$572,746 grant to help tribe’s genealogy

 Saturday, 09 January 2010

One of the major goals of Wesget Sipu Inc., a nonprofit organization in the St. John Valley, is to preserve the cultural traditions of the Micmac and Maliseet tribes.

The possibility of reaching that goal may be a little greater because the organization has received a $572,746 grant, Wesget Sipu program manager Marie Danielle Leblanc said Tuesday.

Wesget Sipu is a Micmac term that translates to “Fish River People,” according to the organization’s Web site. The organization is a group of families, mostly living in the St. John Valley, that follows the cultural traditions of their Maliseet and Micmac heritage.

Wesget Sipu, established in 1998, just received the first installment of the grant, which will be distributed over three years. The grant was awarded by the Administration for Native Americans’ Social Economic Development Strategies program, which falls under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families division.

Leblanc said the money will help finance a project called “The Preservation of the Ancestral and Cultural Heritage of the Maliseet and Micmac People known as the Wesget Sipu of the St. John Valley, Maine.”

“This project is being put on by our organization and it has three major objectives,” she said Tuesday. “Our first goal is to trace the genealogies of at least 75 percent of the families who make up the Wesget Sipu tribe. We are going to use what we find during our research to create an electronic database for all tribal members that will help them create their family trees.”