James Neptune, Penobscot Elder

Spirit Song

Nov 25

We interviewed James Neptune on the bank of the Penobscot River, on Indian Island, the one and only Penobscot Reservation in the USA.

Penobscot is one of only four surviving tribes in Maine. (The others are the Passamaquoddy, Micmac, and Maliseet.) As a Penobscot elder and former curator of the Penobscot Nation Museum, Mr. Neptune had stories for days.

As we were talking, a nearby bullfrog seemed intent on joining the conversation with his deep bellowing. The bullfrog, we were told, is important to the Penobscot origins. Mr. Neptune shared the origin story of the Penobscot River and its people, in present tense, and our crew gathered round like children at bedtime, riveted. The story begins when their hero and Spirit Chief Gluskabe makes himself enormous so he can battle Aglebemu, the giant frog monster who has hoarded all the water and fish, causing a massive draught. He cannot get the giant—and apparently very greedy—frog monster to release the water, so he tears a tree from the ground, roots and all, and uses it to club the monster, smashing its back and reducing it to a bullfrog, while sending a flood of water back through the valley, expanding the river. To save the people from dying in the water, Gluskabe transformed the Penobscots into water animals, and that’s where their clan names come from. So now you have Mr. Neptune’s eel clan, and you’ve got the beaver, the otter, the turtle, and so on. And now, you also have the Penobscots’ root club and the bullfrog.

FIELD RECORDING: Mr. Neptune tells the story of the Penobscot Bullfrog.

Now you know where the bullfrog’s oversized sound comes from, and you know the hump on its back is a reminder of when Gluskabe struck the monster and saved the tribe.

The less obvious message is the one on hoarding resources. While the story could be interpreted as encouraging military escalation, I think it’s a cautionary tale: there will always be a bigger monster (if you’re the hoarder). And, for the rest of us, this message precludes Darwin’s theory of survival: it’s more likely when you’re able to adapt.

We sat all morning listening to stories with Mr. Neptune. He told us his concerns for the ways the world is changing, as we disconnect further and further from nature, and from one another. He said he was happy he lived when he did, during a time when he could play in nature without the disruptions of modern man, our pollutants and our devices, and that we need to find people to teach us to survive and work together, to reconnect with one another and the earth.

We need to adapt to the changes within our own lives, mindfully.

Before the sun became too hot and we called it a day, he sang the Medicine Man song to us, as he has done with all visitors and guests of the museum over the years. We were honored to be able to include even a bit of his stories and singing in Spirit Song, and the full version of his Medicine Man song plays throughout the end credits with a haunting and healing beauty. (You can watch the full film here.)

FIELD RECORDING: Mr. Neptune’s introduction to the Medicine Man song.

James Neptune did, in fact, vibrate with a very loving energy that was perceptible to all of us who met him, and even our team members who only experienced him onscreen.

Mr. Neptune passed away in October 2019, but his energy resonates as strong as ever.