How the Saco River Got its Name: Wabanaki Place Names in Context

Biddeford Historical Society and Biddeford Pool Historical Society are co-hosting a weekend of events illuminating life in the 17th century colonial Province of Maine. Events are free, but donations are accepted/

“How the Saco River Got its Name: Wabanaki Place Names in Context,” will be held at 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 24 at First Parish Meetinghouse, corner of Pool and Meetinghouse roads in Biddeford. Joe Hall, professor at Bates College, will present the program.

Plenty of people know that many placenames in Maine, such as “Saco,” come from Wabanakis, the indigenous group of this region. A few people might know what some of these words mean, such as that “Saco” means “a river outlet.” But what did it mean for Wabanakis to use these words and not others in their conversations with English colonists? In exploring that question, participants can see how Wabanaki place names tell us not only something about English-Wabanaki relations in the 1600s, but also how Wabanakis continue to have a presence in Maine in the centuries since.

Hall teaches colonial, American Indian and environmental history. He is researching the history of Wabanakis, Maine’s indigenous peoples, and is particularly interested in the ways that Wabanakis continued to cultivate ties to their homeland even as colonial peoples sought to dispossess them of it. In his lecture he will speak about the ways that Wabanaki place names offer some clues not only to how Wabanakis inhabited their homelands before colonists’ arrival, but also how they continued to inhabit those lands in the midst of colonization.

See the original listing in the Courier.

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8th Annual Abenaki and Indigenous People’s Honoring Day

Colrain: Apess Historical Marker Going Up Oct. 13, 2018

I want to sincerely thank everyone here who pitched in to the Apess campaign to place an historical marker up in Colrain, MA commemorating Colrain as the place of William Apess’ birth in 1798. The marker has been purchased with the funds we raised together and it is scheduled to go up on the front lawn of the Griswold Memorial Library on Saturday October 13th of this year. I’d like to make this an event, a ceremony, and a celebration of continued indigenous presence in the region–so please mark it on your calendars and, if you can, come join us on October 13th. It may also be your last chance to pick up one of these fashionable What Would Apess Do t-shirts. More info to come.

“when this tree of distinction shall be leveled to the earth, and the mantle of prejudice torn from every American heart–then shall peace pervade the union.” William Apess

Read the original post from Drew Lopenzina.

Northfield MA: Day of Indigenous History and Culture

Members of the Abenaki nation will bring people into the history and culture of local indigenous groups on Saturday, July 21, at the Northfield Mountain Recreation and Environmental Center. This “day of history,” from noon to 3 p.m., is the second in the Northfield Historical Commission’s series on “bringing to light the native history of our area” that encompasses a period of at least 12,000 years, Commissioner Lisa McLoughlin said.

Roger Longtoe, Chief of the Elnu band of the Abenaki nation, will talk about local history from the 17th century up to modern times, using period-authentic “things that we would have had in the 17th century,” like muskets, spears and bows and arrows, he said. Longtoe specializes in what he calls “living archaeology” of the 17th and 18th centuries, using materials and traditional stories to help people understand the way Abenaki peoples lived when they occupied vast regions in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and eastern New York.

But, “a lot of people have questions about modern history, too,” he said. Now, the Abenaki nation has about 15,000 members and is mostly based in Vermont, with reservations in Quebec. The Elnu band has about 60 members and is based in southern Vermont, making it the southernmost group of the larger nation.

Rich Holschuh, representative of the Elnu band, will lead a walk through Northfield Mountain’s trails where he will try to communicate the traditional understanding of the environment.

“I want to talk about the very real hands-on things in front of us, and then I want to talk about the relationship of the people to this place,” Holschuh said. “All of the various aspects out there in the natural world are considered to be a part of you, literally a relation to you. So you’re going to interact with them as equals. It’s not simply a harvesting or a taking, but there’s also a giving, a reciprocity. It’s a two-way relationship. “Some of these things would be very practical,” like identifications of plants, Holschuh said, “but you’re also perhaps going to learn a lesson from the plant about how it is, why it’s growing there, how it’s growing there.”

Singer-songwriter and guitarist Bryan Blanchette will play traditional and new songs in both Abenaki and English.

Also, an update on a National Park Service-funded study of King Philip’s War will be discussed by David Brule, president of the Nolumbeka Project. The Nolumbeka Project advocates for a more thorough understanding of indigenous history up to and including the colonial era. The study, now in its third phase of funding, is focusing on the Battle Turners Falls.

See the original article by Max Marcus in the Greenfield Recorder.

On 7/24/18, Lynne Keating Murphy: the Sadoques Family in Keene, NH

Facebook Event listing here.

The Historical Society of Cheshire County will offer the first lecture of its 2018 Wyman Tavern Lecture Series Tuesday, July 24, at 7 p.m.

Lynn Keating Murphy, Abenaki Indian, master educator, and descendant of the Sadoques of Keene, will discuss the history of her family in the Connecticut River Valley and Quebec and their basket-making traditions. The history of the Sadoques family intersects with this area, and provides insights into the complex story of the Abenaki people in the region. The talk will be held at the historical society’s headquarters, 246 Main St. in Keene, and admission is free.

The theme of this year’s Wyman Tavern Lecture Series is “Indigenous people, history and culture into the 21st century.” The Wyman Tavern Lecture Series will continue Aug. 29 when Keith and Kathy Stavely do a book signing for their early American cooking book — “United Tastes: The Making of the First American Cookbook” — and Linda Stavely prepares samples of early American recipes including a Native-American-inspired dish.

On Oct. 7, The Colonial Theatre will host a showing of “A Good Day to Die” — a 2010 documentary that chronicles the American Indian Movement that fought for the civil rights of American Indians.

The series concludes Nov. 3 with a “Basket Day” at the historical society. Members of the public are invited to bring their baskets, and basket experts will be available at the full-day event to identify and record the age, origin, physical characteristics, and known history of each basket. Basket Day will end with a talk by basket expert Lynn Clark on the history of Native American baskets in the Monadnock Region and New Hampshire, and by Lynn Murphy on her family’s Abenaki Indian basket history.

More information: visit hsccnh.org or call 352-1895.

See the original listing in the Keene Sentinel.

Institute for American Indian Studies Exhibit Features Abenaki Creative Process

On February 24 at 2 p.m. the Institute for American Indian Studies, 38 Curtis Road, Washington, CT welcomes Vera Longtoe Sheehan, Abenaki, one of the creative minds behind the exhibit, “Alnobak Wearing Our Heritage.”

Vera Longtoe Sheehan, notes “this exhibit is unique because it is the first traveling exhibit about Abenaki people that are still here living on the land and creating wonderful things.” During this fascinating talk, Sheehan will explain how items in the current exhibition are made and used to express Native Identity.

This beautifully curated exhibit is composed of artifact clothing as well as contemporary pieces made by Vermont’s Abenaki artists, community members, and tribal leaders. The show offers a chronological look at Abenaki fashion and adornment. There is everything from a beautiful 17th-century style buckskin dress by Melody Walker Brook to a hip looking denim jean jacket with a Tolba or turtle design created by Vera Longtoe Sheehan.

 “The message of this exhibit is that we are still here and that we know our history and still respect and practice our culture,” said Longtoe Sheehan. Many of us practice both traditional designs and clothes such as the twined woven dress and handbag I made as well as contemporary designs using a jean jacket, in different ways, both connects my family tradition to thousands of years of our history.”

Read the full story in the Litchfield County Times.

Also here, in the Torrington Register Citizen.

Marge Bruchac: Savage Kin – Indigenous Informants & American Anthropologists

In this provocative new book, Margaret M. Bruchac, an Indigenous anthropologist, turns the word savage on its head. Savage Kin explores the nature of the relationships between Indigenous informants such as Gladys Tantaquidgeon (Mohegan), Jesse Cornplanter (Seneca), and George Hunt (Tlingit), and early twentieth-century anthropological collectors such as Frank Speck, Arthur C. Parker, William N. Fenton, and Franz Boas.

This book reconceptualizes the intimate details of encounters with Native interlocutors who by turns inspired, facilitated, and resisted the anthropological enterprise. Like other texts focused on this era, Savage Kin features some of the elite white men credited with salvaging material that might otherwise have been lost. Unlike other texts, this book highlights the intellectual contributions and cultural strategies of unsung Indigenous informants without whom this research could never have taken place.

These bicultural partnerships transgressed social divides and blurred the roles of anthropologist/informant, relative/stranger, and collector/collected. Yet these stories were obscured by collecting practices that separated people from objects, objects from communities, and communities from stories. Bruchac’s decolonizing efforts include “reverse ethnography”—painstakingly tracking seemingly unidentifiable objects, misconstrued social relations, unpublished correspondence, and unattributed field notes—to recover this evidence. Those early encounters generated foundational knowledges that still affect Indigenous communities today.

This book also contains unexpected narratives of human and other-­than-human encounters—brilliant discoveries, lessons from ancestral spirits, prophetic warnings, powerful gifts, and personal tragedies—that Native and non-Native readers alike will find deeply moving.

Coming out in January 2018. Pre-order here!