After 36 years of fighting for their right to claim the Abenaki identity, all four tribes in Vermont have finally been given formal state recognition.
Gov. Peter Shumlin signed two bills recognizing the Koasek and Mississquoi Abenaki tribes on Monday. The two bands join the Nulhegan Abenaki and Elnu Abenaki. All four tribes in Vermont have now been officially recognized by the state.
About 50 people marked the historic signing ceremony event with drumming, singing and speeches on the Statehouse steps.Chief Nancy Doucet, of the Koasek Band of the Koas, thanked Homer St. Francis and Sen. Julius Canns, both now deceased, for seeking legislative approval starting in the early 1990s. Canns, who represented Caledonia County, was black and Cherokee.
“This has been a long journey, a long trail of tears,” Doucet said. “We have come so close in the past … This is really forever.”
Trudy Ann Parker, who wrote a book about her great aunt’s experiences as an Abenaki living in the 19th century, remarked on the resiliency of her people.
“It’s not good times that make a people strong, it’s bad ones,” Parker said. “It’s tears that make us strong. I give thanks to the governor and the Legislature, for they saw us as a people with a heart and a soul and today they gave us a voice.”
For 36 years, the Mississquoi have fought in the courts, and battled gubernatorial whim and legislative hesitation to obtain the right to call themselves Abenaki. In 1976, Gov. Tom Salmon issued an executive order recognizing the Mississquoi tribe. A year later, Gov. Richard Snelling rescinded that order.
The Abenaki held “fish-ins” and other civil disobedience protests and turned to the courts for recognition. Though they won in the lower courts, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled against their quest for status in the 1991 Wolchek decision.
Eventually, the tribes sought assistance from the Legislature. Sens. Cannes, Hinda Miller and Vince Illuzzi and Reps. Kesha Ram, Helen Head, Tom Stevens and Michel Consejo were all advocates for Abenaki recognition. In 2006, Gov. James Douglas signed the first legislation allowing the Abenaki to obtain state recognition. Lawmakers established the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs in 2010.
The fear that state officials might take away that recognition again was a theme speakers at the Statehouse celebration on Monday reiterated again and again.
Luke Willard, a Nulhegan Abenaki and head of the commission, spoke a few words in the Abenaki language — “I am Abenaki” and “we did it” — and tried to dispel that anxiety.
“Don’t let anyone say you are not Abenaki,” Willard said. “‘Enda,’ ‘no’ — This is your birth right.”
Each of the four tribes had to meet the criteria for recognition of a Native American tribe required by the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs, which recommends tribes for recognition.
Tribes must provide evidence to meet nine criteria established by the commission including that the majority of members reside in a specific geographic location within the state’s borders and that a substantial number are related through kinship; that they have a well-documented historical connection with Vermont through archaeological, historical or ethnographic evidence; and that they cannot be recognized by another state or province.
Two bands — the Elnu Abenaki in Windham County and the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation in northeastern Vermont — gained state recognition last year. A bill in 2006 formally recognized the Abenaki as Native Americans, though it did not entitle them to any rights.
Now that the St. Francis-Sokoki Band of the Abenaki Nation at Missisquoi in northwestern Vermont and the Koasek Band of the Koas Abenaki Nation from the Connecticut River Valley near Newbury have also met the criteria, Willard said all Vermont Abenaki have been recognized. There are about 3,200 people in the four tribes.
“One year ago I said to the remaining Vermont tribes, we’re not done, we’ll be back,” Willard said. “Here we are, one year later. No Abenaki left behind. You see what we can accomplish when we work with solidarity?”
State recognition will open the door to educational and financial resources for the bands, such as federal Indian education funding for schools with Abenaki students, scholarships, and grants for economic development and cultural revitalization, according to Willard.
Rep. Consejo, a Democrat who represents Swanton, which has a large Abenaki population, said recognition is just the beginning of a process of healing between Native American peoples and white Vermonters.
“It’s a very big deal, not just for them, but for the state of Vermont,” Consejo said. “We still have eugenics we have to be forgiven for, but that’s a first step.”
A University of Vermont eugenics survey in the 1920s and 1930s led to the subjection of more than 200 Abenaki to sterilization. As a result of this very difficult history, many Abenaki were reluctant to claim their heritage and maintain their traditions.
“How can we be denying to a people to be who they are?” Consejo said.
Corrections: Nancy Doucet is chief of the Koasek Band of the Koas. Sen. Julius Canns’ last name was misspelled in the original story, and the two bills were signed, not one.
