309 words, 2 minutes read time.
Dark Academy Adventures, Episode 1: The Adventure of the Bentwood Boxes
Join the Heritage Hunt using vintage Dark Academy science, deduction, and technology to venture cautiously into the exclusive and elitest world of “American Indian Antiquities Collecting.” This episode will track down and authenticate an American Abenaki Bentwood Box. Those who study Northeastern Native American Art may be familiar with early 19th century “Micmac Brides’ Boxes.” This first Dark Academy Investigation involves a set of three, seemingly related bentwood boxes from a small area far to the West of Nova Scotia and Maine. Find how design motif analysis and tree biogeography reveal a surprising unknown American Abenaki Indigenous woodcraft tradition.
Series Description:
Dark Academia is a lifestyle, an aesthetic, and a mindset that ranges from a sub-genre of fiction to fashion and dark, bookish interior design. The Dark Academy captures its desire for classical learning and a quest for new truths — involving arcane knowledges and a pinch of danger. It celebrates academic freedom, and classical evidentiary discovery, analysis, and interpretation with satin-polished steel calipers, black body microscopes and emotionally rewarding hours in the library stacks or on the trail. Since 2020, the Dark Academy has gained immense popularity; especially among young adults. Its acceptance by vigorous young minds resonates with Sherlock Holmes’ tireless pursuit of the truth through the science of deduction, and Indiana Jones’ improbably magical discoveries in the field. But can the way of the Dark Academy be used to solve mysteries in real space and time? So let us dust off our Harris Tweed and Hastings Triplet magnifying glass – the game is afoot!
Series created through a partnership between the Abenaki Arts & Education Center, Abenaki Cultural Conservancy, Abenaki Health and Heritage, Atowi, Heritage Hunter Productions, and Vermont Abenaki Artists Association.
Supported in part by the Vermont Department of Health.
Contact Heritage Hunters’ Productions (wisem@vtlink.net)
Related Readings:
Article:
Activity:
- Abenaki Animals Coloring Book
- Abenaki Cultural Practices, Lifeways, and Natural Resources Card Game
- Abenaki Uses of Natural Resources
- Habitats Are Homes (early learners)
- DIY Seed Paper: Restoration Ecology for Kids!
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