New Hampshire and other Northern New England states have seen lots of debate in recent years over efforts to recognize groups who claim to represent Indigenous communities in the region.
Federally recognized Abenaki nations in Canada, whose homeland includes New Hampshire and Vermont, have voiced concerns that members of these groups have no claim to Abenaki ancestry.
In Burlington, Vermont recently, that debate has centered on a proposed statue of an Abenaki chief in the city's downtown.
NHPR All Things Considered host Julia Barnett spoke with Shaun Robinson, a reporter at VTDigger, who has been covering the story of the statue of Chief Grey Lock. Below is a transcript of their conversation.
Related: Review of genealogies, other records fails to support local leaders’ claims of Abenaki ancestry
Transcript
Shaun, give us some background on this art installation. The statue was of an Abenaki leader, Chief Grey Lock, and this new piece would have actually been a replacement for an old one that had previously been there, yes?
Yeah, that's right. So, we're talking about this pretty prominent park at the top of downtown Burlington. It's a really high traffic spot. So, it's a site that the city cares a lot about. I think that's important context. The original [sculpture] had been there since 1984 and just over the decades since then had weathered a lot. It was rotting on the inside. It was made out of wood and was, as of a year or two ago, in danger of falling over. So, the city said ‘this is a public safety risk, we need to take this down.’ The city said ‘we want to replace it with something that's also going to honor and represent the Abenaki community in Vermont and around Vermont.’
And so to do that, they turned to the entity that the city of Burlington has had an agreement with for a number of years now to consult on Indigenous issues. And that's one of the four state-recognized groups in Vermont that we have here. It's the Abenaki Nation at Missisquoi, is what they're called. They're based maybe 45 minutes north of Burlington, in a town called Swanton.
Several groups identifying as Abenaki here in New Hampshire have made a push to also achieve state recognition over the years. Those proposals have yet to move forward. But can you give us the basics on what state recognition is, and in the context of Vermont, what it offers to those groups?
I think it's important to say off the bat that there's a difference between state and federal recognition. I think a lot of folks are familiar with the federal recognition process. [State recognition] is a process that is specific to Vermont law, and a process that Vermont legislators came up with. The recognition in Vermont gives these four groups a lot of legitimacy in dealing both with the state but also with local governments, like in Burlington, and also like nonprofits and the business community here. Members of these state recognized groups get a number of benefits also that they might not otherwise. So, they get free hunting and fishing licenses from the state. The state recognized groups can get property tax exemptions from the state on land that they own. Members of the groups can sell artwork that they produced with a label that says that it was made by an Indigenous person.
And of course, leaders of these state recognized groups also sit on boards and commissions that have influence over state policy. Vermont has a Commission on Native American Affairs. I think New Hampshire has a similar state Native American affairs governing body. And in Vermont, the members of the state recognized groups have had a really strong presence on that commission pretty much ever since it was started.
Shuan, why do some people view state recognition as controversial or different than federal recognition?
Yeah, that's a huge part of the context here. So, as listeners in New Hampshire might be familiar, there's two Abenaki nations based in Quebec: Odanak and Wôlinak First Nations. And particularly over the last few years, they have been very, very adamant in public forums, in other kinds of communication, they've even run advertising campaigns in Vermont, saying that most members of these groups in Vermont who are recognized by the state as Abenaki, cannot actually claim Indigenous identity. And they've urged Vermonters to reject this recognition decision that our state made in the 2010s. So, that's the context for this.
And that was the context that sort of framed the controversy around this project in Burlington, because the city was sort of following the letter of the law, I guess, for lack of a better word, and consulting the state recognized groups. But now you have these First Nations, not based in Vermont, but who maintain that Vermont is their ancestral territory, saying, “No, you're consulting with groups who were actually appropriating Indigenous identity as opposed to fully, accurately representing it.”
The City of Burlington wanted to continue to recognize Abenaki history and culture by putting a statue in this prominent space in the city. But the city council voted the statue installation down 11 to 1, which is a pretty resounding ‘no.’ So what did you hear from councilors that led them to this near-unanimous decision to not move forward?
It was a really fascinating meeting, and I think it was really clear, just in the kind of vibe of councilors’ remarks and the energy in the room, that this was an incredibly contentious, hard question for the city councilors to deal with. Before the vote took place, during the beginning of the meeting when there was public comment, it was just like person after person coming up to the podium to speak about this project. The vast majority of the people who spoke were in opposition to it and saying the council needs to hit pause on this.
Ultimately, I think if I had to summarize how councilors thought about it, they were not willing to move forward with installing this replacement sculpture from one of the state recognized tribes while there are these really contentious questions about identity swirling in the air and in the public discourse here in Vermont.
So, Shaun, is this near-unanimous rejection of this proposal notable in any way?
I think it really is. At least since 2022, when the leaders from Odanak and Wôlinak First Nations started really bringing their case to Vermonters, this is the first time that I can think of that a government entity in Vermont has taken a public vote against a request from one of the state recognized groups here. And these kinds of votes don't come up very often, right?
So, I don't have a ton of necessarily data to compare it to, but it is a really notable one, that the discourse around this issue came before the city council in the first place and that they did vote to not go along with something that the state-recognized group felt really strongly about.
