As a longtime resident of Vermont and the Upper Valley, I would like to comment on the ongoing controversies surrounding the Vermont Abenaki community and the Odanak and Wolinak First Nations.
I am a professional filmmaker, teacher, coordinator of the “Vermont Archive Movie Project” and co-founder of White River Indie Film and I am deeply concerned with accurate representations of Vermont’s cultural diversity, past and present.
I would like to start by saying how distressed I was to learn that Vermont Public Television (now consolidated with VPR to Vermont Public), has come down on the side of a small but vocal group of Abenakis from Odanak, Quebec, who claim that Vermont’s state recognized Abenakis are fraudulent. I found this out when Vermont Public told me they would not rebroadcast the complete 6-part collaborative series that I produced, Freedom & Unity: The Vermont Movie, unless I agreed to remove the parts of the series that include Vermont Abenakis’ stories and experiences. This, despite the fact that the entire 6-part series was recently accepted for National Broadcast on Public Television and is currently being broadcast by other PBS stations across the country.
Since when is it Vermont Public’s job to publicly adjudicate Abenaki identity? They are a news organization, not a state or federal agency. I can think of no other instance where Vermont Public refuses to allow people to identify their own ethnicity and identity.
I first heard about Vermont Abenakis in the early ’70s, when Chief Homer Saint Francis and others from Swanton were launching “fish-ins.” These were acts of Civil Disobedience, (echoing those that first began in the Pacific Northwest), to assert Indigenous sovereignty over ancestral fishing waters, like in this case, the Missisquoi River in Swanton, Vermont. But they were also about state recognition, land claims, and fishing and hunting rights.
By 2011, Vermont had recognized four Abenaki Tribes or Family Bands: The Missisquoi, Nulhegan, Koasek, and Elnu bands. And, finally, in 2020, these four bands were granted free, permanent hunting and fishing licenses from Vermont Fish and Wildlife.
But certain members of the Odanak community in Quebec have launched a full-frontal assault on the rights of these Vermont Abenaki to call themselves Abenaki and to enjoy Vermont state recognition. In fact, a small group of Vermont legislators have introduced a bill circulating now in the legislature proposing to remove their state recognition.
Not only that, but the Odanak folk have cast themselves as the “victims” in this public relations battle: one member of Odanak actually told a Vermont Public reporter: “They (the Vermont Abenaki) are erasing us by replacing us.” Odanak is federally recognized by Canada, and enjoy many economic and other benefits from that status. To my knowledge, no Vermont Abenakis have ever tried to deny Odanak their identity.
One might ask why a group of Canadians object to what a group of Vermonters call themselves? Why is a foreign entity trying to exert control over Vermonters and the Vermont legislature?
They say they want to preserve the “purity” of Abenaki blood or identity. But there is no “pure” Abenaki blood or identity. The Abenaki had already intermingled with French-Canadians, British, and other Indigenous groups such as the Algonquians 400 years ago and that has continued. Odanak itself began as a French Catholic mission village hosting a small group of Native people from multiple tribal communities.
To say that all Abenaki people fled from Vermont to Canada during the colonial expansions of the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries is preposterous. Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Quebec were part of a vast “homeland” of Abenaki people. Many, as historians have documented, integrated themselves into colonial settler communities. Others kept their native identities, customs and culture private because of prejudice, and lived quiet lives in the hills. In the early 20th Century, the Eugenics program forcibly sterilized people deemed “undesirable” — that often meant French-Canadians, mixed race people, people of Abenaki descent and just plain “poor people.” This too contributed to the decision of Vermonters with Abenaki descent to hide their ancestry.
Up until the late 1960s and 70s, many people in our own community who had Abenaki grand-parents and great grand-parents hid their identity. I went to high school with several of them. And since they didn’t look that different from good Anglo-Saxons, Irish or Italian Vermonters, the census people just checked the “white” box on the census records. But since the 1960’s there has been, as we know, a Native American pride movement. Many people are no longer ashamed and have been speaking out, sharing and exploring family stories and oral traditions that had been covered up.
In fact, it is the very “oral” nature of Vermont Abenaki cultural heritage and family history that the Odanak people are attacking. And the irony is that the genealogical tools being used by Odanak were developed by colonial powers who insisted on precise documentation of family lines to preserve colonial “purity.” The Odanak Abenaki claim that the Vermont Abenaki do not have similar genealogical records that “prove” their Abenaki ancestry. But if you lived a subsistence lifestyle, as many Abenaki did for generations, you couldn’t prepare genealogical records because you were too busy feeding your family. You didn’t necessarily feel you had to prove who you were. And in fact, many refused to prove it on principle. But you could tell oral versions of your family’s history. Just because you lack formal documentation of your heritage does not mean you are not Native.
This is not to say that people who identify as Vermont Abenaki do NOT have genealogical records. Many do, and yet even they have been attacked as “pretendians.” My point is this: Abenaki people who happen to live in Vermont are not fakes, not liars, and not deserving of this public hate campaign.
And it is not just the Vermont Abenaki themselves who self-identify as such. Many good old-fashioned Yankee Vermonters tell stories about so and so who lived in the hills with their families, who lived “quiet” lives (read private). Some were itinerant farm workers, some made baskets, and some “looked a little different.”
Finally, I would like to say that I and the other filmmakers involved in Freedom & Unity: The Vermont Movie are deeply saddened by Vermont Public’s position. Vermont Public was delighted to broadcast the complete series in 2013 and 2014, as were we, and we were looking forward to sharing it twelve years later with people who did not get to see it back then, as it provides a timely and interesting perspective on Vermont history, values and culture.
We recognize Vermont Public’s value and greatly appreciate its help in sharing the many films that we, separately and as a group, have produced but we do not accept its censoring of films that highlight the Vermont Abenaki experience.
The fact that the series will not be shown on Vermont Public (though it is available on the PBS app) is much less important to us than the fact that our community television station is attempting to render invisible Vermont Abenakis, who have always lived here, long before the state of Vermont existed, and who contribute to the rich mix of people that we are today.
Jacobson writes on behalf of filmmakers who participated in Vermont Movie project: Jay Craven & Bess O’Brien, Dan Butler & Richard Waterhouse, Kate Cone, Anne Macsoud, Nat Winthrop, Ben Silberfarb, Matt Bucy, Dorothy Tod, Alan Dater & Lisa Merton, Jesse Larocque, Louise Michaels, Orly Yadin, Greg Guma, Robin Lloyd, Dina Janis, Sue Rees, Eleanor Lanahan, Kenneth Peck, Peter Kent, Deborah Ellis, Jill Vickers, Emma Schlenoff, Mike Kusmit, Kate Purdie & Andy Reichsman.