Suzanne M. AuClair

Historian Suzanne M. AuClair serves as president of the Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail Festival. Over the past 31 years, she has developed an extensive body of work focused on the Moosehead Lake Region, documenting its history and significance through her award-winning writing and photography. She produced the state’s reference anthology, The Origin, Formation & History of Maine’s Inland Fisheries Division. As executive director of the Moosehead Historical Society & Museums (retired), she authored Moosehead Lake Region: Gateway to Maine’s North Woods, played a key role in expanding the institution’s programming, creating its Outdoor Heritage Museum and Cultural Heritage Center, initiating a partnership with the Penobscot Nation Cultural and Historic Preservation Department, and cultivating international relations. She works with a vision of honoring the spirit of time, place, and people, within historical context. She has served on many local boards. She is a long-time member of the Forest Society of Maine Advisory Council and the Maine Woods Forever Board of Directors. In 2024, she co-founded the Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail Festival as its own non-profit corporation.

Alexandra Conover Bennett

Alexandra Conover Bennett is a founding member of the Maine Wilderness Guides Association, co-founder of North Woods Ways Guiding Service of Willimantic, Maine, and a founding incorporator of the Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail Festival, member of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway Foundation Advisory Council. She has held her Master Maine Guide, fishing, and hunting licenses since 1978 and a member of Maine’s Biggest Buck Club. She is well known for her hand carved wooden canoe paddles and axes, and has been teaching paddle making since 1980.  For 20 years she demonstrated at tradeshows traditional skills for making paddles, axe handles, pack baskets, pounding logs, and tanning hides with animal brains and smoke. For the past eight years, she has been teaching outdoor skills to students from the College of the Atlantic, bringing them up to the Moosehead Lake region. She teaches and demonstrates in outdoor programs during the annual Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail Festival, for Piscataquis County Soil and Water Conservation programs, and a youth program in Dover-Foxcroft. She continues mentoring, in person and on-line, from the book “A Snow-Walking Companion,” which she co-wrote with Garrett recounting their 350-mile winter trek across the Ungava Peninsula. The book has since become a go-to about how to live, travel, and survive on foot during the winter, often in extreme conditions. In 2024, she co-founded the Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail Festival as its own non-profit corporation.

Dawna Blackstone

Dawna Blackstone has worked extensively in the field of education for over 30 years, as a teacher, school health coordinator, Outdoor/Environmental educator, athletic director, basketball coach and, most recently, as an Outdoor Learning mentor and coach to teachers. Dawna has grown up and lives in the Moosehead Lake Region and has strong ties to the land and the people of the area. She is a 2024 graduate of the Maine Master Naturalist Program and actively serves the community on many boards and through her church. She serves as secretary of the Thoreau-Wabanaki Board of Directors. Dawna loves to spend her time outdoors in all seasons in the woods and on the water, and she loves to engage others in joining her outside.

James E. Francis, Sr.

James Eric Francis Sr. serves as the Penobscot Nation Director of Cultural and Historic Preservation, Tribal Historian, and Chair of the Penobscot Tribal Rights and Resource Protection Board. As a historian, he explores the relationship between Maine Native Americans and the land. Before his current roles, James contributed to the Wabanaki Studies Commission, assisting with the implementation of Maine’s Native American Studies Law in schools. He co-produced the documentary *Invisible*, which highlights the racism faced by Native Americans in Maine and the Canadian Maritimes. James is a member of the Abbe Museum’s Board of Trustees and Abbe Council, and he is a co-founder and Chair of Local Context, an initiative dedicated to supporting Indigenous communities in managing their cultural heritage and intellectual property. He serves on the University of Maine Hudson Museum Advisory Board and chairs the Maine Archives Board. In 2024, he co-founded the Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail Festival as its own non-profit corporation. He serves as its vice-president. James is also a visual artist, working as a historian, photographer, filmmaker, painter, and graphic artist.

Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson worked as an Inland Fisheries and Wildlife fishery biologist for 35 years based in Greenville, Maine, with responsibility for the waters in the Moosehead Lake Region. Throughout his career he strived to conserve Maine’s natural resources, and in retirement he remains dedicated to this goal. Paul is a member of Maine Woods Forever and involved in promoting the Thoreau – Wabanaki Trail, a project initiated by Maine Woods Forever.  Currently he is a member of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway Foundation, involved in its natural resource inventory and assessment of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway and ongoing projects to maintain the ecological integrity of the Waterway and its watershed. Today, he actively serves on the Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail Festival Board of Directors.