Chiefs from all five of Maine's tribes joined Gov. Paul LePage today in signing an historic agreement to create a Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It will examine child welfare practices that once resulted in large numbers of Indian children being forcibly removed from their homes. The ceremony in the State House Hall of Flags marks the first time that such an effort has occurred in the United States between Indian nations and a state government. Tribal members consider the agreement crucial to their healing process.

The statistics are sobering. Chief Brenda Commander of the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians says at one time, 16 percent of all Maliseet children were in state custody. In the 1970's the Federal Indian Policy Commission backed that up with a report that found Indian children in Aroostook County were being placed in foster homes 60 percent more often than non-native children.

Finally, Commander says, members of her tribe took a stand. "One dark, cold night, again, they came in force to remove two teenage girls: three DHHS workers, one town police officer and one state trooper with an emergency removal order unsigned by a judge."

But instead of turning the girls over to the authorities, tribal members held firm and ordered the state workers off their land. It was a turning point in a tragic chapter of tribal-state relations that Commander says threatened the very survival of her tribe and many others. "We finally found courage and a voice to demand change."

Chief Kirk Francis of the Penobscot Nation says children were placed in foster homes or sent away to boarding school in a cruel attempt at assimilation. They were separated from their families, their language, their cultural identities--and in some cases, he says, subjected to horrific abuse.

"But this effort is really not about blame," Francis says. "It's about acknowledgement and moving forward, ensuring these things are never repeated through education, process and partnerships. It's about allowing people to be heard and heal in communities they were separated from."

In thanking Gov. LePage and other tribal members for their help in establishing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Chief Francis also acknowledged 52-year-old Denise Altavater, who was just seven years old when she and five of her sisters, who'd been living on the Pleasant Point Reservation with their mother, were packed up by strangers and taken away in a pair of station wagons.

Altavater says she had never been in a car before. "They took all our belongings in garbage bags, put us in their cars, didn't say anything to us and started driving away, and drove for miles and miles and miles," she recalls. "And for me, my world just disappeared. It was all I knew."

Altavater says she and her sisters were taken to a foster home in Old Town, where they were sexually abused and tortured for the next four years. "They had a dirt cellar that had one lightbulb at the top of the stairs, and one of the punishments was to lock us in the dirt cellar that had rats and spiders in it and unscrew the lightbulb and leave us in there overnight," she says.

Altavater says the girls were not permitted to see or speak to their mother. And when child case workers showed up at the house, Altavater says they didn't believe the girls' stories of abuse.

One day, for reasons that are still unclear, Altavater says she and her sisters were taken out of that home and sent somewhere else to live, although not together. It wasn't until she was 15 that she was returned to her home on the reservation.

To this day, Altavater says she has never discussed what happened with her sisters. But her story has been used to train hundreds of DHHS workers.

She says the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has given her hope for the future. "No more nightmares. No more pain. No more regrets. No more tears. It's time for truth. It's time for healing. It's time for peace and it's time for forgiveness. Thank you."

"Today is what I call a great day and a sad day," Gov. LePage told the crowd. It's a great day, LePage said, because the Truth and Reconciliation process will help produce a common, accurate understanding of history to correct past shortcomings and improve the child welfare system. "The sad day is that we have to be here in the first place," he said.

The next step will be to select a panel who will choose five TRC commissioners.