“New Lights in the Dawnland” is a two hour audio documentary based on five individually recorded voices recounting 13,000 years of Indigenous history of Northfield leading up to the arrival of English colonists in the 17th Century and the impacts of colonialism that followed. Replete with tribal songs, flute and drum interludes and ambient sounds, this conversational telling of the story creates its own imagery, to the considerable satisfaction of those whose voices are interwoven throughout.

For Monday - October 14, 2024 - Vermont Governor Phil Scott issued an Executive Proclamation affirming Indigenous Peoples’ Day for this year’s observance.

“How many times does Mother Earth need to send us a message of, ‘You can’t build right next to the creek or river and not expect Mother Nature to do what Mother Nature does,’ which is, assert her right to flow freely,” said Kritkausky. 

“It has driven home the message of Indigenous people that we need to look at Mother Nature as our coequal and not some thing that we can dominate,” he said. “It just doesn’t work.” 

The Montpelier Bridge has also published the commentary (June 26, 2024) written by AJ Ruben and recently printed in several other Vermont media outlets. An unabridged, more comprehensive version can be found on his personal blog here. It is time to examine the motives and methods of those who seek to bring division in a world that needs healing and reconnection. There is a crucial difference between messages of diminishment by competition and those of collaboration by coexistence.

Over the last several years, increasing at an alarming rate over the last several months, there has been a dismaying onslaught of negative statements, presentations and media attacking the integrity and existence of Abenaki people living in Vermont. The recent attacks by some Native people and UVM-affiliated academics have and continue to cause harm – emotional pain and real physical danger - to the elders, children and all Abenaki people in Vermont.

A thoughtful, provocative essay by Jenny Odell published in Emergence Magazine dated March 21, 2024.

“Walking was reading, and every wrinkle had a meaning. If I kept looking up and around in the way I had just learned, I could really see the whole thing: the movement of rock, the signature of water.”

On Tuesday June 11, 2024 Randy Kritkausky will present “A Native American's Indigenous Perspective on the Anthropocene” as a part of the University of Vienna’s Welcome to the Anthropocene lecture series.

My son and I bleed the same color, but I’m Penobscot and he’s not. That’s because of blood quantum, a legal measure that affects our political and social rights. But there’s another way to live—and another way to understand our identity.

A news item that came across our desks makes it clear that the Federal government and the Administration understands that there is room for dialogue with Native communities of all types and standings, regardless of qualified legal status for restricted programs elsewhere.

In May, a community group will begin unveiling its work on a $37,000 study of the Native rock carvings next to the Vilas Bridge on the Vermont side of the Connecticut River. The Kchi Pôntegok Project (kit-see pohn-tuh-guk), named after the Abenaki expression for "at the Great Falls," which refers to the location of the petroglyphs. The group is at the point of wrapping up the project and members are planning public presentations of their findings.

Vermont Governor Phil Scott has renewed his annual Executive Proclamation of Abenaki Heritage & Recognition Week as of today, May 1, 2024. The week itself will run from May 5th through May 11th for this year of 2024, which is the 6th year in a row this action has been taken by the Governor.

First in the series. The Vermont Truth & Reconciliation Commission presents this series of discussions that speaks to the truth by examining history and present-day realities of the impacted communities outlined in Act 128.

Leading scholars of indigenous identity and belonging gathered at UVM on Thursday to examine contested claims of indigeneity in our region. Before the talk began, protestors were outside the Dudley H. Davis Center, proclaiming these discussions were the opposite of educational.

 "There is not one Abenaki past, but a complex, dynamic story, as their culture changed and adapted as much as that of any people," Goodby notes. Many areas most important to the Abenaki have been completely developed, like Bellows Falls, Vermont, which was once a major fishing site, village and burial ground. But Goodby says, "You can go there and look at the rivers and waterfalls that were — and are — so important to the Abenaki."

The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Vermont hosted a panel discussion on April 16 in the Silver Maple Room of the Davis Center to highlight the collaborations between the university and the four Vermont Abenaki tribes and other indigenous people.

Members of Vermont's indigenous community gathered on Tuesday to issue a call for tolerance and wider discussion after members of the Abenaki nation in Canada have called into question the validity of state recognition in Vermont. "We're looking for connection. We're looking for restoration. We're looking for healing," said Rich Holschuh chair of the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs. "We're not looking for divisiveness. We're not looking for power, and we're not looking for control."

…The press conference [began] with an appeal to the Abenakis of Odanak in Canada for a detente. "We're calling for discussion, an open and healing exchange among our own people," Holschuh said. "This is not a matter to be arbitrated by others, whether they are academic, the public or the media."

UVM faculty, staff, and students have established and maintain productive relationships with members of Vermont’s four State recognized Abenaki tribes and other indigenous people who live in Vermont or represent descendant communities with ancestral ties to the region. This panel will explore these relationships and highlight some of the knowledge developed and shared as they have and continue to work to address common goals.

Let me start off by saying two things. I am an enrolled member of the Nulhegan Abenaki Tribe, an Indigenous Tribal Nation that is legally recognized by the state of Vermont.

I am also an ally and a friend of Odanak First Nation, one of two small Abenaki Reserves in Quebec, Canada. My family and I have been so for many decades.

That should be all I need to say, but the unrelenting attacks on the legitimacy of the Vermont Abenaki Nations — and on my own reputation — have made it necessary for me to speak up.

A commentary letter by LEAG member David Mulholland to The Commons (Wednesday, January 31, 2024 — Issue 750) under the full title 'A mendable stitch to bolster our common fragile social fabric of a shared community'.