Relicensing: FirstLight Agrees to Help Purchase Mariamante Lot

From The Montague Reporter, March 30, 2023. Story by Mike Jackson.

Ahead of a major federal deadline this Friday for wrapping up settlement talks with stakeholders over the terms of its hydroelectric licenses on the Connecticut River, FirstLight Power has signed an understanding “in principle” with local tribal agents and advocates over its approach to traditional cultural resources along the river during the next several decades…

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…The tentative agreement, released to the public last Friday, is a “good faith” step toward a formal settlement on cultural resources the company will ask be reflected in its federal license for the next 30 to 50 years. It was signed by chief operating officer Justin Trudell as well as representatives of the Elnu Abenaki tribe, the Chaubunagungamaug Band of Nipmuck Indians, and the Nolumbeka Project, a local Native advocacy organization.

Among its provisions is an agreement that the company, to “remediate the flooding and impoundment” of a centuries-old Native village in present-day Gill now largely underwater due to the Turners Falls hydroelectric dam, will help secure a ““substitute ceremonial site” for the tribes.

The site specifically named by the agreement is the long-controversial “Mariamante” parcel, a 12-acre plot of land on the corner of Main and West Gill roads.

The property was purchased in 2004 by the town of Gill, originally to prevent the construction of a 60-unit condominium development. When the town prepared to market it to other developers, however, generations-old public speculation surfaced that it may be the site of an unusual Native “spokes burial” referenced in a 19th-century local history. 

Archaeological studies in 2005 and 2008 were inconclusive, finding evidence of graves that may have dated to the colonial era, but a 2009 survey of the field with ground-penetrating radar appeared to yield much more interesting results – hundreds of excavations below the plow zone, scattered throughout the field, according to a public presentation by a researcher in October 2010. 

That research was subsequently impounded by the Massachusetts Historical Commission, however, in an apparent effort to protect subsurface cultural resources from the public – and the town of Gill has been perplexed ever since by the large, unmarketable parcel on its main road. Each year, local farmers bid for the right to hay the field.

The Memorandum of Understanding in Principle (MOUIP) released last week between the hydropower company and Native representatives and allies appears to provide a solution to this stalemate. A section titled “Flooded Cultural Resources Remediation Plan” ties the parcel to the 1676 massacre of Native noncombatants at the Falls, which was largely perpetrated on land now underwater:

Part of the Village/Native camp that was attacked on May 19, 1676 is now under the impoundment waters known as Barton Cove. This historic battlefield site is a part of the National Park Service Battlefield Study and no longer accessible. To remediate the flooding and impoundment of this important cultural and historic site, FirstLight shall work with the town of Gill in pursuing the funding needed to purchase a substitute ceremonial site located nearby above the falls in Gill, Massachusetts, home to documented native burials associated with the May 19 attack, commonly referred to as the Mariamante / Conway Site, as part of the future National Battlefield Monument Historic Park.

“For the first time in the history of these hydropower facilities, there is participation by Native people,” Rich Holschuh, tribal historic preservation officer of the Elnu Abenaki, told the Reporter. “When they were built, there was no federal process in place for tribal participation.... Given that the term of the license is up to 50 years, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and we need to make the most of it.”

Attempts to reach Liz Coldwind Santana-Kiser, tribal historic preservation officer of the Chaubunagungamaug Band of Nipmuck Indians, were unsuccessful as of press time.

“FirstLight is happy to cooperate in this effort, out of respect for the tribes and the cultural significance of the area to them,” said company spokesperson Claire Belanger.

While the negotiation over cultural resources is only one of five tracks FirstLight has convened with federally-recognized stakeholders – the others are on “flows and fish passage,” “recreation,” “whitewater recreation,” and “shoreline erosion” – Belanger said that it “should be able to move forward on its own,” without being contingent on any of these other negotiations succeeding.

Belanger also confirmed that FirstLight is making an effort to show the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission partial progress in the settlement talks in the hope that further progress after the March 31 deadline will be taken into account in the relicensing. “[T]hat is the hope and expectation based on other relicensing processes,” she said.

Gill town administrator Ray Purington said the town was surprised to learn this week of the proposal to work with the power company to “pursu[e] the funding needed” to make the Mariamante parcel a historic park.

“The town was not part of the cultural resources discussions, or negotiations,” Purington told the Reporter. “Inclusion of this possibility – of funding to purchase the Mariamante property – is an interesting possibility for the use of the property, and the town looks forward to being part of further conversation.”

“The agreement is not to provide funding, but to assist the town of Gill in pursuing the funding,” Belanger replied when asked whether FirstLight would be able to contribute money toward the site’s purchase. “However, FirstLight also has agreed to provide access to its own lands for ceremonial and other purposes.”

“We just ask them to make it happen,” said Joe Graveline, a senior advisor with the Nolumbeka Project, Inc., a nonprofit group that advocates for Native interests in the region. “If they want to write a grant, they can write a grant; if they want to get it on the National Register [of Historic Places] and create a situation where somebody else can easily write the grant, that’s fine, too.”

“It would be great to get the burden of that land off of the town of Gill,” Nolumbeka president David Brule said of the agreement. “They bought it with the intention of creating a solar farm.... My understanding is that when the ground-penetrating radar work was done, it was determined that there were a little shy of 200 features of disturbed ground, which led everybody to assume that it was a burial ground, and possibly for individuals killed in the massacre.”

Graveline, who was present for the radar survey in 2009 and has been participating in the ongoing National Park Service Battlefield Grant study of the event, said that on May 22, 1676, three days after the massacre, English troops marching north from Hadley turned around when they saw fires burning on the high ground.

“We know that somewhere around 300 people die in the massacre,” Graveline said. “They weren’t going to walk away and leave the bodies. They gathered them up out of the river, they brought them up onto the high ground, and I think they spent days doing cremation burials.”

Graveline said that he and Doria Kutrubes, the researcher who led the radar project, counted 286 excavations. “She made it clear that there were European laid-out burials underneath the roadways,” he added. “They could be pauper burials, or slave burials, that spilled over from the [Riverside] graveyard. But mostly on that property were Indigenous-style circular burials and cremation burials.”

I’m hopeful that the licensees will not just be responsive, but be cognizant of the fact that it’s incumbent upon them to deal with this,” said Holschuh. “The history of the 400 years cannot be ignored any longer, and it’s time to start dealing with these things. 

“And this is this is a really good place to start. It’ a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and it needs to be engaged.”

“They may not chip in any money,” quipped Graveline, “but they damn well better show