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• 1 media/History column headlines.jpg media/History column headlines.jpg 2023-02-09T02:29:49-08:00 Maine Vegetarian History Project 198 Historical recovery image_header 2025-01-03T09:21:04-08:00 Maine Sunday Telegram Avery Yale Kamila Maine’s vegetarian history runs deep through time, yet for centuries the story of this plant-based past remained ignored within the state’s conventional historical record. This has begun to change. Since 2020, when I started the Maine Vegetarian History Project, others in Maine have begun to explore and embrace this lost history. In 2024, the Maine Historical Society in Portland opened a first-of-its-kind exhibition of this vegetarian history, which includes intriguing vegan meals eaten in Maine hundreds of years ago and details of the state’s lengthy involvement in the worldwide vegetarian movement, which stretches back through time more than 2,500 years.  
  
  My research suggests many other American states also have as-yet untold vegetarian histories waiting for researchers to recover. Often, the history of vegetarianism is incorrectly categorized as a "fad" or a "diet." But vegetarianism is neither a fad nor a diet but rather a social change movement that seeks to modify the human relationship with animals. Like other social change movements, such as civil rights and feminism, mainstream interest in vegetarianism waxes and wanes throughout history. Scholars have referred to these upswings in mainstream vegetarian interest as health reform cycles, clean living cycles, or food protest cycles. We're living in one right now. However, even when mainstream culture ignores vegetarianism, vegetarians continue to be active and the social movement continues to exist. The Maine Vegetarian History Project aims to uncover this buried past within the geography of a single state and contextualize it within the broader national and international movements. I welcome calls, emails, and messages from those working to unearth buried history, who have information to share about Maine's rich vegetarian past, or anyone else interested in this project.

  Maine's Vegan & Vegetarian Food Map

  I created this Google map using publicly-available mapping tools to visualize how contemporary plant-based restaurants, businesses and affiliated sites fit within the Maine landscape, including where they are absent and where they cluster. As of 2023, Kittery is the state's statistical plant-based hot spot with the most plant-based businesses per capita: https://www.pressherald.com/2023/08/20/vegan-food-businesses-thrive-in-kittery/ 
  
  Maine's Vegan & Vegetarian Food Map: bit.ly/MaineVeganMap (this link won't work on mobile devices or the Google Maps app; instead see the embedded map below)
  ~ The Google map below may take a moment to load. ~
  

  Maine Vegetarian History Project

  Publications

  300 Years of Maine's Untold Vegetarian History, by Avery Yale Kamila. (Portland, Maine), 2024. Vegetarian meals flavor America's culinary past, yet the history of this cuisine is little known. These collected columns from Maine journalist Avery Yale Kamila explore the vegetarian movement's ties to riots in the 1830s, a 19th century activist newspaper and the 1970s back-to-the-land movement. Reaching back 300 years, Maine's Untold Vegetarian History features stories of Mainers who changed what vegetarians eat and opened access to plant-based food. Published in conjunction with the first-of-its-kind exhibition of Maine's vegetarian history on view at the Maine Historical Society. The book is available in select library collections and for sale exclusively at the Maine Historical Society bookstore, 489 Congress St., Portland, or purchase the book online at https://www.mainehistorystore.com/30yrofmaunvehi.html.
  
  The Vegan Museum historical vegetarian research guide, 2022, compiled by Avery Yale Kamila. The museum hopes the guide will aid others in researching U.S. vegetarian history, where past scholarship has been scant. veganmuseum.org/resource-guide-1
  
  Maine's Hidden Vegan & Vegetarian History: Learn the secret plant-based past excluded from the Pine Tree State's official history, by Avery Yale Kamila. XPress Copy (Portland, Maine), 2022. Available for the sale at the Maine Historical Society bookstore, 489 Congress St., Portland, and in select library collections, including the Maine Historical Society's Brown Library, the Portland Public Library's Portland Room, and the American Antiquarian Society library in Worcester, Massachusetts. 
  
  "A Brief Vegetarian History of Maine," by Avery Yale Kamila. Maine Community Cookbook, Volume Two, Margaret Hathaway and Karl Schatz, ed. Islandport Press (Yarmouth, Maine), 2022. https://www.islandportpress.com/product-page/maine-community-cookbook-volume-2

  Exhibitions

  Maine's Untold Vegetarian History, September 10, 2024 to May 17, 2025, Maine Historical Society, 489 Congress St., Portland, Maine. Avery Yale Kamila co-curated with John Babin, author and Maine Historical Society Visitor Services Manager. https://www.mainehistory.org/all-exhibitions/maines-untold-vegetarian-history-exhibit/
  
  America's Hidden Meals: The History of Vegetarianism in the U.S., an online story map exhibition that went live Dec. 10, 2023, hosted by The Vegan Museum, Chicago, Illinois. https://veganmuseum.org/vegetarian-history-in-the-us  Avery Yale Kamila was one of four curators who co-wrote the exhibition. 
  
  CODE RED: Climate, Justice & Natural History Collections, March 17-December 30, 2023, Maine Historical Society, 489 Congress St., Portland, Maine. https://www.mainehistory.org/all-exhibitions/code-red/  Exhibition advisor Avery Yale Kamila wrote two wall panels about the connections between climate, animal agriculture, and pathogenic disease.
  View the panels online:
  Eating lower on the food chain,  https://www.mainememory.net/sitebuilder/site/3278/page/5201/display?popup=1      
  Vegetarians and zoonosis,  https://www.mainememory.net/sitebuilder/site/3279/page/5202/display?popup=1

  News coverage of the project

  • Maine’s Untold Vegetarian History’ exhibit at Maine Historical Society, ARC Maine morning show with Jeff Petersen and Katie Sampson, CBS-13 WGME-TV, Jan. 3, 2025
  • Maine's Untold Vegetarian History exhibit, by Amy Paradysz, Green & Healthy Maine magazine, Winter 2024-2025
  • Maine's Untold Vegetarian History with Avery Yale Kamila, by Aaron Parker & Tim Holland, Propaganda by Seed podcast, Dec. 17, 2024
  • Maine’s 300-year-old vegetarian history is being written for the 1st time, by Troy Bennett, Bangor Daily News, Dec. 5, 2024
  • New exhibit at Maine Historical Society shares 300 years of vegetarian movement history, by Carol Bousquet, Maine Public radio, Nov. 27, 2024
  • Plant-based food columnist explores Maine’s buried vegetarian history, by Tim Cebula, Maine Sunday Telegram, Sept. 22, 2024
  • Maine's Untold Vegetarian History, by Anestes Fotaides, Portland Food Map, Sept. 2, 2024
  • Explore Maine’s Untold Vegetarian History at the Maine Historical Society, VegOut Magazine, Aug. 31, 2024
  • First-Of-Its Kind Exhibition on Maine’s Vegetarian History Opens at Maine Historical Society, International Vegetarian Union, Aug. 29, 2024
  • Friendly Fire: Historical links between violence & eating animals, WMPG radio, April 10, 2024
  • Diet & Riot: Vegetarianism in Maine with Avery Yale Kamila, by Ian Saxine and Tiffany Link, Mainely History podcast, Feb. 17, 2024
  • Vegan Action: Maine Veg History, Vegan Journal, Issue 4, 2023
  • The History of Vegetarianism & The Good Life, International Vegetarian Union, Aug. 11, 2023.
  • The oft-invisible history of a movement that didn't even have a name! Journalist Avery Yale Kamila on Maine's scrubbed veg history, women, farm girl life, and being served a friend for dinner, by Chrissy Benson, Vegan Posse podcast, May 26, 2023.
  • Speaker series addresses life in troubled times, Penobscot Bay Press, May 25, 2023.
  • Free Research Guide to U.S. Vegan History Released by The Vegan Museum, Vegan Magazine, Dec. 24, 2022.
  • Free research guide to U.S. vegan history released by The Vegan Museum, International Vegetarian Union, Dec. 10, 2022.
  • Journalist and Historian Avery Yale Kamila, by Michele Oleander, Vedge Your Best podcast, Oct. 25, 2022.
  • Hidden vegan history in non-veg cookbook, International Vegetarian Union, Aug. 15, 2022.
  • Vegetarianism in Maine in 1854, Vegetarian Resource Group, May 10, 2021.
  • Vegetarian History, by Victoria Moran, Main Street Vegan podcast, July 22, 2020.
  • America's First Milk Was Vegan Milk, American Vegan Society, Nov. 14, 2020.
  • Wabanaki Enjoying Nut Milk and Butter for Centuries, Atowi Project, Nov. 8, 2020.

  Talks

  Vegetarian Thanksgivings are Older Than You Think, Nov. 26, 2024, 5 p.m. PST/6 p.m. MST/7 p.m. CST/ 8 p.m. EST, a virtual talk with Seth Tibbott, who invented Tofurky in 1995, and vegan news columnist, Avery Yale Kamila, Vegan Museum, Chicago, Illinois. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXzjKwKCLtw
  
  Maine's Untold Vegetarian History: A talk with the curators, Sept. 30, 2024, 7 p.m., a virtual talk with co-curators Avery Yale Kamila and John Babin, Maine Historical Society, 489 Congress St., Portland, Maine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxEQWxyJpGI
  
  Vegetarianism & The Good Life, July 30, 2023, 4 p.m., talk by Avery Yale Kamila, Good Life Center Summer Speaker Series, The Good Life Center, 372  Harborside Road, Brooksville, Maine. 
  Read about the presentation, which explored The History of Vegetarianism & The Good Life, in this report from the International Vegetarian Union.
  
  300 Years of Vegetarianism in Maine, June 21, 2023, 6:30 p.m., talk by Avery Yale Kamila, Harrison Village Library, 4 Front St., Harrison, Maine.
  
  300 Years of Vegetarianism in Maine, April 18, 2023, 7 p.m., talk by Avery Yale Kamila, Buxton-Hollis Historical Society, 100 Main St., Buxton, Maine.
  Watch a video of Avery Yale Kamila's presentation of 300 years of Maine vegetarian history for the Buxton-Hollis Historical Society. 
  
  300 Years of Hidden Vegan & Vegetarian History in Maine, October 29, 2022, talk by Avery Yale Kamila, Maine VegFest, Portland, Maine.

  Maine Sunday Telegram history columns

  Open access versions of these columns are accessible from the top navigation menu
  
  Vegetarian Thanksgiving is a lot older than you think, Maine Sunday Telegram (Portland, Maine), Nov. 14, 2024
  
  Father Sebastian Rale may have been Maine’s first vegetarian, Maine Sunday Telegram (Portland, Maine), June 23, 2024.
  
  The opening of Good Day Market in 1970 ignited Portland’s vegetarian food scene, Maine Sunday Telegram (Portland, Maine), May 12, 2024.
  
  Nearly 150 years ago, a Seventh Day Adventist leader had a vision about vegetarianism, Maine Sunday Telegram (Portland, Maine), February 20, 2022.
  
  Nearly 200 years ago, the lectures of a celebrity vegetarian visiting Portland caused a riot, Maine Sunday Telegram (Portland, Maine), June 27, 2021.
  
  A 19th-century Portland newspaper an early advocate for a vegetarian diet, Maine Sunday Telegram (Portland, Maine), February 14, 2021.
  
  Americans have been enjoying nut milk and nut butter for at least 4 centuries, Maine Sunday Telegram (Portland, Maine), November 8, 2020.
  
  Exactly 45 years ago, Maine hosted a historic 2-week conference for vegetarians, Maine Sunday Telegram (Portland, Maine), August 16, 2020.
  
  Embrace of vegetarian diets in Maine predates statehood, Maine Sunday Telegram (Portland, Maine), May 24, 2020.
  
  A meat-free diet in Maine is nothing new, Maine Sunday Telegram (Portland, Maine), March 29, 2020.
  
  Maine back-to-the-land leader Helen Nearing’s cookbook makes meatless eating simple, Maine Sunday Telegram (Portland, Maine), March 30, 2016.
  
  Maine woman founded church, converted followers to vegetarianism, Maine Sunday Telegram (Portland, Maine), May 13, 2015.  

  Contact information 

  Avery Yale Kamila 
  PO Box 4242
  (Packages: 622 Congress St., #4242)
  Portland, ME 04101
  207-780-0915
  avery.kamila@gmail.com

  Maine Sunday Telegram Vegan Kitchen newspaper column
  https://www.pressherald.com/foodanddining/vegan-kitchen/
  
  Social Media links 
  www.instagram.com/averyyalekamila
  www.facebook.com/averyyalekamila
  www.linkedin.com/in/avery-yale-kamila-a964b020
  https://beyondanimal.com/user/profile/view/AveryKamila