It's a foggy morning on Lookout Mountain when the first visitors of the day arrive at the Tekαkαpimək Contact Station. With light wood inside and out the building feels open to the surrounding woods, and offers a direct line of sight to Mount Katahdin, which holds spiritual significance for the Wabanaki Nations. The architecture of the building incorporates a double curve design- a significant element to the Wabanaki Nations.
The Burnurwubskek Singers, a Penobscot Nation drumming group are the first to greet them at the Eastern Gathering Circle. This project has taken years of design and construction work, slowed by the pandemic, and driven by a unique partnership with the Wabanaki Nations.
"It's amazing to have been involved from the very beginning, and to see it all come to life after so much hard work and heart and soul is pretty incredible," said Jennifer Neptune, a citizen of the Penobscot Nation, is the lead exhibit writer for station.
She helped select some of the traditional Wabanaki stories that are shared inside the station on exhibit walls- some accompanied by audio recordings of the same stories spoken in Penobscot, while others include videos of the surrounding area.
"You know, we really had to narrow it down to what most represented this place and the rivers and the land and what happened here, and what you can experience here as a visitor," Neptune said.
It's just one element of the exhibits that detail the Wabanaki Nations' connections to this land.
The initial contact station designs were very different from what stands on the land today- the originals resembled a farmhouse and silo. But James Eric Francis Sr., the Penobscot Nation's director of cultural and historic preservation, said the representatives from the Wabanaki Nations objected, pointing out the design erased the area's indigenous history and instead emphasized the colonization of the region.
"We saw early on that protecting our Wabanaki expressions needed to be attended to," Francis said. "So that was an important step, like it happened so early that it felt like a true collaboration, not this eleventh hour consulting that often happens."
Francis is one of the representatives on the Wabanaki Advisory Board, that worked on the project. The group worked not just on the building, but on the exhibits inside, commissioning several pieces from Wabanaki artists.
The result is a building that is deeply embedded with the Wabanki culture and history.
The building is meant to orient visitors to the variety of views in every direction, with tall windows and balconies. That extends down to the floor, where Francis designed a map of the Penobscot watershed, which is etched into the concrete tiles.
"Well, one of the things that we really wanted to do was understand, that we wanted visitors to understand, where they were in the landscape," he said. "We really wanted them grounded. It's a very important place that we sit here."
Integral to the project is that the Wabanaki Nations maintain the intellectual property rights to the information shared and how the National Park Service can use it.
Altogether, its a unique endeavor, said U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve in a cabinet position. Haaland, who is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, traveled to see the station for herself on Saturday.
"It is extraordinary, not only in the what- a beautiful space- but in the how- this is the result of a deliberative and collaborative effort with tribal nations to fully honor the traditions, languages, images, kinship and ancestral representations of these lands original stewards," she said.
That collaboration extends to the name. In Penobscot, Tekαkαpimək means "as far as one can see." And Jennifer Neptune says it's a perfect description.
"Because throughout this process, we were looking as far as we could see back to honor our ancestors that were here before us, and as far into the future as we could see to make sure that what we were doing, and what we're creating, and what we were leaving behind could speak to future generations," Neptune said.
The National Park Service will announce normal visiting hours in the coming months, but the station will remain closed for now as finishing touches are completed. But the Wabanaki Advisory Board will continue work, and plans to hold trainings for park rangers and begin an ethnographic study on the Wabanaki Nations' history in the area.
