This commentary is by Nora Jacobson and co-signed by the following Vermont filmmakers who participated in Freedom & Unity: The 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 (St. Francis-Sokoki Band of the Abenaki Nation at Missisquoi), 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, Meghan O’Rourke and Jesse Bowman Bruchac (Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation).
As a professional filmmaker and long-time Vermont resident, I am deeply concerned with accurate representations of Vermont’s cultural diversity, past and present.
I was distressed to learn that Vermont Public has apparently sided with Abenakis from Odanak, Quebec, who are attacking Vermont’s Abenakis. I discovered this when they refused to rebroadcast the six-part collaborative series I produced, Freedom & Unity: The Vermont Movie, unless I removed Parts 1 and 2, which include Vermont Abenakis’ stories and experiences — even though the entire six-part series is currently being broadcast by other public broadcasting stations across the country. Of course, the other filmmakers and I refuse to allow the broadcast without those sections.
Since when is it the job of a news outlet to publicly adjudicate Abenaki — or anyone’s — identity? I can think of no other instance where this occurs.
I first heard about Vermont Abenakis in the early 1970s, when Homer Saint Francis, chief of the Missisquoi, and others from Swanton were launching “fish-ins” on the Missisquoi River, while also seeking state recognition. By 2011, Vermont had recognized four Abenaki groups: Missisquoi, Nulhegan, Koasek and Elnu, and by 2020, they were granted free hunting and fishing licenses from Vermont Fish and Wildlife.
But members of the Odanak First Nation in Quebec have sharply challenged the legitimacy of Vermont’s Abenaki tribes, casting themselves as the victims and telling a Vermont Public reporter: “They are erasing us by replacing us.” Yet Odanak is not located in Vermont; they are federally recognized and financially supported by Canada. No Vermont Abenakis have ever tried to deny Odanak their identity or rights in Canada.
Odanak claims they want to preserve what they call Abenaki “purity.” But there is no “pure” Abenaki blood or identity. There is extensive documentation showing that Abenaki people have intermingled with French Canadians, English colonists, and other Indigenous groups. Odanak itself began as a French Catholic mission village hosting a small group of Native people from multiple tribal communities.
To assert that all Abenaki people fled to Canada during the colonial expansions of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries is preposterous. In this regard, the culture and traditional knowledge of the Nation remain very much alive, particularly in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Quebec, which were all part of the vast homeland of Abenaki people. Many reputable historians and anthropologists have documented the persistence of Abenaki communities in Vermont. As Dartmouth historian Colin Calloway writes in The Western Abenakis of Vermont 1600–1800, “Despite white encroachment, land leases, and denial of their presence, many Abenakis remained at Missisquoi.” I would add: and elsewhere in Vermont.
Many people, as these historians documented, integrated themselves into colonial settler communities. Others kept their Native identities and customs private because of prejudice, and lived quiet lives in the hills. In the early 20th century, the eugenics program forcibly sterilized people deemed “undesirable,” including French-Canadians, mixed-race people, people of Abenaki descent and others.
Until the late 1960s, many people in our own community who had Abenaki relatives hid their identity. I went to high school with several of them. But since the Native American pride movement of the 1960s and ’70s, many people are no longer ashamed to speak out, sharing and exploring family stories and oral traditions.
In fact, it is the very oral nature of Vermont Abenaki cultural heritage and family history that the Odanak people are attacking. The Odanak Abenaki claim that Vermont Abenaki do not have genealogical records that prove their Abenaki ancestry. But that decision is not Odanak’s to make. All North American Indigenous tribal nations have their own methodology to establish membership, which is typically based on some combination of family history, kinship groupings, oral history and genealogy.
Nonetheless, Odanak and Wôlinak First Nations commissioned genealogical research examining members of Vermont’s Abenaki tribes and have actively circulated the findings to challenge their legitimacy. Yet, by conducting invasive research with the apparent motive of causing harm, we believe this report raises serious ethical concerns and, according to Chief Don Stevens of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation, runs counter to accepted standards for genealogical and ethnological research on living human subjects. The Leroux Report is full of errors, lacks source data and includes ancestors who are unrelated to the people being targeted. Although that report has been discredited by a Native American digital forensics expert, Phil Guimond, it is being widely circulated as part of what we view as a concerted slander campaign.
The fact that The Vermont Movie will not be shown on Vermont Public — although 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.
