President appoints Newell to national education council

Passamaquoddy elder and educator Wayne Newell has been appointed by President Obama as a member of the National Advisory Council on Indian Education. "This is such an honor, and I am delighted," Newell says. Newell lives in Indian Township, where he has worked in Native education for 40 years.
"This has a lot of meaning for me. It is a pleasure, and I have all the more experience to take with me this time. Hopefully it will be useful in the deliberations ahead of us over the next years, as the council is mandated to report to Congress."
This is the second time that Newell has been a member of the all‑volunteer council. He served the first time during President Carter's administration more than 30 years ago. That time, he enlisted the support of prominent Democrats such as Senator George Mitchell to get himself considered for the council. This time, he was not aware that someone else had recommended him for the position.
"This time will be different," Newell, 68, says. "I'm now in the sunset of my career. I am at a different stage in my life, so I will enjoy this appointment more than the first time. My agenda will be the kinds of things that I can give to the organization. I expect many of the other members will be younger than me."
Newell's appointment was announced by the White House on Friday, July 1. He had been sworn to secrecy on his candidacy since he was first contacted for consideration three months ago. After several weeks back and forth on the phone with the Obama administration, he waited all day Friday for the notification. That arrived at 3 p.m.
When he shared his good news that day with his immediate family, his sister soon posted it on Facebook -- and the rest of the world suddenly knew, too. "There was no reason to keep it confidential any more," he says. "But I couldn't even get it out to the press because of the holidays. But everyone knows now. I have received so many good wishes from all over."
A former tribal representative to the Maine Legislature, Newell has been recognized recently for his continuing and extensive Passamaquoddy cultural work. Last September he and Blanche Sockabasin performed storytelling and songs in Washington, D.C., through the Library of Congress' series of folklife concerts.
In December 2008, after three decades of work to restore and preserve the Passamaquoddy language, Newell wrote the introduction for the first Passamaquoddy‑Maliseet dictionary, with 1,200 pages and 18,000 entries. The University of Maine Press published the three‑author work, already nearly out of print.
Newell had grown up at Pleasant Point, then an isolated reservation where Passamaquoddy was the primary language through the 1950s. Legally blind since childhood, knowing he would need skills to move beyond his vision setback, Newell made a decision as a 15‑year‑old C he would use his education at Shead Memorial High School in Eastport to expand his limited life at the reservation.
He intentionally repeated his sophomore year, he told Shead's graduates two years ago when he served as the Class of 2008's commencement speaker. He graduated from Shead in 1963. "I came to school late to begin with, and I stayed in longer," he told students in his commencement message. "I made a crucial decision to stay, when I could have quit like many of my colleagues. Education is like a key; it opens up worlds for you. Whatever obstacles you know, you can overcome them through education."
Newell has been immersed in the world of teaching and learning ever since. Twice he dropped out of traditional college programs C in Boston and closer to home, in Houlton. He went to work without a degree and actually never finished college.
But when a friend told him that Harvard University was seeking Native students for its master's program in education, Newell responded, was accepted, and received his master's degree in 1971. The national contacts and credentials he gained in Native education set him on his lifelong career path.
"It wasn't just the degree I got," he says. "The Harvard opportunity opened up my door to Native people and leaders in the field of education across the country. They were all struggling for the same things. The Kennedy Report to Congress in 1969, called 'A National Tragedy,' outlined the education of Native children, how it was a traumatic, shocking failure everywhere."
Newell first taught at Indian Township School from 1971, directed the first bilingual and bicultural education program for the Passamaquoddy Tribe. In 1978 he turned to setting up a health delivery system for the community. He returned to the school in 1988. He continues to work as the school's director of Native Language and Cultural Services.
One of his accomplishments with a statewide impact, approved by the Maine Legislature in 2006, was allowing Native elders to be certified to teach the language at the reservation schools without having four‑year degrees. Toward that, Newell and others testified in Augusta in Passamaquoddy and provided the translator for the legislators. "It was quite moving," he says. "And it passed."
Newell has been active on a national level for many years through the National Indian Education Association. He helped plan the association's third conference, in the 1970s, for just 300 or 400 attendees. Now the annual conference attracts as many 6,000. Newell is always among them.
Newell's Passamaquoddy community was touched when he was named a trustee for the University of Maine System in 2007. But now comes this even bigger honor in the National Advisory Council for Indian Education appointment. Drawing from tribes across the country, the 15‑member organization will convene for the first time in August.
"There has never been, and never will be, the funding that Native education needs," Newell says. "But because of the people who are in it, we get a lot done in our key issues, like the retention of our language and our cultural contributions to the continent, really. It's exciting to be at this level again because you get a voice, a national voice. And this national voice is something that has a lot of meaning for me."