PORTLAND, Maine — The corporate arm of the Penobscot Indian Nation plans to launch its own line of vodka to sell primarily to tribal casinos in other states, an idea the nation’s former chief said contradicts tribal values and the aims of its affiliated corporation.
A subsidiary of the tribe’s parent company, Penobscot Indian Nation Enterprises, or PINE, in August 2016 received a federal permit to process, bottle and ship spirits. It has a pending state distillery application at 31 Wabanaki Way on Indian Island.
The plan is to bottle and prepare vodka distilled elsewhere, a process called rectifying, according to the tribe’s federal permit, though Penobscot Chief Kirk Francis declined to confirm details of the business plan and said nothing is finalized.
“Until our internal permits are done, I have no comment about something that does not exist at this point,” Francis said of the bottling operation.
The state permit application would allow the subsidiary, Pine Distilling LLC, to produce more than 50,000 gallons of distilled spirits per year, apparently under the Algonquin word p8gui (ba-gui), meaning “clean” or “pristine,” according to a website archived by Google at the address pine-distillery.com.
“Pine Distilling is pleased to provide you with a vodka that is produced with the highest standards with a focus on pristine quality,” the website states. “The logo for our vodka is a Dragonfly, which for many Native American cultures, symbolizes pristine, water, and happiness. These are the principles that we abide by in producing this quality product for you.”
The website’s ” about” page describes a vodka that is “distilled six times using 100 percent corn and is gluten free.”
Values versus value
Former Penobscot Indian Nation Chief Barry Dana said it’s not right to use the nation’s culture to sell alcohol.
“Vodka, I personally believe, is not in line with the values of the Penobscot Nation,” Dana said. “We have a problem with alcohol to the point we have banned the sale of it on the island. It seems weird to me that we can’t sell it, but we’re going to make it.”
Wayne Mitchell, a board member of Pine Distilling, said he thinks the plan is “a great idea for the tribe in the long run,” noting that Maine state government makes millions on liquor sales. Mitchell was the tribe’s representative to the Maine House before it stopped sending a representative to the Legislature in 2015.
Mitchell said the tribe has had trouble dealing with state government to secure its permit to bottle and ship the vodka it would process out of state.
“It’s not going to be sold in the state at all, and we want to minimize our dealings with the state as much as we can,” he said.
It’s not clear how long it would take for the business to start production after receiving a required permit from the state. Mitchell said he felt the tribe should already have received it, a delay he attributed to a lack of available state inspectors.
Officials with the state’s Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages and Lottery Operations had not responded by Thursday evening to an inquiry about the status of the permit.
The tribe’s federal permit allows on-site warehousing and bottling operations in a PINE facility where the tribe previously launched a failed mail-order pharmacy business, called PIN Rx. It applied for the permit in May 2016.
Struggling to create jobs
The vodka business would be one of the newest ventures for PINE, which started in 2005 with the goal of creating jobs for tribal members through business opportunities outside of tribal land. The separate business arm started with $113,000 from the tribe and distributes some of its profits back to tribal members, if its subsidiaries are successful.
PINE’s businesses include a federal facility maintenance contractor, Penobscot Support Services, and a medical device and heath care staffing business, PINE Health Services. PINE and its subsidiaries have qualified for various federal programs that give it advantages, including when competing for federal contracts.
Its website describes its mission.
“The tribe has tried to remain as self-sufficient as possible under the limited means and historical barriers to succeed in the business world,” PINE’s website states. “Like all other tribes, Penobscot citizens live to maintain traditional cultural ways, while living in an ever modernizing world. We have had a number of commercial ventures, some successful for many years, [others] not so.”
Its failed ventures have included Olamon Manufacturing, which produced cassette tapes, and a mail-order pharmacy, PIN Rx. The mail-order pharmacy business was hit in 2007 with a $500,000 fine from the state’s Board of Pharmacy after the board found the company illegally sold more than $3 million in drugs via the internet.
Dana, who lost to Francis in the tribe’s 2014 election, said he felt the business was out of line with PINE’s business development goals.
“The purpose was to get federal contracts,” Dana said. “With it, we had a line on what the federal government needs. That philosophy got carried forward but with a new value system. I can tell you that had that come before me when I was chief, that is as far as it would have went. It would have gone right into a trash can.”
Lisa Montgomery, a tribal member who started an online petition against the vodka sales plan, said she thinks the business also sets a bad example and contributes to an association between Native American populations and alcoholism, a stereotype researchers said was unsupported in a 2016 study of health survey data from 2009 to 2013.
“Even though they say it’s only going to be sold to casinos, it just doesn’t make a good statement to our youth,” Montgomery said.
Dana, who has two daughters living on Indian Island, said he shares that concern.
“You don’t want to put the chicken too close to the fox,” Dana said.
A tribal decision
PINE CEO Miles Francis, the father of Kirk Francis, did not respond to requests Wednesday for comment about the vodka processing plant or the business plan.
Montgomery said PINE officials have projected that the business would create about 13 new jobs and that it would be the first vodka produced by a Native American tribe.
In a 2014 statement, collected for the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission Archive, Francis recalled “alcoholism was very visible here in the community” in the 1970s, a problem he said “was rooted in hopelessness” at a time of challenging economic circumstances that drove many to leave the reservation for jobs.
Montgomery’s petition seeks to force a general meeting of the tribal council to consider banning alcohol-related businesses on Indian Island.
So far, she hasn’t gotten enough signatures to force a general meeting and said it’s unclear whether the state will require a public hearing before issuing the business a license.
Mitchell said he did not think the application would require a public hearing.
State officials did not respond to an inquiry from the Bangor Daily News about whether the state would require a public hearing before issuing the permit, or whether such a move is common.