Addressing Race-Shifting and Cultural Appropriation
There have been concerns regarding claims that certain Abenaki individuals, families, and communities in Vermont, New Hampshire and neighboring areas are representing themselves fraudulently. The issue of ethnic legitimacy was settled over a decade ago. In 2009, the current-day State of Vermont created statutorily regulated, scholarly, and political vetting processes to determine the authenticity of its Indigenous communities (see 1 V.S.A. § 851 - known as Act 107 - here). In 2011 and 2012, the Legislature of the State of Vermont passed laws recognizing the Missisquoi, Nulhegan, Koasek, and Elnu peoples as legitimate Native American Tribes.
Nevertheless, certain individuals have questioned the validity of these Abenaki Communities south of the present USA-Canadian international border. These dismaying, repetitive assaults focus on genealogy and culture. In this short response drafted by members of the Community, we introduce a few of the factual, ethical, and human rights violations embedded in these claims.
“Race Shifting”
In 1995, Vermont Governor Howard Dean, with his Attorney General, began a quarter century of political, economic, and social assault on in-state Abenaki ethnic legitimacy. It has recently evolved into a two-pronged social media assault on the four state-recognized Abenaki Tribes. One noted offspring of this legacy is kept alive by Darryl Leroux, a St. Mary’s University (of Halifax, Nova Scotia) social justice professor who has been compiling a self-vetted online genealogy study of Vermont and New Hampshire Indigenous people. His Twitter and Facebook posts about this incomplete, biased sample illogically suggest that the south-of-the-border Abenaki Communities are riddled with white supremacists co-opting Abenaki genetic identity. The supposed purpose of this accused racist charade is to steal government largesse destined for legitimate Native people. Leroux’s claims have achieved some support amongst the local Vermont social justice community including, most recently, school librarians and four Departments at the University of Vermont, and groups in the broader region.
The results of this flawed research display ignorance of the historical, cultural, genealogical, political, and geographic complexity of the Abenaki Indigenous experience outside of the First Nations reserve system in Canada. Leroux’s work demonstrates inappropriate academic behavior, such as demeaning his academic colleagues as uninformed or unprincipled "anthros ... one of the driving forces behind white folks "playing Indian." His divisive rhetoric violates Twitter's "Hateful Conduct Policy" and Facebook's Community Standards III:12 "Hate Speech." Its methods defile human subjects research core values such as those listed in "The Code of Ethics of the American Anthropological Association," "American Folklore Society Human Subjects and Ethnographic Research Code of Ethics," and the "American Association of Geographers Ethics Guidelines." Leroux’s narrow, genealogy-based critique of these Abenaki identities is a human rights violation under Article 33, sections 1 and 2 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP), which states that Indigenous communities, not expositors like Leroux, set their criteria for citizenship. Leroux's behavior has ignited the flames of intertribal distrust and racialized politics.
The “Cultural Appropriation” Assault
A second destructive legacy of the Dean administration’s Native policy is an ethnocidal campaign designed to portray regional Abenaki bioculture as entirely “made up” or pilfered from neighboring tribes. This ethnic cleansing flows from a bizarre assortment of basement bloggers, social justice advocates, misguided Native activists, conspiracy theorists, and university professors. It displays not only a sad lack of understanding of the colonized Abenaki experience, but an alarming ignorance of the ethical and legal restraints against attempting ethnic erasure of whole communities.
Modern Abenaki culture in what is called northern New England is ethnically distinctive and composed of many ancestral regional traditions. These range from growing twelve unique regional varieties of corn, beans, and squash to the socially and spiritually complex Forgiveness Day and Harvest rituals. In keeping with original practice, regional Abenakis have received freely given traditional knowledge from friends in neighboring communities. For example, in the 1980’s only the basics of the Abenaki Round Dance remained in the Koas and Missisquoi communities, but in the 1990’s, Odanak Abenakis helped their American neighbors add new dance moves to “fill in the gaps,” restoring the beautiful, joyous dance we all do today. In addition, indigenous colleagues from Indian Township and Sipayik (Maine) and Kahnawake (Quebec) have traveled to the Champlain Valley over the years to gladly teach Abenaki relatives the political, cultural, and spiritual nuances of the Wabanaki Confederacy and Seven Nations of Canada. Likewise, local Abenakis also routinely travel to New York, Quebec, Maine, and New Brunswick indigenous Communities to share their knowledge. An interesting circular “cultural polarity” occurred years ago, when “Fancy” ash-splint basket weaving was taught to more southern Abenakis by Odanak (Quebec) basketmakers -- who then turned around and taught Wôlinak (Quebec) Abenaki citizens! Like most North American Indigenous peoples, the Abenakis here have a robust ethnic tradition, much of which is regional and ancestral, but much of which is also shared with their neighbors.
The detractor’s broad campaign of negativity has led to intellectual, ethical, and legal abuses. Scholarly and ethical violations include the improper use of materials from known southern Abenaki families to prove that Odanak Abenakis occupied Vermont in the 19th and 20th centuries. South-of-the-border Abenakis know full well that Odanak people came to Vermont to sell baskets, guide fisherman, and perform dances and song; and many elders here remember dancing and sharing meals with our Canadian neighbors. In a broader context of significance, this troubling assault on Abenaki biocultural legitimacy outside of colonized and nationalized Federal recognition is a violation of Articles 8.2, 11.1, 13.1, and 31.1 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. These articles repeatedly declare, in different ways and contexts, that Indigenous communities have the inalienable right to develop, revive, maintain, and promote their culture in whatever way they see fit. In addition, the U.N. Declaration articles insist that state, provincial and national governments take actions necessary to protect that right.
The Abenaki communities south of the international border, a part of the traditional First Peoples of what is now Vermont and New Hampshire with other nearby areas, neither recognize nor accept these biased and divisive colonial - supremacist constructs, and reject the destructive narratives of their perpetrators. Rather, we embrace the need to return to traditional values of relationship and mutual respect, learning from the past to enable - in the present - a future for the coming generations. This is our responsibility - to this Land, our Mother, with each other, and with All of Our Relations. We recognize the harm that is and has been done in the name of separation, control, and human greed and we seek a return to balance through Spirit. We welcome a return to relationship within these homelands. Nialich - may it be so.