By Alexander Cotnoir As spring temperatures begin to climb across Vermont’s forested landscape, the annual arrival of “sugaring season” – that time of year when families, farmers, and maple producers gather to tap sugar maple trees and boil down the…
Continue ReadingBy Mali Obomsawin Cluelessness about Native people is rampant in New England, which romanticizes its Colonial heritage. In college, I attended a rally my friend organized to discuss the constitutionality of flag burning. Predictably, his newspaper op-ed provoked a group…
Continue ReadingThe Indigenous Abenaki people of the Northeast have, for generations, been subjected to both genocidal attacks (killing of people) and ethnocidal attacks (killing of culture) by colonial settlers and their descendants. In the colonial era, these threats took the form…
Continue ReadingThe following article re-contextualizes the 17th century narrative of Hannah Dustin’s kidnapping and how she escaped by killing and scalping an Abenaki family that was sleeping. This historic retelling from the Abenaki perspective was written by Brian Chenevert, Historic Preservation…
Continue ReadingThe United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was adopted by the General Assembly on Thursday, 13 September 2007, by a majority of 144 states in favour, 4 votes against (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States)…
Continue ReadingToday, we identify famous people as people we see in movies or on television. This list digs deep into Abenaki history to uncover iconic figures from the world of from pop culture, history, social activism. Publisher: Elnu Abenaki TribeYear: N/A
Continue ReadingThe following material is excerpted from an exhibition that was on view at the Bethel Historical Society from July 2004 through May 2007. This exhibit tells the story of Molly Ockett, an Abenaki Indian of the Pigwacket tribe whose lifetime (ca.…
Continue ReadingFor hundreds of years the Western Abenaki a Native American nation in what is now Vermont New Hampshire, used designs and patterns made of beads – wampum- instead of writing. They used the beads for decoration and to tell stories, send…
Continue ReadingTHE HOPE IS THAT EVERY VERMONT school child has heard of the Abenaki Indians, and many have probably heard of the Indigenous “three-sisters” garden of corn, beans, and squash. But for a state with such strong associations with farming, most…
Continue ReadingAbstract Abenaki is a common generic term for the Native American Indian peoples of northern New England, southeastern Canada, and the Maritimes. These peoples are also known as Wabanaki (Eastern Abenaki – Maine and the Canadian Maritimes) or Wôbanakiak (Western…
Continue ReadingAbstract about this article is not available. This essay was published as a chapter in the book In Captive Histories: Captivity Narratives, French Relations and Native Stories of the 1704 Deerfield Raid, from University of Massachusetts Press. Author(s): Marge Bruchac…
Continue ReadingAbstract The term Wôbanakiak includes many culturally related groups of Native peoples who were the original inhabitants of present-day Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, parts of Massachusetts, parts of southern Canada, and the Maritimes. Wôbanakiak means “people of the east” or…
Continue ReadingAbstract The October 4, 1759 attack on St. Francis is recognized as an important event in American history, but most people only know the fictional version. The movie “Northwest Passage” portrays half naked savages, living in tipis and pounding on…
Continue ReadingAbstract The area around Keene, New Hampshire was originally known to the Abenaki Indian people as Ashuelot. Although the name is now best known as a river, it originally translated to “land between place,” referring to the flat land between…
Continue ReadingAbstract The tribal name Abenaki is adapted from the original Wôbanakiak, a noun that combines the morphemes for dawn or white light (wôban), and land (-aki) with an animate plural ending to indicate the people who dwell in that place…
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