Kskimokas "numb maker" (Western Abenaki)

Kαkskimóhkehso (Penobscot)

Northern Blue Flag (Iris versicolor)

Note the “uninhabited” label - only used in this single area - on the vast south bank of the Kchitekw (St. Lawrence River), from the Gaspé peninsula and southwest down between Kwenitekw (Connecticut River) and Bitawbagw (Lake Champlain). This is how fiction becomes established truth…

Kiwôbodian 1: Looking around, with Atowi

Stories, reflections, language, lifeways of this place — Wantastegok — through an Indigenous perspective

From an article by Gregory S. Schneider in the Washington Post from November 21, 2018, an extracted observation can be readily applied in the mid-Kwenitekw valley as well, to Sokwakik and the presence of the Abenaki here.

Photographed at Weatherhead Hollow Pond, Guilford, VT June 15, 2021. Known in Abenaki as mskata, plural mskatak, locative form mskatak.

Necessary for the regular conduct of subsistence, familial relations, trade, and diplomacy during times of peace, these trails were also used frequently during conflict, for resistance, raiding, reinforcement, and reconnaissance. Many settler captives followed these watery and mountainous paths with their Abenaki captors, on the return to more secure points north from Abenaki homelands,

Presented as part of a professional development session on April 13, 2021 with faculty at Northfield Mount Hermon School, in answer to the workshop question "What is my place?" With panelists including Tom Wessels, Thomas Easley, Q.M. Zhang (Kimberly Chang), and myself (Rich Holschuh), I was asked to discuss relationships with the school's place in Sokwakik tali Kwenitegok (now Gill, MA), through an Indigenous lens. The day's well-received events were adroitly organized by Becca Malloy, NMH's Director of Sustainability and member of the Biology faculty.

Excerpted from the 2021 Retreat Farm Almanac:

At the edge of the flooded West River Meadows directly across the street from the farmhouse and barns, a joyful community ceremony was assembled. Hosted by Retreat Farm and Elnu Abenaki Tribe, the gathering was appropriately centered within a landscape that has witnessed the unfolding of many stories, all of which retain currency in the water, earth, and air that create this Place.

The Kwenitekw/Connecticut River, looking agwdaiwi/upstream from Kitadowôganisibosis/Whetstone Brook. The mountain waji-nahilôt/to the east (right side) is Wantastiquet, the namesake for this place experienced as Wantastegok/Brattleboro. As seen on the evening of May 4, 2021.

The wonderful folks at the Dummerston Historical Society (DHS) invited me (Rich Holschuh) to be their guest speaker at the spring Quarterly Meeting. The gathering saw more than 60 people Zoomed-in to enjoy the evening’s program. I was honored to share stories of indigenous presence specifically in what is now the Town of Dummerston, VT, and then generally in the immediate area of Sokwakik - Sokoki Abenaki country.

Elnu has recently partnered with Brattleboro’s Retreat Farm to create the Atowi Project, a public interface for outreach and capacity-building. Retreat Farm has already worked extensively with VLT, having a similar mission of reconnecting community with landscape. With VLT, Elnu has begun to affirm their own goals here in Wantastegok — the traditional name for the confluence of the Wantastekw/West and Kwenitekw/Connecticut Rivers. A small parcel of highly significant riverfront land has been secured and conserved, and other priorities are being actively established.

Mara Williams of Brattleboro Museum & Art Center and Rich Holschuh of Atowi Project discuss a cultural collaboration between Atowi and BMAC. Video footage by Martin Cohn from the April 1st Rotary Club meeting, archived with Brattleboro Community TV.

John Eliot gets a lot of the credit for the “Indian Bible” (1663) in conventional histories, but it would never have happened without the cultural insight and able assistance of the Native people James Printer, Nipmuk, and Job Nesutan, Massachusett. Also, we must include John Sassamon, Massachusett, and Cockenoe, Montaukett in this citation correction. The title page names Eliot, and English colleagues Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson, but omits the critical and necessary work of (at least) these four Indigenous persons.

March 26, 2021 (pre-recorded 3/22): Vermont's Legislature is considering a few bills this session focused on promoting racial and social equity through land access and home ownership. Yet, land sovereignty may not mean the same thing to all of us. Rich Holschuh of Atowi and liaison for the Elnu Abenaki discusses the issue from an indigenous perspective.

The Vermont Land Trust (VLT) recognizes and respects the Abenaki people as the original stewards of ndakinna (a portion of which is now known as Vermont), and the enduring relationship that exists between the Abenaki, as individuals and in communities, and their homelands.

On October 8, 2020, Governor Phil Scott signed into law Act 174 (2019-2020 Session) which had been introduced as H.880. The Act enabled the addition of Abenaki place names on State Park holdings and the VCNAA was delegated to provide a list of suitable entries for the Commissioner of Forests, Parks, and Recreation to consult in fulfillment of these intentions. The Commission is undertaking that work right now.

From Thomas St. John’s Brattleboro History site, quoting from an article by local historian Charles C. Frost, in the Vermont Record and Farmer, March 31, 1876.

Rich Holschuh opens the 2021 Northfield Authors and Artists Festival: Honoring Nature in the language of the Abenaki people

Given on February 23, 2021, at 1 pm, by request of Vermont House Committee on General, Housing, and Military Affairs Chair Rep. Tom Stevens.

In the Western Abenaki lunar cycle, Pia8dagos means “makes branches fall into pieces” or ‘falling in pieces branches maker.” The days grow a little longer as Grandfather Sun edges higher in the sky, but we know there will be more snow and cold before the maple trees begin to lift their sweetness from the earth.