Vermont Abenaki Heritage Days
By Donna Laurent Caruso, Today correspondent
Story Published: May 28, 2010

SWANTON, Vt. – The Abenaki people will celebrate their culture, promote their crafts, and honor Vermont state legislators who helped pass new legislation affecting the livelihood and education of the people, at the 18th Annual Abenaki Heritage Celebration on the Village Green in Swanton May 29 – 30.

“Circle of Courage will be here, which is very exciting, because this year represents the first in many when our band has had a youth drum,” said Chief April St. Francis-Merrill, of the Abenaki Self-Help and Tribal Headquarters in Swanton.

Abenaki will honor state legislators “who worked diligently to pass S222, which was recently signed by the governor, and that corrects the many flaws of the first state bill so that we can earn a livelihood with our crafts as well as educate our children,” she said.

The list of those who assisted the Abenaki is extensive. Heritage Day celebrants will honor state senators Ashe, Brock, Carris, Illuzzi, Miller, and Racine as well as state representatives Whitney Branagan, Consejo, Copeland-Hanzas, Savage, and Webb, and legislative counsel Meredith Sumner.

“These people worked very hard to get the first (state) bill corrected. We lost our federal recognition in 2005, even though no one from the federal government visited our homeland or interviewed us. In the 1920s and 1930s our people were being sterilized so our way of adapting to that pressure precludes meeting all seven of the federal criteria for recognition – so this state bill is an important one for us,” St. Francis-Merrill said.

Many Abenaki artisans will be available to demonstrate and sell their products. “Last year,” St. Francis-Merrill said, “some artisans’ tags stated that their products were ‘almost Abenaki made.’”

In addition to the newly formed youth drum, the host drum for the event is Negoot-gook, a Maliseet drum from New Brunswick, Spirit of the Wind, a ladies’ drum from Quebec, and a guest Mohawk drum, Red Tail Spirit Singers.

More than 1,000 people are expected to come to the event, especially if the weather is good. “Passports are an issue for our people, though,” the chief explained. “Our sisters and brothers, (who are recognized as Odanak Abenaki from Canada), now have to have a passport to cross into the states and many people refuse to get a passport on principle that the Jay Treaty still exists.”

Ironically, born in the states but living in ancestral Canadian territory, film artisan Alanis Obomsawin is awarded numerous U.S. honors for her work as an Abenaki artist; she received the Luminaria Award for her lifetime of achievement producing documentaries.

Interviews from the Robin Washington TV Library (on YouTube) with the current chief’s late father, Chief Homer St. Francis, explain some of the conflicts that arose when the federal government established a wildlife refuge on Abenaki land in the 1980s. The Abenaki of Vermont received federal recognition in 1976, but a few months later, newly elected Gov. Richard Snelling rescinded the act.

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