I enjoyed talking recently with Nina Keck about Vermont’s fascination with “Lost Nations”, on this latest episode of Vermont Public Radio’s Brave Little State podcast series. My contribution at about 22:00.
Tag: podcast
Podcast: David Brule on River Stories 2020
David Brule, president of the Nolumbeka Project, based in Greenfield, speaks about a series focusing on Native Americans in the Valley. The series, which will consist of about a dozen events, is in part a response to this year’s Plymouth 400 observance, which is more focused on white settlers and the 1620 Plymouth Rock landing by the Pilgrims.
Check out the podcast at the article link.
Brattleboro, William Brattle, and the Art of Colonization; Yes, He Was Here
John Singleton Copley, William Brattle, oil on canvas, 128 x 102.5 cm (50 3/8 x 40 3/8 in.), 1756, Harvard Art Museums, Harvard University, Massachusetts. Image in public domain, via Wikipedia
From the Brattleboro Historical Society, posted March 30, 2019:
This Week in Brattleboro History. We are happy to release our 200th podcast episode. BAMS students interviewed local historian Rich Holschuh about his research into William Brattle, our town’s namesake. Rich explains how Brattleboro gained its unique name, and also shares insightful background information about early relations between the English and Native Americans. Click below to hear the story…
BHS Soundcloud Podcast here (listen).
Interview underway at BAMS with Amani and Priya. Photo by teacher Joe Rivers.
Green Mountain Mornings: The Winter Solstice and Connecting to Wantastegok
Episode 2 with Olga Peters on her Green Mountain Mornings show at Brattleboro’s WKVT radio (100.3 FM & 1490 AM). This is the second in a series of Sokoki Sojourn: Live on the air. We will explore Sokoki-inspired topics over a broad range of interests (mostly local, but occasionally further afield) including historical, linguistic, geographic, contemporary, political, cultural… (it’s all cultural…)
December 20, 2018: In Abenaki, the Winter Solstice is known as “Peboniwi t8ni kizos wazwasa” or “In winter when the sun returns to the same place.” Rich Holschuh shares the deeper meaning of these phrases. He also helps anchor the sense of place that is Brattleboro (Wantastegok).
Decolonizing Thanksgiving: an American story Connects to Brattleboro, VT
An interview with Olga Peters on her Green Mountain Mornings show at Brattleboro’s WKVT radio. This is the first in what will become a series of Sokoki Sojourn: Live on the air. We will explore Sokoki-inspired topics over a broad range of interests (mostly local, but occasionally further afield) including historical, linguistic, geographic, contemporary, political, cultural… (it’s all cultural…)
November 15, 2018: Rich Holschuh shares his thoughts on Brattleboro’s connections to the story of the Pilgrims and “The First Thanksgiving.” He talks about the complexities of decolonization. Holschuh then shares the Abenaki word to express gratitude. Holschuh operates the blog Sokoki Sojourn.
Green Mountain Mornings WKVT: Indigenous Peoples’ Day
I was invited by Green Mountain Mornings host Olga Peters to join her for the show on Monday, Oct. 8, 2018, for a discussion of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. We had an enjoyable 20-minute conversation about the who, what, why, where, and “now what” aspects of this symbolic yet significant change of observance from Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day. A link to the podcast resulting from the airtime dialogue is here on SoundCloud.
Happy note: Our time ended with Olga asking me if I would be interested in putting together a regular monthly show devoted to a place-based indigenous perspective, with guests and a wide variety of Abenaki-centric topics. Of course I said “Yes!” Centering on n’siboal – our rivers – and Wantastegok, we will explore local history, linguistics, politics, relationship to place and all of our relations, ways of being in the world, traditional skills, arts, music – you name it… culture is complex.
Photo by Kristopher Radder of the Brattleboro Reformer.
The Art of the Wabanaki: Indian Market at the Abbe Museum
The inaugural Abbe Museum Indian Market takes place in Bar Harbor May 18-20. The market will support Wabanaki artists and the local community. We’ll discuss the art of the Wabanaki, its effect on the local economy and learn about events taking place to celebrate the inaugural event.
Drew Lopenzina About William Apess On NPR’s With Good Reason
On VPR: Vera Longtoe Sheehan for Women’s History Month with Molly Ockett
Kwai Nedobak! Nd’elewizi Vera Longtoe Sheehan du Elnu Wôbanaki – that translates into English as: Hello my friends! My name is Vera Longtoe Sheehan, and I’m a citizen of the Elnu Abenaki Tribe.
I’m here to honor the countless generations of Wôbanaki women who were fiber artists and to the women that will carry this art form to future generations of our people. Most of their names have been lost to history, but they’re remembered for the textiles they created – and when we’re lucky, through the surviving textiles themselves.
The late Jim Petersen, a professor and Anthropology Department Chair at UVM, documented an extensive legacy of textile fragments dating back thousands of years that have been found in Abenaki archaeological sites. And I’ve personally had the honor of studying some of these surviving 18th-century textile pieces.
The Maine Historical Society has an 18th-century plant fiber object in their collection that was made by an Abenaki woman known as Molly Ockett, a healing woman who took care of people in her community, and who was also a talented fiber artist. As an herbalist, Molly would have been a keeper of extensive knowledge about different types of plants and what they were used for. She would also have known how to harvest plants like the milkweed or dogbane that she used to weave bags such as the fiber object that has come to be known as Molly’s Purse.
My father, John Sheehan, is an eighty-four-year-old Abenaki culture bearer who fondly remembers carts full of milkweed being delivered to his grandmother “Lena” during his childhood. He recalls watching his grandmother and aunties talking and laughing as they made milkweed string – then the hours they spent weaving it into market bags that they sold for less than twenty-five cents apiece. Later “Lena” taught him how to weave and he passed this family knowledge on to me – his daughter.
I’m honored to carry Lena’s fiber arts knowledge and pass it on to my daughter Lina who will carry it on to the next seven generations.
It is important for us to continue teaching weaving and other old-style art forms to revitalize our culture that connects us to our ancestors, our traditions, and n’dakinna – our homeland – now known as Vermont, New Hampshire, Northern Massachusetts, Southern Maine, and Quebec.
Local Radio Show Broadcasts Native Perspectives
When Deb Reger began her weekly radio show, “Moccasin Tracks,” on WRUV 90.1 FM last Tuesday at noon, she reminded her listeners where she was. “We recognize this area where we broadcast from as N’Dakinna, the ancestral homeland of the Abenaki nation,” she said from the radio station’s studio in the University of Vermont’s Davis Center in Burlington.
As the song “Grandmother” by Navajo artist Radmilla Cody played in the background, Reger told listeners that her guest for the week was Grandmother Nancy Andry, an elder who lives in Connecticut and is of Algonquin and Metis heritage. It took a couple of tries before Reger got through on the phone to her guest. So the seasoned radio host adjusted her playlist to include longer songs. She wasn’t too frazzled, though. “It happens,” she explained.
Reger started “Moccasin Tracks” in 2009 because she wanted to produce a show that featured the voices and music of native peoples. “You just didn’t hear [from them] that much,” Reger said.
Reger, who doesn’t claim any native ancestry, stresses she doesn’t seek to speak for the native peoples. Her goal is to let them represent themselves and tell their stories. “I hold this space, this broadcast time, for the people who are underserved,” the radio host said.
Sokoki Sojourn 