A wonderful film that acknowledges timeless connections between people and place... While a mountain can stand seemingly alone in the landscape, we know from the stories that these ones can also move through time and space with us.

Wliwni Sozap and Jezi for your sharing herein!

From an article in The Commons, Wednesday January 10, 2024 Vol XIX No 2 Issue 747 Written by Robert Smith, additional reporting by Jeff Potter.

Atowi note: These questions request context and thoughtful, responsive engagement. We will be providing this context and analysis in a more active manner, going forward.

An acoustic stone wall at a public amphitheater in Killington, a mural by a local Abenaki artist at the Retreat Farm in Brattleboro, and plans from the locally owned electric utility in the Town of Stowe to engage a stone mason to re-envision public access are among the projects recently awarded Animating Infrastructure grants from the Vermont Arts Council.

After taking on smaller, individual- and family-focused projects for the town during the anniversary celebration, Sunderland-based folklorists Michael and Carrie Kline are presenting their crown jewel of oral history with “New Lights in the Dawnland,” which features regional Indigenous voices and encompasses nearly 13,000 years of native history in a two-hour audio documentary.

We would like to once again offer our appreciation to Vermont Governor Phil Scott, who issued an Executive Proclamation this month on November 9, 2023, for Native American Heritage Month within the State of Vermont. The Proclamation can be seen at this link, and is shared in its entirety in this post.

In a letter to the editor, Jeff Benay examines a situation wherein the ‘…UVM campus is reduced to rigid ideological camps, where one side claims “purity,” and the other “silence” in fear of being ridiculed.’

From WaPo: The report provides the most detailed data we’ve ever had on America’s racial and ethnic origins, including stunningly exhaustive data on nearly 1,200 tribes, native villages and other entities. We hoped it would shed light on one of the biggest mysteries in the 2020 Census: Why did the Native American population skyrocket by 85 percent over the past decade?

Columbus Day seems to be fading as a widely observed holiday, having come under fire in recent decades from Native American advocates and others, who’ve argued that Christopher Columbus isn’t an appropriate person to celebrate.

The Fort at No. 4, a historic landmark and open-air museum in Charlestown, NH, was the location for a recent presentation of the National Park Service-funded Kchi Pontegok Petroglyph Project held Aug. 10.

A Vermont Abenaki poet is being honored by the American Academy of Poets. Joseph Bruchac, the Vermont Abenaki Artists Association master artist, received the organization’s Poet Laureate Fellowship Award.

A private law and public policy graduate school in central Vermont is making one of its scholarships available to members of state-recognized tribes for the first time.

Yesterday (April 26, 2023) Vermont Governor Phil Scott issued his fifth consecutive Executive Proclamation of Abenaki Recognition and Heritage Week. Link here to the pdf and the full text below. Kchi wliwni Gov. Scott, from everyone!

A state-funded effort has begun to document how Vermont state laws and policies have discriminated against marginalized committees, including people with disabilities, Black people, Indigenous people, other people of color and people of French Canadian heritage.It came out of legislation passed last year that created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to seek ways to repair harm caused by the state of Vermont.

Ahead of a major federal deadline this Friday for wrapping up settlement talks with stakeholders over the terms of its hydroelectric licenses on the Connecticut River, FirstLight Power has signed an understanding “in principle” with local tribal agents and advocates over its approach to traditional cultural resources along the river during the next several decade.

”As part of an ongoing effort to ensure that Dartmouth is in compliance and actively pursuing repatriation under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, known as NAGPRA, a visiting team of forensic anthropologists and archaeologists is working with Dartmouth to re-inventory human skeletal remains in Dartmouth’s possession. The visit comes after an ongoing internal review of the institution’s osteology collections unexpectedly discovered the inclusion of previously unreported Native American ancestral remains…”

In a unanimous vote Wednesday, the Brattleboro Development Review Board approved a site plan and a change of use to religious facility and nature park to establish an Abenaki cultural center at 25 Shore Dr. Conditions are anticipated to be outlined by Brattleboro Zoning Administrator Brian Bannon in a written decision.

The implementation of H.880, enacted as Act 174 of 2020, has begun to show its public side. After two years of work prioritizing State parks which would need new signage; research and consultation into Abenaki references that might apply; and developing templates and procedures, the first iteration was recently announced by the VT Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation.

Jesse Bruchac recently posted an Abenaki language voice-over video of a traditional accounting originally told by storyteller Theophile Panadis. The graphics are drawn from Joseph Bruchac’s and Will Davis’s graphic novel from 2010 entitled “Dawn Land.”

“…with the US Forest Service now planning to substantially increase logging in the Green Mountain National Forest — across areas that amount to more than 10 percent of the federally managed land — local climate activists have been staging protests, arguing the agency is defying Biden’s executive order and acting hypocritically.”

The full board of trustees meeting approved a land acknowledgement statement for official University use as well as a consent agenda containing several updates for UVM on Oct. 29. The acknowledgement statement, created by the Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and members and leaders of the four recognized Abenaki tribes of Vermont and the Vermont Commission for Native American affairs, is intended to recognize UVM’s historical acts of land usage, said Amer Ahmed, vice provost of the Division of DEI.