Mači-pikʷátohsək: A Wayfinding Walk
Sunday, October 5, 2025
1–6 p.m.
*Related programming Saturday, October 4*
⭒ Castine ⭒
Mači-pikʷátohsək (Majabigwaduce), or Castine, is known for its unique historical signs first installed by the Village Improvement Society in 1908. While these panels are considered by many to be a distinctive part of the town's character, they reflect outdated historical interpretations and contain problematic content, often focusing on European colonization while invisibilizing Wabanaki history and sense of place and erasing the traces of Castine’s Black residents.
Mači-pikʷátohsək : A Wayfinding Walk will use signage as a central theme, examining both the stories these signs tell and the histories they leave out, encouraging participants to critically reflect on visible elements of the commemorative landscape while learning about Penobscot worldview, wayfinding techniques, and relationship to place. Join us as we walk together to reflect and reimagine the many layers of stories that unfold in this landscape.
SUNDAY 10/5
WHERE Walk
1:00 pm Welcome & opening remarks at Emerson Hall (67 Court Street)
2:00 pm The 2.5 mile Wayfinding Walk begins (shuttle available throughout)
4:00 pm Reconvening at the Wilson Museum (112 Perkins Street) for observation stations, a shared meal, student presentations, and group processing
6:00 pm Event ends
Featuring the voices of Jennifer Neptune and Flo Edwards
Jennifer Neptune is a Penobscot artist, writer, teacher, and guide who lives on Indian Island. She has won national awards for her artwork and has travelled extensively throughout the United States speaking, demonstrating, and sharing her skills and culture.
Dr. Florence Edwards is the host of the podcast In The Pocket: Conversations with BIPOC Mainers, as well as a recreational kayaker, an Army veteran, and a practicing dentist for more than a decade.
Walk Logistics
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We will share a meal together at the end of the day, around 4 p.m. We’ll also have some snacks available to tide people over during the walk itself.
If you want to secure food prior to the beginning of the event, you may want to do so before arriving in Castine, as local options are fairly limited at this time of year.
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We highly recommend carpooling. Parking is available here:
Castine Health Center, 102 Court Street
Castine Town Docks, 91 Main Street (public restrooms available here too)
Court Street, on street parking
Maine Maritime Academy's Stevens Street Lot, corner of Main and Stevens Street
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Castine Town Docks, 91 Main Street
Castine Town Hall / Emerson Hall, 67 Court Street
Dyce Head Lighthouse (portapotty)
Wilson Museum, 107 Perkins St.
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Shuttles will be available throughout the walk to support anyone who needs a ride.
Have questions about mobility needs or accommodations during the walk? Email where@atlanticblackbox.com or leave a voicemail/text 207-200-7235 and we’ll get back to you.
Do you have questions, thoughts, or feedback about this walk or WHERE at large?
Email us at where@atlanticblackbox.com or leave us a voicemail at 207-200-7235 and we’ll get back to you.
In addition to the Wayfinding Walk on Sunday, all are invited to join WHERE and the Castine Historical Society on Saturday, October 4, 2025 from 2:00 - 5:00 pm at Emerson Hall for a lecture and performance that will provide critical insight into the suppressed history of this region’s role in the slave trade while illuminating some of the ways that people of African heritage have made their own freedom.
The Malaga was a 183-ton brig built in 1832 in Brunswick, Maine, in a shipyard owned by Joseph Badger. Like many other 19th-century Maine-built vessels documented by historian Kate McMahon, it was eventually drawn into the illegal slave trade and served in at least four transatlantic slaving voyages between 1843–1847.
When Brazilian-American storyteller Antonio Rocha learned that a vessel built close to the place he has called home for nearly four decades could have carried his own African ancestors to Rio de Janeiro, where he grew up, the artist set about connecting the dots of his upbringing in Brazil and his immigration to Maine with those of the slave ship Malaga, which was built in Maine and “immigrated” to Brazil. He came away convinced he was born to tell this story.
SATURDAY 10/4
Lecture & Performance
at Emerson Hall
67 Court St., Castine, ME
2:00 pm Lecture: Maine and the Slave Trade, with Dr. Kate McMahon
2:45 pm Performance: The Malaga Ship: A Story of Maine and the Middle Passage, with Antonio Rocha
4:15 pm Integrating: with Solar Playback, with Erin Curren
In this solo black box theater show, acclaimed storyteller Antonio Rocha explores Maine's role in the transatlantic slave trade by mapping the trajectory of this Brunswick-built vessel onto his own journey of historical recovery. His powerful performance makes visible the shared legacy connecting Africa, Brazil, and Maine while radically expanding our sense of what happened in coastal towns like Castine in centuries past. Through this creative confrontation of painful historical truths, Antonio opens the way for collective healing.
The Malaga Ship performance will be preceded by a talk by Dr. Kate McMahon, Executive Director of the Castine Historical Society and a leading scholar on New England’s role in the global slave trade. Providing historical context for the story of the Malaga, Kate will share her groundbreaking research into the involvement of Maine vessels, seamen, merchants, and investors in an economy built on stolen labor, focusing on the period between 1830–1865 and illuminating the many ways enslaved Africans made their own freedom.
Following The Malaga Ship performance, Movement teacher and Playback improviser Erin Curren will offer audience members an opportunity to process and integrate what we will have experienced. Playback invites audiences to share their own true stories while being witnessed and to watch those stories be honored with improvisation. This unique form has proven a compelling way to increase our capacity for empathy and deepen the felt-sense of our shared humanity.
These events are a collaboration between Castine History Partners (CHP) and the Walks for Historical & Ecological Recovery (WHERE), a series convened by Atlantic Black Box. This initiative is funded in part by the Mellon Foundation, Morton-Kelly Charitable Trust, Maine Humanities Council, Maine Community Foundation, Sewall Foundation, and by generous donors.
Castine History Partners is a collaboration originally established to create virtual history tours for Castine, and CHP continues to work to support a variety of learning opportunities around the history of Castine. The partners include Castine Community Partners, Castine Historical Society, Castine Touring Company, Maine Coast Heritage Trust, Maine Maritime Academy, Wilson Museum, and Witherle Memorial Library.