Darren Ranco is a member of the Penobscot Tribal Rights and Resources Protection Board and Chair of Native American Programs at the University of Maine.

“One of my major projects right now is my work on the Wabanaki Commission on Land and Stewardship.  As a member of the planning team, I was able to help secure appointments to this commission from each of the Tribal Nations in what is now Maine and help raise funds for the Commission’s work.

The other major current project has to do with climate change impacts on Wabanaki Tribal homelands and climate change adaptation needs and priorities of Wabanaki Tribal Nations.  In 2014, the Passamaquoddy Tribe-Pleasant Point received funding from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to develop Wabanaki Climate Change Adaptation baselines and priorities, and we, Dr. Daigle, myself, and our student Natalie Michelle, were tasked with the social science part of this work, researching, and communicating the Tribal Climate Change priorities for each Wabanaki Tribal Nation.  This has led to further grants related to this work to support our students as well as collaborations with the United South and Eastern Tribes (USET) and the Northeast Climate Science Center (NE CASC), with funding forthcoming from USGS to establish the University of Maine, Native American Programs, as the Tribal lead for research collaboration with NE CASC starting in 2022, allow us to continue our work supporting Wabanaki Tribal Nations creating their own climate adaptation plans.

I was the lead PI on NSF INCLUDES Grant #1744506 (since November 2017), NSF DDLP: Wabanaki Youth in Science (WaYS) Program to Bridge Inclusion in Post-Secondary Education Through the Sciences (Wabanaki Ecological Knowledge and Western Science).  This program integrates Wabanaki knowledge traditions in the teaching of science at the college level as a critical element of retention for Native American science students.

As a member of the Penobscot Tribal Rights and Resources Protection Board (PTRRPB) (since 2012) and as Chair of Native American Programs at the University of Maine (since 2011), I have been developing research collaborations with the Wabanaki Tribal Nations in Maine, and ensuring the protection of Wabanaki Cultural heritage, as it relates to University of Maine collections.  This work has resulted in an historic Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Penobscot Nation and the University of Maine in May of 2018.

Also in May of 2018, we produced the Penobscot Signage Report for the University of Maine campus, which has ushered in a transformative bilingual signage project, highlighting places and meanings in the Penobscot language (23 signs have been installed so far).  Along with the MOU, this project received local and regional news coverage and has marked a new era of University of Maine leadership in Native American scholarship, research, and partnerships.  More recently, and partly due to the recognition of our work from 2018, we have received several gifts to further our work in Native American student and community development (close to $250,000), as well as several grants to extend the Wabanaki Youth in Sciences (WaYS) program into the future at the University of Maine (over $400,000 in the last three years).

I have spent my entire career promoting diversity in the academy and was an Undergraduate Mellon Mays fellow at Dartmouth College.  I am currently a panelist for the Woodrow Wilson Faculty Career Enhancement Fellowship, and instructor for the Mellon Mays Preparing for the Professorate Symposium, each of which target, and promote underrepresented minorities in the academy.

Lastly, I am also engaged in various projects not yet represented in my academic production, including the creation of the Wabanaki Commission on Land and Stewardship, which has led to the return of hundreds of acres of culturally important lands to Wabanaki Tribal Nations, with the help of, and coordination with, Maine’s Land Trusts.”