08/25/2026
(Pemetic Pesamkuk Wapuwoc Wabanahik)
A very good read below📖📚👓
Long before Mount Desert Island was known by the name we use today, it was part of a landscape known, traveled, and cared for by the Wabanaki peoples.
Among the traditional names associated with the island is Pemetic, a name describing the island’s remarkable range of mountains and the prominent peaks rising above the surrounding waters. Pesamkuk, has been associated with Mount Desert Island and the waters surrounding it, reflecting the deep connection between the Wabanaki people and the coastal landscape.
High above the island stands what is now called Cadillac Mountain, one of the most recognizable peaks along the coast. The traditional name Wapuwoc has been associated with the mountain and is described as meaning the “white mountain of the first light,” a name that evokes the mountain’s relationship with the rising sun and its place within the landscape.
Mount Desert Island is not simply a beautiful place on a map. It sits within the historic and contemporary homelands of the Wabanaki, the people of the Dawnland. The Wabanaki Confederacy includes the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Mi'kmaq, and Abenaki nation in Canada, whose histories stretch across what is now Maine and the Maritime provinces.
The Penobscot homeland has long centered around the Penobscot River and Penobscot Bay, while the Passamaquoddy and other Wabanaki peoples maintained extensive relationships with the coast, islands, rivers, and forests throughout the region. These places were traveled seasonally for fishing, hunting, gathering, trade, ceremony, and community.
The mountains and waters of Mount Desert Island therefore represent more than scenery. They are part of a much older Wabanaki landscape—a landscape with names, stories, routes, memories, and generations of connection that existed long before modern borders, towns, parks, and roads.
Today, institutions such as the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor help preserve and share aspects of Wabanaki history, language, and culture. Learning the traditional names of places like Mount Desert Island is one small way of recognizing that the landscape has a history that reaches far beyond the names placed upon it during colonization times.
When we look across the mountains of Pemetic (Mount Desert Island), we are not looking at an empty wilderness that was simply discovered. We are looking at a landscape that has been known by our Wabanaki peolple as sacred for generations. a place within the Wabanahikuk , carrying names and stories that remain part of the living history of our wabanaki people and im extremely thankful to be reconnected with a island our ancestors once lived and stopped on the way to Pemetic. Woliwon to all those involved making this day possible it elwas simply amazing. Nicky Nicholas