Clean air, clean water, and healthy forests sustain Maine people from all walks of life. We share a responsibility to protect these public assets for people throughout Maine and for our children’s shared future.
We recognize that NRCM’s mission— to protect, restore, and conserve Maine’s environment, now and for future generations —is best advanced by the leadership, experiences, and values of people from diverse backgrounds, beliefs and cultures, because threats to the environment can affect us all.
Protecting the nature of Maine transcends political, cultural, and social boundaries. NRCM must also transcend these boundaries in order to engage more people in protecting Maine’s land, air, waters, and wildlife. The board and staff members of NRCM are resolutely committed to the values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in our approach to connecting with people who care about Maine’s natural resources in order to:
- Listen to and learn from their experiences with the natural world.
- Understand and value their perspectives.
- Build an enduring movement of people who will actively engage to protect Maine’s woods, waters, and wildlife.
- Provide information about current environmental issues and ways to get involved in advocating for them.
- Actively working on these values will engender the highest participation in and guidance to the work of NRCM, thereby enhancing our effectiveness and the environmental movement’s long-term strength and health.
- We define diversity as the recognition and inclusion of individual and group differences based on race, ethnicity, nationality, age, education, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, political affiliation, religious belief, and physical and mental ability.
- We define equity as the impartial and fair treatment of people both inside and outside the organization by our staff and board.
- We define inclusion as a welcoming environment that ensures diverse voices are present and active in all aspects of our organizational life.
- We define justice as the assurance of healthy natural resources for diverse people and communities across Maine.
NRCM strives to recruit and maintain a diverse staff. We work to ensure that our staff members are sensitive to the diversity in Maine through training and mentoring, and through fostering an organizational culture that prioritizes fairness and respect. At NRCM, all employees are treated equitably and are encouraged to achieve their fullest potential. We are committed to a workplace free of any kind of discrimination and an organizational culture that displays the highest standards of ethics, transparency, and accountability. We are equally committed to these values when our staff and board interact with others on behalf of the organization.
We are committed to:
- Recruiting a diverse board of trustees.
- Fostering open and effective cooperation among the board and staff.
- Partnering with diverse individuals and communities.
- Identifying and working with diverse vendors, contractors, and consultants.
- Promoting intercultural understanding inside and outside the organization.
Respect, inclusion, and opportunity for people of all backgrounds, lifestyles, and perspectives will attract the best ideas to NRCM and helps us shape a healthier, more vibrant future for all of us who share our planet. By honoring and celebrating people’s diversity, NRCM can bring new creativity, effectiveness, and leadership to our work throughout the state. Achieving diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice is a continuous process, which, we believe, will contribute to a sustainable and peaceful world.
We Support Black Lives Matter
NRCM understands that our land, air, and water are not truly in the public trust until all people are safe to access them, free from intimidation, harm, or hate. Our organization’s work will never be accomplished as well as it could be until we successfully draw an increased number of diverse people to our tables and listen carefully to what they are telling us. And our aspirations for a better future will never be met unless we address systemic issues like police brutality, environmental injustice, or health disparities that people of color suffer from. Clean air and water must not be matters of privilege. Safely running in your neighborhood, birding in a local park, or simply living and breathing must not be matters of privilege. These basic rights must be afforded to everyone regardless of the color of their skin.
On June 3, 2020, NRCM and other Maine environmental organizations released a statement to collectively condemn the injustices and crimes committed against the black community. Read the full statement.
We Support Tribal Sovereignty
NRCM deeply values the work of the Wabanaki Confederacy over the past several decades to safeguard Maine’s environment and natural resources, and we are proud to have played a role in conservation. We feel honored to have worked with the Tribes to restore water quality and the health of Maine’s rivers, remove dams and other obstacles that have prevented sea-run fish from reaching vital upstream habitat, secure passage of the strongest regulations in the country against dangerous metallic mineral mining, and advocate to stop the dumping of polluting out of state waste in Maine, among other accomplishments.
In solidarity with the Wabanaki Alliance, we believe it is important that we be actively engaged in efforts to restore Tribal sovereignty in recognition of the historical genocide and ongoing oppression of native people and the unequal footing of the federally recognized Tribes in Maine relative to their counterparts in other parts of the nation. This comes from both a moral imperative and an understanding that environmental justice is an essential component for environmental organizations throughout all advocacy campaigns going forward. All of our work is conducted regarding and on unceded Wabanaki land.
NRCM supports LD 1626, An Act Implementing the Recommendations of the Task Force on Changes to the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Implementing Act, which was introduced to the 130th State Legislature by Representative Rachel Talbot Ross of Portland. It would restore the rights of the Wabanaki people to self-govern and to self-determination, rights that have not been recognized since the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act and the Maine Implementing Act of 1980. It would also modify the existing law to ensure that the Tribes would enjoy “rights, privileges, power, duties and immunities” similar to other 570+ federally recognized Tribes.
At NRCM, we believe our responsibility is not limited to advocacy for LD 1626 alone. We seek to be better partners with the members of the Wabanaki Confederacy who stewarded the land and waters of the area we now call Maine for millennia, the same place we are committed to bettering and caring for through our advocacy.
Our Work on Wabanaki Lands
NRCM recognizes and honors the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Mi’kmaq Nation, and Maliseet Tribes of Maine, collectively Wabanaki, which translates as “People of the Dawn.” These Tribes have stewarded Maine for generations, stretching back to before colonial settlers forcibly occupied the area.
The NRCM office in Augusta is on the unceded territory of the Penobscot Indian Nation, and many of us conduct our work on unceded lands once overseen by the Wabanaki. These lands — both urban and rural — have inherited a legacy of broken treaties and genocide. In defiance of these injustices, descendant communities of the Wabanaki maintain spiritual, cultural, and physical connection to these lands.
We acknowledge this history and recognize Indigenous sovereignty. A land acknowledgement like this is an essential beginning — but it is only a beginning. NRCM is committed to actively using our voices, our resources, and our power to support Tribes of the Wabanaki Confederacy. We know how important it has been over the 63 years since our organization was founded — and how essential it will continue to be — to work together with the Wabanaki knowledge-keepers to protect the land, air, water, and wildlife of Maine.
