Dispute over Abenaki identity in Vermont grows more entrenched

BURLINGTON — For the third time in as many years, a crowd filed into a conference room at the University of Vermont last Thursday evening for a panel about Indigenous belonging. The focus, once again, was on Vermont’s four state-recognized tribes.

Among the headline speakers was Darryl Leroux, a University of Ottawa associate professor who’s conducted leading research on Indigenous heritage in the region.

“There’s such obvious and compelling evidence that these groups do not represent Abenaki people in any way,” Leroux said during the panel, detailing the findings of a paper he published last year about Abenaki identity in and around Vermont.

“How,” he continued, “did the state of Vermont recognize them as such?”

Leroux’s work has backed assertions made for years by the leaders of Odanak First Nation, an Abenaki tribe centered in southern Quebec. The First Nation has maintained that many members of Vermont’s four state-recognized tribes are not Indigenous and, instead, are appropriating Abenaki identity in ways that are harmful to their people.

Leaders of the state-recognized tribes in Vermont have sought over the past several years to, as they tell it, defend their culture against attacks levied by a former ally.

But if the content of last week’s panel wasn’t entirely new, it came at a time in which the dispute over tribal identity in the state has become more entrenched. Near the entrance to the building where the event took place, several dozen people associated with the state-recognized tribes held a demonstration, waving flags and holding signs.

Some signs bore slogans such as “we are here” and “you don’t know my genetics.”

The panel came just over a week after a delegation from Odanak First Nation took its case to a United Nations forum in New York City. The nation’s leaders have said they won’t stop broadcasting their concerns about the Vermont groups to the state.

“We’re going to keep on pushing this,” said Rick O’Bomsawin, chief of Odanak First Nation, in an interview after last week’s event. “I’m not going to stop.”

‘A fundamental distinction’

Research from scholars on Indigenous communities in New England and Canada — as well as reports from the Vermont and U.S. governments — have concluded that there is little evidence to support the existence of Abenaki tribes in Vermont with ties to historic groups. Reporting from Vermont Public , New Hampshire Public Radio and several news outlets in Canada has also examined those issues over the past year.

The issues have also been discussed at multiple UVM panels that prompted statewide conversations about the process by which Vermont gave Indigenous recognition to four groups in 2011 and 2012. Those groups are the Elnu Abenaki, Nulhegan Abenaki, Koasek Traditional Band of the Koas Abenaki Nation and the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi.

To be recognized by the state, a group has to show that “a substantial number of the applicant’s members are related to each other by kinship and trace their ancestry to a kinship group through genealogy or other methods,” according to standards adopted in 2010 .

That’s a different — and less stringent — standard than the federal government’s recognition requirements , which provide that, among other stipulations, an applicant must have been identified as Native American “on a substantially continuous basis since 1900.” Odanak First Nation has similar federal recognition in Canada.

At last week’s panel, speakers read a statement from the president of the Wabanaki Alliance, which represents four federally recognized tribes in Maine: the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, Mi’kmaq Nation, Passamaquoddy Tribe and the Penobscot Nation. The statement, by Maulian Bryant, was a clear shot at Vermont’s recognition process.

Speaking about Odanak First Nation, Bryant said the Wabanaki Nations “stand with their efforts to protect their legitimate people from the harm of state recognized groups who have circumvented federal recognition, guidelines and formalities in favor of (a) looser state process that doesn’t take into account the standards that our tribes have met.”

Bryant, a citizen of the Penobscot Nation who serves as its tribal ambassador, went on to acknowledge that the federal recognition process is “absolutely a remnant of the colonization that we’re healing from.” But, she said, it still offers useful standards.

“The Abenaki of Odanak have met criteria, as our tribal nations have, and when they raise issues with other groups, I believe them and support them,” she said.

READ MORE

Last week’s event came on the heels of perhaps the most prominent dialogue yet on the dispute centered on Vermont. Last month, members of Odanak First Nation spoke about the dispute at a United Nations conference on global Indigenous issues.

They were joined by the chief of the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador, a group representing 43 Indigenous communities in eastern Canada.

On April 16, Odanak First Nation also purchased a billboard in Times Square that read “STOP Indigenous Identity Fraud!” and that called Odanak and its sister community just to the north, Wôlinak First Nation, the “sole guardians of Abenaki identity.”

Vermont Public reported that the display, which cost the tribal nations $500, broadcast the message for one minute of every hour throughout the day.

Sigwanis Lachapelle, a 26-year-old who lives on Odanak’s reservation, said at the U.N. forum that there is “a fundamental distinction” between having a distant Indigenous ancestor and being accepted by Indigenous communities such as her own.

“Today, we take the floor to issue a warning to all Indigenous peoples: The violation of rights that our nation suffers today could become your reality tomorrow,” Lachapelle said, according to a translation posted online . “Indigenous identity fraud threatens the integrity of our cultures and traditions and distorts our age-old histories.”

Speakers at multiple Vermont panels in recent years have said that many of the members of the groups in Vermont are “pretendians,” or people who falsely claim to be Indigenous. It’s a major issue in tribal politics in the U.S. and Canada today, panelists including Leroux said last week.

Leroux’s peer-reviewed research has found that many members of the Vermont groups have French-Canadian ancestry but have little connection to Abenaki ancestors.

‘This is unilateral aggression’

Meanwhile, Odanak First Nation’s assertions have drawn a continuous defense from the members of Vermont’s state-recognized tribes. They’ve repeatedly said in public forums and interviews that they’ve proved their identities and don’t need to do so again.

A week after Odanak band members spoke at the U.N., leaders of the Vermont groups held a press conference at a waterfront office building in Burlington. It was the same location where they convened reporters about a year ago on a similar topic, though the tone this time around seemed more urgent.

“We’re not taking anybody’s identity. We’re claiming our own. This is our truth. This is who we are. This is why we proved ourselves to the state,” said Don Stevens, a Shelburne resident who is chief of the Nulhegan state-recognized tribe.

Several speakers said they disagreed with Odanak band members’ definition of Indigenous identity, and suggested that the First Nation was trying to eliminate the Vermont groups — something they said they will continue to stand against.

It was clear, too, that the First Nation’s demonstration in New York was top of mind.

“This is unilateral aggression. We’re not fighting with anybody. Our hands are out, and they are not clenched in a fist in front of a billboard on Times Square,” said Rich Holschuh, the chair of Vermont’s Commission on Native American Affairs, referring to a photo shared on social media by the organization Abenaki Heritage.

Holschuh, who is a member of the Elnu state-recognized tribe, told reporters that he and other leaders of Vermont’s groups planned to have a meeting with Odanak leadership sometime soon. Last week, O’Bomsawin said he was willing to meet, too, but that a time and date hadn’t been settled yet.

Such cross-border leadership meetings have proven elusive in recent years. Odanak First Nation leaders have called on the Vermont groups to furnish genealogical evidence of their Indigenous ancestry. But members of the Vermont groups have refused to provide sufficient evidence of this, Odanak leaders have said.

At the same time that they’ve continued to face questions about their identities, though, the Vermont groups have received backing from state institutions. While Odanak First Nation was in New York, UVM’s College of Arts and Sciences hosted a panel in which professors highlighted ways that they collaborate with the state-recognized tribes.

In February, the Vermont House and Senate adopted a resolution commemorating a Stowe woman’s donation of 350 acres of land in Wheelock to a nonprofit that is associated with the Nulhegan group, called Abenaki Helping Abenaki.

That comes on the heels of resolutions adopted last May in both chambers declaring lawmakers’ support for the state-recognized tribes. All three members of Vermont’s congressional delegation stated their support for the groups last year, too.

‘People are starting to listen’

During and after last week’s panel, both Leroux and O’Bomsawin said they’ve met with a handful of Vermont lawmakers to discuss the state recognition process and urged them to reopen the Legislature’s inquiry. It’s not clear yet whether any lawmakers would take steps to do so, according to O’Bomsawin, but he added, “I believe people are starting to listen, people are starting to question.”

(Odanak First Nation leaders have contended that lawmakers didn’t hear from all sides during the state recognition process because only Vermont residents were allowed to testify before the Legislature in person.)

O’Bomsawin said he has reached out multiple times to Gov. Phil Scott seeking a meeting about the state recognition process but hasn’t heard back. In an emailed statement Thursday, Scott spokesperson Jason Maulucci said the governor sees the status of the four state-recognized tribes as “a settled issue,” and that the recognition process does not need to be changed.

“Should legislators like to revisit the topic, that is their prerogative, but again, it is not something the Governor will ask them to do,” Maulucci said.

That’s not the only outreach the nation has done, though. Since last summer, its leaders have written to dozens of organizations and groups across Vermont urging them to stop working with the four state-recognized tribes and work with Odanak and Wôlinak First Nations instead.

Late last year, several organizations told Seven Days that they were either pausing their work with the state-recognized tribes, or were considering doing so, in response.

At the panel, Leroux said it’s difficult for such organizations — especially those that work with state governments — to make those types of calls when the recognition is the law of the land. That’s why, he said, the Legislature should take action on the issue.

“That would make these sorts of conversations a bit easier — if there was an acknowledgement by the Legislature that their previous recognition process is deeply flawed,” Leroux said. “And I would urge them to just redo it.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Dispute over Abenaki identity in Vermont grows more entrenched .