The Wabanaki Nations may be allowed to gather sweetgrass in Acadia National Park for the first time in over a century, the National Park Service announced Wednesday.

Harvesting sweetgrass, which Wabanaki citizens traditionally use in basket weaving and ceremonies, has been outlawed in the area since the park was formally established in 1916, the park service said. The Wabanaki, or “People of the Dawn,” include the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, Mi’kmaq Nation, Penobscot Nation and the Passamaquoddy Tribes at Pleasant Point and at Indian Township.

“Over the past 100 years, we’ve been denied access and told that what we do is not a form of conservation,” said Suzanne Greenlaw, a postdoctoral scientist at the park’s Schoodic Institute and a citizen of the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians.

For decades, Greenlaw said, the park service embraced the view that human activities are inherently harmful to the natural landscape. She said that perspective clashes with the Wabanaki understanding that engagement can be mutually beneficial to humans and the landscape.

“Through our actions of harvesting and our worldview, we contribute to a landscape surviving,” Greenlaw said. “The more that we pick, the sweetgrass thrives.”

Greenlaw said she was “very optimistic” that the shift could signal a strengthening of the relationship between the Wabanaki and Acadia, and a greater emphasis on Indigenous knowledge in caring for the landscape.

In 2016, the Park Service finalized new rules that allow individual parks to enter into agreements with local tribes who wish to use plant materials. In order to qualify, tribes must be federally recognized, provide the park with information about culturally significant plants, and have “a cultural affiliation with the park,” the park service said.

Following a years-long evaluation, beginning when Acadia officials first consulted with Wabanaki citizens in 2015 to ask about culturally significant plants, the park service released a Finding of No Significant Impact for the practice. The review was intended to determine whether carrying on the practice would negatively impact Acadia’s conservation efforts, said Amanda Pollock, a spokesperson for the park.

Though the individual agreements are still to come, the report opens the door for future harvesting to take place.

The rule change resulted from “a great deal of collaboration, conversation and hard work,” Acadia Superintendent Kevin Schneider said in a statement Wednesday.

“This is a critical step in both preserving and protecting the park through co-stewardship with the Wabanaki tribes and providing space for Wabanaki citizens to heal and reconnect with their homeland,” Schneider said.

Wabanaki gatherers will be limited to traditional techniques of gathering the grass by hand, according to the impact report. Harvesting will remain prohibited to non-tribal citizens, as will the commercial use of plant materials or their sale within the park.

Additional gathering activities and rules would be determined by individual agreements between the park and tribes.

Sweetgrass harvesters will also be responsible for annual site assessments, post-harvest monitoring, and reviewing the health and quantity of sweetgrass within the park, according to the impact report.

Refined over hundreds of years, “Traditional Wabanaki gathering promotes sweetgrass so that it grows back in denser clumps,” according to the impact report. Harvesting the grass, which grows along Maine’s shorelines and in its saltmarshes, aerates the soil and allows water and nutrients to reach its roots, according to the park service.

Maulian Bryant, tribal ambassador for the Penobscot Nation, said the harvest season typically lasts for two to three weeks in the middle to late summer. The sweetgrass turns a vivid green when ready to be picked, Bryant said.

She said that while many harvesters aim for grass at least a foot tall, basket-makers may need blades as long as 3 to 4 feet.

Bryant said harvesters need a trained eye to identify sweetgrass among other plants that fill the shorelines, but “you can always tell by the smell” – a sweet, almost-vanilla aroma. She called Indigenous wisdom a valuable but “untouched resource” in conservation, and said its implementation can benefit the park and the Wabanaki.

“Having this restored is really restoring our connection” to the park’s land, Bryant said. “Restoring Wabanaki connections to ceremony and homeland, I think, will only help everyone.”