We're going to take a trip today.

A 1,500 mile journey around New England by canoe.

But it's more than just an adventure.

It's about indigenous history, ancient waterways and what they mean to the people who paddle the Great Circle.

♪ Welcome to Windows to the Wild.

I'm Willem Lange.

Today we continue a story that began the last time we got together.

Freddy Wilkinson is a New Hampshire journalist who writes for National Geographic and The New York Times.

He and a group of indigenous paddlers set off on a journey to retrace a 1,500 mile historic canoe route.

We met them at Indian Island in Old Town, Maine.

It's I don't know, it's maybe 9, 9:30.

We're here at the north end of Indian Island, Penobscot Territory and just getting ready to set off on our big journey.

Next one is a big tall one.

I thought maybe the next adventure would be, like, two weeks or something, but here we are for a 1500 mile journey.

Approximately three months.

We'll see.

(WATER RUSHING) You are circling what you call not New England, but the North East, right?

Correct.

Because it encompasses?

Well, a big part of this journey is through New England, but it's also through, New York.

We're going all the way to New York City and then we'll be going north up the Hudson River, to Albany and then west out the Mohawk River.

Yeah.

To, to ultimately get to Lake Ontario.

And and then that'll from there the path will lead us north down the Saint Lawrence Seaway, passing the Thousand Islands area and Montreal and Quebec City.

And then from Quebec City, that'll be the farthest north point of our journey, we're told we'll turn around and come back south to to return to Old Town, Maine.

You know, if you went back in time 2,000 years ago, I believe this would have sort of been the beltway highway of the region.

Not many individual people would have paddled this entire circle in their lives, but communities all along it were connected in deep and sustained ways.

And, you know, that traditional knowledge of, you know, how to go, you know, what's the best route to travel in a canoe?

You know, you can still still find that.

And, you know, that's what this journey is all about.

♪ Three of the paddlers are filmmakers.

They shot many of the images you see.

♪ James Francis is one of them.

He’s an artist, educator and Penobscot Nation tribal historian.

He helped Freddy plan the trip.

And he paddled part of it.

My journey as a tribal historian really took, took a turn because it's like there's not a lot of written documentation by Penobscot people about our history.

And so I was looking for other avenues to figure out the history of my people and stumbled into indigenous geography.

Studying of place names and understanding how my ancestors interacted with place.

And so for me, retracing some of those old canoe routes and connecting river systems together on this modern journey was very intriguing to me.

It's kind of reestablishing that connection to the waterways and to the landscape and reinvigorating an older Penobscot sense of place.

Well, how did you get involved with this?

I mean, you're not part of the Old Town community.

No, I'm not indigenous.

I'm a I'm a white journalist adventurer dude.

And I spent the last 20 years of my life seeking out mountain adventure.

But I realized, although I I love the White Mountains and our home hills in in here in New England, the real adventure and the form of wilderness travel that gives you the deepest connection to the history of this place isn't in the mountains, but on the water.

Yeah.

That's right.

I figured I'd hang up the crampons and pick up the paddle for a few years.

♪ In our previous story, we followed the team from Old Town, Maine to the coast of New Hampshire.

They took a short break and then continued their journey.

We met them again on Thompson Island in Boston Harbor.

♪ How did you find the Old Town canoes on the ocean?

They handled okay.

We.

It was it took some practice and it took some trial and error.

We ultimately ended up modifying them with 12 ft outriggers.

Yeah.

That turned the canoes into, sort of a multi hull, pontoon vessel and make them quite stable.

So we paddled through 4.5 ft swell, 2.5ft chop probably to get here.

With a lot of big water ahead of the paddlers, the canoes that brought them to Boston Harbor will be temporarily retired.

♪ Just across the bay from the campsite, the team finds James Francis.

He arrives with a 31 footer.

♪ This is a 31ft custom made war canoe.

We're going to call it a voyageur canoe.

And it was made in Old Town, Maine by Mike Mayberry, well-known local shop teacher and canoe aficionado.

♪ So what Neil Phillips did, my uncle, was to take his favorite boat to Penobscot.

I think it was a 17.

And then measure it and multiply everything by 1.6.

And he came up with a very large 28, but this one has been modified a little further to go to 31ft.

You can see how the ends are almost like the Concorde.

You see, the noses are bent to really take the ocean.

The bow and the stern have been modified by Mike Mayberry.

Mike and the Penobscot River keepers have loaned us this boat for the next stage in our journey.

So I've been I've been out to visit it at Mike's house.

It’s in storage.

We've looked at it like this.

We've never actually flipped it right side up and put it in the water.

And and that's where we're pretty psyched to do.

(WIND) There's so much legacy and intergenerational sharing of of knowledge that happens out on the waters.

And and this canoe is is just one example of that.

I think the big change was when we delivered the warrior canoe, the 31 footer, in in Boston Harbor.

That really became a really important journey for especially the Shinnecock, who, whose waters they were going to go down through on on Long Island.

(CHEERING) (WATER RUSHING) (SINGING) I'll tell you, Will, I'm fascinated by the diversity in native watercraft that was developed before Europeans came here.

And, you know, for me as a writer and a historian, that diversity speaks to the diversity in in lifestyle and the, you know, the remarkable equilibriums that, you know, traditional cultures can find with the landscape and geography.

And the kicker is, today, you know, it's really hard to find more than 3 or 4 models of canoe.

500 years ago, there was 100 different models of canoe.

Every different community made their canoes a little differently to match the water conditions and what they were doing to gather resources and and sustain and, you know, grow their communities.

Now, you know, sadly, you know, Old Town Canoe makes four models of canoes.

So so that lack of diversity is a story that needs to be documented.

And I think it raises questions, you know, profound questions, not just questions for us as outdoors people, but questions for us as a species.

What happens when, you know, diversity is is starting to dwindle?

♪ Ryan Kelley and I grew up in, MDI, Acadia National Park area, and now I'm living in Bangor.

(WATER SPLASHING) I did not grow up with the canoe I grew up very familiar with water, but not so much the vessel itself.

That's been a recent addition in my life.

A very pleasant one.

It's been probably 12 years since I bought a kayak.

And then I upgraded to a canoe shortly thereafter.

The the canoe was the preferred method for me.

The kayak is nice, but the canoe just feels at home to me.

The canoe is kind of the focus of all this activity, right?

Without the canoe, nobody's going anywhere.

It's a metaphoric connection.

It's a literal connection.

It's a logistical connection.

It's.

It's our, you know, it's our life and death, you know, form of transportation most days.

I realized that this trip really tapped into indigenous peoples’ desire to reconnect with old and traditional ways that, you know, we're pretty strong in our canoe culture here today.

But I I think other tribes are in different places on that spectrum.

And getting that reinvigorated, especially through this trip, has been such a positive thing that has happened.

That, you know, these tribes are going to look at this as a springboard back into some sort of revitalization that they could carry on for years to come.

♪ I was really excited about them doing this 1,500 mile circle.

Jennifer Neptune is an artist, teacher and Maine guide.

She and James are married.

Together they work to preserve tribal culture.

So I run our museum and do a lot of research into history and as a Maine guide, you know, I'm always, like, researching, like the history of the waterways that we paddle and traveled and that our ancestors did and a lot of the canoe routes that are famous today that canoeists travel are based on canoe routes that our ancestors traveled to trade and interact with the tribes around us.

And so I was super excited about it.

And actually, you know, wanted to be part of it and do a lot of it.

And it didn't work out for my schedule to be able to do that as much as I wanted to do.

So I was kind of moral support and, you know, just keep I just kept praying for them the whole way from here.

As it happened, Jennifer joined the team late in the journey.

She spent several days with them traveling Maine's Penobscot River.

She really wanted to, get with them someplace on the West Branch of the Penobscot and she joined them at Ripogenus Gorge.

And then, they rafted for a day down the West Branch of the Penobscot.

And then, you know, she stayed and paddled with them for a couple more days in the boat.

(WATER RUSHING) I joined them on the West Branch and so I was part of the the rafting on the West Branch that we did.

(WATER RUSHING) The rafting?

Yeah.

As a canoeist, I tend to, like, try to stay away and, you know, take the stay out of the class four and five.

And, yeah, that was really humbling for me, like, as someone who has a lot of respect for the water and, you know, takes people out on the water and tries to be safe, it was, a little too exciting for my taste.

(WATER RUSHING) I like my wife when she comes out of the woods.

She's always so refreshed and recharged.

♪ The paddlers make their way along the route.

They cruise past Long Island and New York City on their way to the Hudson River.

Along the way, they make mental notes of their surroundings.

One of the things that I heard on this trip by other tribal people is like, these waters aren't the same anymore.

That they've been colonized.

That the advent of dams and of modern infrastructure, canals has changed these waters in one way or another.

So, you know, as far as the Penobscot sense of place that we paddled through, it was, you know, we had those structures and the Sebasticook carry portage was about four miles.

I think they had to walk.

And it might have been much less than that if more beavers were allowed to do what beavers do.

They really extend, the amount of waterways that were canoeable when they were doing what they do.

I think everyone on this planet needs to be an environmentalist.

And the values that Native Americans hold and are willing to share if you listen to them that relate to, you know, how to live a thoughtful, balanced environment with the landscape and geography.

Those are lessons we all need to to hear.

And here again, and I believe that, you know, native communities and outdoors communities can and should be natural allies.

And there's beautiful examples of that happening in some places.

Old town, Maine has, a thriving canoe community that's, you know, people of all colors and stripes, just united by their love of canoeing and and, but in other places that hasn't happened.

And, you know, I think we outdoors people can can lead by example by by engaging in a thoughtful way with native communities and hearing about, you know, what their struggles and challenges are.

And, you know, acknowledging that they were here first.

You know, these are their waters and their lands in a fundamental way that we can't hope to to give back what's been lost.

But we can we can come and be a little more humble and willing to listen.

That would be nice.

But do you think it's going to happen?

You got to keep trying.

Yeah, I guess you're right.

You do.

You do.

♪ Our reservation is made up of islands in the Penobscot River that go, like, 50 miles upriver.

And so it's easy to get into a canoe and just head out when you want to get away.

And, you know, go out on those islands that aren't developed or to go fish or to go hunt.

And so there's still a really strong tradition of people hunting and fishing and doing traditional things by way of canoe, like taking the canoe and going to an island to hunt is something that happens every fall here.

And so, people never let that go.

And, you know, we we still have this connection because we're so lucky to have never been removed from our homeland.

♪ The journey along the Great Circle began in early spring.

It carried on throughout the summer.

There were a lot of discoveries along the way and there were challenges.

♪ By early fall, the team came back home to the place where it all began.

♪ (SINGING) Well, first of all, 1,500 miles ended up being a lowball number.

They ended up going 1,816 miles from Indian Island near Old Town, Maine back to Indian Island.

So in, 116 days.

(SINGING) I thought it was quite aggressive and a lot.

(DRUMMING) (CHEERING) And I knew that I wasn't in the position, as far as my work goes, to dedicate a lot of time on the river.

But I did, agree to help out with logistics.

And, you know, 60, 500 miles later over the summer.

Yeah.

There was a lot of road miles, but it's, you know, it was worth it.

It was, you know, got a lot of photographs.

I feel great, I feel elated and like, yeah, I, you know, having made a solid group of new friends.

I mean, we were we had our ups and our downs, and it really makes the friendship that much better to know that you can course correct and deal with, you know, conflict resolution is essential to every friendship because it's going to happen.

You just got to, you know, hammer out the difference, figure out what the real problem was.

Communicate clearly.

And then, you know, the the group is a lot better off for that.

♪ My older brother used to say, you cut my veins and the Penobscot River is going to fall out.

I've been vicariously living through them for the last four months.

I'm one of those guys that wanted to be on the paddle and trip from the beginning.

Not in the middle.

So just getting the last eight days, last 100 and some odd miles.

Incredible, incredible.

Wow.

♪ Because it's been years since we've been able to do it.

And it's nice that guys from my tribe and other nations and other tribal people that tied all this together, just amazingly.

I hope that those connections that were made between here and, you know, those other the other tribes and people, continue and those friendships continue.

I hope that in some of the places where they went through that it inspires people to get back in their canoes and keep, you know, that tradition up.

I think, like, you know, a big inspiration for this trip was to slow down the pace of travel to sort of a speed and a rhythm that, you know, people have been using for thousands of years.

And that does, get into your, you know, into your head a little bit into sort of how you go about your daily routines.

And so, yeah, I mean, right now I'm just kind of processing all of it.

♪ Well, James, you made it.

Yeah.

It is, we absolutely did.

Yeah.

It was quite an event.

You’re not looking too much for worse or wear.

Well, you know, I I didn't do a lot of the paddling.

But I was, quite a bit of support.

Yeah, yeah, that's what I hear.

Yeah.

Including a four mile portage.

Yeah.

Four mile portage?

They portaged 140 some odd miles of it Wow, that's great.

Yeah.

I'm glad you all made it.

Everybody's happy?

Yeah.

That they made it anyway.

Yes.

Yeah.

So, that's the end of the trip I guess for us.

It is it is and it was great meeting you.

The pleasure, sir, is entirely mine.

We’ve come to that part of the program I like the least, the part where we have to say goodbye.

Or you don’t say goodbye, you say?

No, Penobscot we don't say goodbye.

We have no word for goodbye.

We say, mina k namihol.

Mina k namihol.

Let's see you again.

Yeah.

I'll see you again.

Absolutely.

And so I will on Windows to the Wild.

♪ Support for the production of Windows to the Wild is provided by the Alice J. Reen Charitable Trust, Bailey Charitable Foundation, the Fuller Foundation, Road Scholar, and viewers like you.

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Thank you.

♪