Burlington City Council rejects art donation from state-recognized Abenaki group

The Burlington City Council rejected a plan to install a sculpture commissioned by one of the groups recognized as Abenaki by Vermont’s state government after the proposal sparked a backlash, including from two Abenaki nations based in Quebec.

At their meeting on Monday, councilors voted 11-1 against accepting the sculpture from the Abenaki Nation at Missisquoi, which is one of the state-recognized groups. The artwork was intended to replace a monument known as “Chief Greylock” in the city’s Battery Park, after officials took that monument down last year due to structural damage.

Before the vote, about two dozen people spoke about the proposed replacement, with some urging councilors to accept it, but the vast majority urging officials not to. The council needed to formally sign off on the new sculpture before it could be installed.

Burlington state Rep. Troy Headrick, an independent, was among the opponents. The Quebec-based tribes, Odanak and Wôlinak First Nations, slammed the piece in a press release issued before the meeting, calling it “a false and harmful representation” of Vermont history.

The First Nations’ leaders have maintained for years that many members of Vermont’s recognized tribes cannot claim continuous ties to historic Abenaki people, or to any Indigenous community. They say genealogical research supports their claims.

“A public monument is not neutral. It tells the public whose voices matter and whose identities are recognized,” said Denise Watso, an Odanak citizen who lives in New York, at the meeting. “This proposed statue is offensive to Greylock’s descendants.”

Greylock was an Abenaki chief famed for leading the Abenaki people in wars against English colonists in the 18th century. The previous sculpture, named after him, was installed in Battery Park in the 1980s. The artist donated the piece to the city.

The sculpture was “named and embraced by the Abenaki community,” although it was not a direct representation of Indigenous people historically in Vermont, according to a memo from Burlington City Arts, a city department that supports local artists.

City officials had been worried about the structural integrity of the wooden statue for years, and it was taken down last summer, with only its base left in place.

As a replacement, city officials had planned to put up a new wooden sculpture donated to the city by the Abenaki Nation at Missisquoi. Under a March 2022 resolution approved by the city council, the Missisquoi group is “the tribal authority to represent Abenaki matters” between local Abenaki people and the city government.

The group commissioned an artist in Jay to create the sculpture using at least part of a $50,000 grant it was awarded by the city — under the terms of that resolution — for cultural programming, according to Burlington City Arts. The piece is valued at $20,000.

The new sculpture, according to photos in city council documents, has a similar shape to its predecessor, though it adds clear references to the Missisquoi group, including the group’s flag and the words “Missisquoi Abenaki.” It also bears carvings of wildlife and an “Indian head,” Brenda Gagne, the Missisquoi chief, said previously.

The piece is meant to focus more broadly on the Missisquoi group’s history, rather than on Greylock himself, Gagne has said.

At Monday’s meeting, Gagne said opposition to the new sculpture was rooted in “a lot of lies” about her and the other state-recognized groups. In recent years, Gagne and other leaders of those groups have asserted that they can, in fact, claim Abenaki identities and have repeatedly urged the First Nations to stay out of their affairs.

“The state of Vermont has already said who we are as Missisquoi, and they are the ones that have the power to say so,” Gagne told the council ahead of Monday’s vote. “What gives anybody else the right to say anything different?”

Several city councilors said Monday that it was difficult to decide what to do about the sculpture because of the 2022 agreement. Councilors “don’t carry the expertise to determine which Abenakis are real and which ones are not,” said Sarah Carpenter, D-Ward 4, who was ultimately the one vote in favor of the proposal.

But several councilors also said that they could not ignore opposition to the project raised by the Quebec-based nations.

Laura Sanchez-Parkinson, P-Ward 3, represents the neighborhood that includes Battery Park. Public art should take “into account the diverse experiences of our communities,” as well as the impacts on those communities, she said. But in that regard, “the public art piece at hand, to me, does not fully meet these expectations.”

Evan Litwin, D-Ward 7, said he also couldn’t support the statue. He added that he thinks the city’s struggle over how to respond to the contentious issues sparked by the art shows that the Legislature needs to, at least, take another look at its past tribal recognition decision.

“I hope our legislators are paying attention,” he said.

This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To learn more, visit vtdigger.org/community-news-sharing-project.