Wohelo has been bringing young women together in nature to develop lifelong friendships and skills for over 115 years. Our network of alums is expansive, numbering in the thousands, spanning multiple generations, and coming from around the globe. While all of us have had our own transformative experiences at camp, what has connected all of us is the land that camp resides on. The rocky shoreline of Sebago Lake and the dense forest that surrounds it have been the perfect place for us to play and work with love and health for over a century. In 1910, our founder Charlotte Vetter Gulick wrote, “This location was selected because of the purity of the pine-scented air, clear waters, and delightfulness of its summer climate.” This is a fact that is still true today. While we are proud of our long history on Raymond Cape, we are humbled by the people and legacy that predate us.
The Abenaki tribe of Native Americans were the original inhabitants of this beautiful spot on Sebago; they also resided within the rest of western and southern Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Quebec. Dozens of distinct tribes lived in New England for 15,000 years prior to European arrival. Artifacts found in the Sebago Lake area have been dated to 9,000 years old. Even the word “Sebago” comes from Native language, meaning “great lake.” As tribe numbers shrunk due to colonization, the Abenaki, along with four other New England tribes, joined together to form the Wabanaki Confederacy. Abenaki and Wabanaki have the same Algonquian root meaning “Dawnland” or “people from the east.”
Prior to European involvement, Native land and culture spanned the entire continents of North and South America. Nearly 600 years of settler colonialism has decimated Native populations, settlements, and history. It is important to acknowledge settler colonialism, not as a distinct historical event, but a structure of economic and governmental practices that is ongoing today.
At Wohelo we will be continuing to take more deliberate action to center and support Native voices. We must accept the responsibility for the land that camp now resides on and also the Native people who were here first by being good community members and tenants. We will continue to examine our camp practices with a scrutinous eye and update them as necessary to be in line with our principles. We will not continue to have aspects of our program glorify Native culture while also being beneficiaries of settler colonialism. We thank our current and former camp community members for their continued patience and support as we work to make Wohelo an inclusive, welcoming, and productive space for everyone. Despite centuries of hardship and persecution, Indigenous communities are alive and well today. We hope that by bringing attention to the people that have maintained this land for millennia will contribute to the ongoing effort of fighting Native erasure and help dissolve misconceptions about our colonial past.
