Mi'kmaq Nation
A nation today
Background
Micmac and Maliseet people living in Aroostook County formed the Association of Aroostook Indians together, and the Nation's own account dates that to the mid 1960s. They worked through the 1970s for recognition of both tribes. They went their separate ways in 1980, when the Maliseets were recognized and became the Houlton Band, leaving the still-unrecognized Micmac as the Aroostook Micmac Council. The tribe then changed its name from the Aroostook Micmac Indians to the Mi'kmaq Nation and was awarded $900,000 for land claims, which it used to buy property. Federal recognition came on November 26 of 1991, through the settlement act the Nation cites as Public Law 102-171. Most of the Nation's 1,500 or so members live in Aroostook County in northern Maine, where the tribal administration sits on Northern Road in Presque Isle, and the government holds tribal elections every two years with nominations in odd-numbered years.
Visit and learn
Cultural Community Education Center
The Nation asks visitors who are in Presque Isle to come to its Cultural Community Education Center and tour the interpretation area, which holds an exhibit on Micmac culture that the museum page dates to about 9,000 years.
Tribal lands have their own laws. Check the nation's site before you visit.
Parks on its homelands
Acadia National ParkThe Mi'kmaq Nation says the Micmac Nation today is made up of seven districts and 29 bands with about 30,000 people, and that the Micmac, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot and Abenaki together are the Wabanaki, one Algonquian language family. The Nation's own community in Presque Isle has 1,500-odd members, most of them in Aroostook County in northern Maine. Source
Programs
Cultural Program
The Nation's cultural program teaches Mi'kmaq language, cross-cultural awareness, cross-generational respect and Mi'kmaq crafts such as ashwood basketry, snowshoes and canoes, and it explains mimajuagan, which it gives as way of life. The program holds a painted calendar disk that depicts the seasonal movements of animals and plants, and it sets out the year's round as two main periods, abundance in the summer when families gathered in bands at the coast, and scarcity in the winter when families were dispersed over the territory the program calls Mikma'ki.
Affiliations
Acadia National Park
The park says its relationship with the Mi'kmaq Nation and the other Wabanaki tribal governments is government-to-government, and acknowledges the Nation among those whose homelands Mount Desert Island sits in.
Sources
- https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-01-30/html/2026-01899.htm
- https://micmac-nsn.gov/tribal-land/
- https://micmac-nsn.gov/
- https://micmac-nsn.gov/tribal-government/
Checked September 2026.