard University, recorded with a Wolastoqey elder, to produce a book of stories from the Wolastoq.
Maliseet Nation Tribal Court
A court of general jurisdiction hearing criminal, civil, juvenile and probate matters, run by a judicial system the Band says has moved away from purely adversarial dispute resolution toward a problem-solving approach. Its Healing to Wellness Court is voluntary and open to tribal members who are in or at risk of the court system and are struggling with alcohol or substance abuse. The court's codes include the ICWA Indian Custodianship Code, a Protection From Abuse Code and a divorce code.
Maliseet Arts and Creations
The Band's craft operation, built on birchbark and brown ash basketry. A basket is etched with a needle or an awl and can be accented with sweetgrass and spruce root. A single basket takes twenty to thirty hours from gathering materials to the last line of etching. Designs on the pieces represent animal and plant life found in the woods, and the Band says the trade gives some families supplemental income while keeping the craft in use.
Education Department
Educational and employment support for tribal members, with some services limited to the Band's service area in Aroostook County. It covers higher and adult vocational education, counselling, guidance and financial assistance for members admitted to accredited Maine college programs, and adult education including HiSET and diploma programs. Johnson O'Malley services cover students from kindergarten through grade twelve, and the department also employs a home school liaison worker.
Affiliations
Acadia National Park
Acadia acknowledges the Band among the tribal governments whose homelands Mount Desert Island sits in, and says those governments hold a government-to-government relationship with the park.
Sources
- https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-01-30/html/2026-01899.htm
- https://maliseets.net/about/
- https://maliseets.net/
- https://maliseets.net/tribal-government/
- https://maliseets.net/service-area/
Checked September 2026.