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Against all odds, new law advances Abenaki recognition

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Saturday, 15 May 2010

Against all odds, new law advances Abenaki recognition
Rookie lawmaker takes heat in effort to gain recognition for Vermont tribes
By Terri Hallenbeck
Free Press Staff Writer
Saturday, May 15, 2010

MONTPELIER — It would be easy to argue that Rep. Kesha Ram, the Legislature’s youngest member in her first term in office, had no business weighing in on the centuries-old issue of official recognition for Vermont’s Abenaki that had eluded a long line of her predecessors.

Before it was over, the 23-year-old lawmaker from Burlington managed to become the target of a torrent of e-mails and blog postings filled with anger and hate. She was accused of being a racist. There was talk of marching on Montpelier to ruin her career.

She also helped forge an agreement that just might succeed where previous efforts have failed. Gov. Jim Douglas signed the bill into law Friday morning with several Abenaki leaders looking on.

“We have a very bright and positive future ahead,” said Nancy Millette Doucet, chief of the Koasek Traditional Band of the Koas in Newbury, even as she and fellow Abenaki acknowledged the bill was not quite what they had hoped for.

“It’s not what we wanted,” said Fred Wiseman of Swanton, tribal historian for the Missisquoi band of the Abenaki who helped negotiate the bill, but he added, “We’re satisfied.”

Sen. Hinda Miller, D-Chittenden, who started the renewed effort to solve the recognition conundrum, summed up why the issue is so difficult. “It’s not only legislation and a bill,” she said. “It deals with the hearts and souls of people.”

Efforts to gain recognition as an American Indian tribe have eluded the Abenaki for generations. The federal government turned down applications for official recognition.

State recognition has seen fleeting success followed by bitter disappointment. Recognition granted in 1976 was rescinded in 1977. A 2006 law, heralded with a celebration on the Statehouse lawn, ended up not meeting federal rules that would allow Abenaki to sell arts and crafts as native-made. A 2008 effort to fix the 2006 law fizzled.

Last summer, Miller, a veteran of the 2006 and 2008 efforts, hosted a potluck dinner with representatives of four core Abenaki groups and several legislators to launch a new effort.

Driven by shared frustrations with the 2006 law, the four Abenaki tribes — the Missisquoi, the Koasek Traditional Band, the Nulhegan Band and the Elnu — had formed a coalition called the Alliance. The plan was to craft legislation that would grant recognition to those tribes based on their stature in Vermont.

The Senate passed just such a bill in March, sending it to the House.

Ram runs into firestorm

When Ram was elected to the House in 2008, she asked to be assigned to the House General, Housing and Military Affairs Committee in hopes of tackling the Abenaki recognition issue. With a father from India and mother of European descent, Ram said her own heritage and upbringing in California have given her a drive to fight for minority rights.

She said she studied up on the history of the Vermont Abenaki, but was sensitive to the fact that the issue long preceded her. “I knew some of this has affected their identity longer than I’ve been alive,” she said.

She had no qualms, however, about raising concerns she had with the Senate bill when it arrived in her House committee. Having the Legislature grant recognition to four tribes would not meet the federal arts and crafts standards, she argued, because the criteria established was not specific enough.

Ram and her fellow committee members also heard complaints from other Abenaki who are not part of the Alliance that they would be shut out if the Senate bill became law. The committee quickly became hip-deep in the complexities that have made this issue so difficult to solve: There is deep-seeded mistrust among various Abenaki tribes about who is really Abenaki and who deserves recognition. A commission created by the 2006 law was riddled with paralyzing distrust.

Ram said the committee tried to turn to neutral sources for information, looking at other states’ recognition laws and turning to outside historians. “I felt as though I couldn’t turn to anyone else for expertise. Everyone had a particular interest,” she said. These efforts infuriated the Alliance, whose members suddenly felt they were being left out. Wiseman, a humanities professor at Johnson State College as well as tribal historian, said his work as a scholar was under fire.

“I was angry. I was frustrated,” said Wiseman, an outwardly calm man whose demeanor seems to match his name. “My research was called into question for the first time in my career.”

Don Stevens, a Missisquoi Abenaki from Shelburne who is former chairman of the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs, sent an e-mail to other legislators seeking to kill the bill Ram and the rest of her committee had rewritten before it reached the House floor. “We thought we had been hoodwinked,” Stevens said.

Rep. Tom Stevens, D-Waterbury, a member of the House committee, said much of the anger was generated because a proposed bill circulated and was blown out of proportion. It contained ideas about criteria for recognition that hadn’t yet been considered and weren’t necessarily going to survive, he said.

The Alliance’s angry reaction spread quickly on the Internet, with Ram as the central target. “I had a lot of hostility aimed at me that made it difficult to keep engaging,” Ram said. “There were a lot of moments that were hard for me to handle.”

It looked very much like the bill would die. It didn’t.

The last 5 yards

Despite their anger and sense of betrayal, Wiseman and Don Stevens said they kept coming back to the fact that they really wanted to find a way for Abenaki to sell their arts and crafts as native-made, a marketing advantage the federal government allows only for those in recognized tribes.

“My goal was to see this through,” Wiseman said. “I’ve been in this game since 1993.”

Anyone who thought Ram would give up, underestimated her tenacity. She was also surrounded by others who wanted the bill to succeed — her own committee and her roommate in Montpelier, Rep. Kate Webb, D-Shelburne, who was attuned to the issue on behalf of constituent Don Stevens.

When the Alliance would no longer work with Ram, they turned to Webb and Reps. Michel Consejo and Carolyn Branagan, whose Franklin County districts include the Missisquoi Abenaki.

“There just was this incredible miscommunication about what people were doing,” Webb said. “My role was to keep everybody playing.”

Running out of time as the Legislature’s adjournment neared, they kept playing even if they didn’t particularly like all their playmates.

Within a week’s time, they settled on a revised bill. It doesn’t offer the immediate recognition the Alliance had hoped for. Instead, tribes may apply for recognition to a new commission, which will rely on a three-person expert panel to make recommendations for recognition to the Legislature.

“This is the second-best thing to direct recognition,” Don Stevens said.

Consejo, who had fought to kill the House version of the bill at one point, said the final product is a good balance, which surprised him. “Against all odds, it was done with the cooperation of everybody. Most of us didn’t think it would happen,” he said.

Webb summed up the long process this way, “Hinda took the ball to the 50-yard line. Kesha took it all the way to the 5. Then there was a crowd of people who ushered it the last 5 yards.”

Ram said, “The entire bill was a journey for me.”

As Douglas signed the bill Friday, Don Stevens warned the governor that the journey isn’t necessarily over. “This is only half the battle,” he said. “You have to appoint good people to the commission.”

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20100515/NEWS03/100515004/Against-all-odds-new-law-advances-Abenaki-recognition

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