Post by blackcrowheart on Nov 28, 2005 18:41:07 GMT -5
The voices of native peoples
By Eric Poor
Monadnock Ledger
Monadnock Ledger reporter Eric Poor attended a day-long conference on Abenaki Indian history at Franklin Pierce College Saturday. This is the first story in a two-part series about the Abenakis in the Monadnock region. Next week, we’ll take a look at an Indian site in Swanzey, where FPC students have been doing research.
RINDGE — “Deep Presence” was the name given to the seventh annual fall conference presented by the Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place and Culture at Franklin Pierce College. Held in a tent on the slope toward Pearly Pond, Saturday’s day-long symposium examined the Abenaki Indian history in the Monadnock region.
How deep is that presence? How far beyond the names we say every day — Monadnock (Monadenok), Contoocook, Connecticut, Nashua ... ?
Storytellers, elders and archaeologists trace the history back to the end of the last ice age — some 11,000 years ago. That’s the age attributed to a paleo-Indian site on the Ashuelot River in Swanzey, one of the oldest such sites in New Hampshire.
The archaeologist would call these people the ancestors of the Abenaki. The Abenaki call everyone who came before them “ancestors” and regard them as living spirits on a journey. They struggle to piece together the fragments of the creation stories that are their oral history and tradition. These are stories that might pre-date that site in Swanzey.
There are some who can still tell the stories in the music of their native tongue.
The storyteller, the archaeologist, the preservationist, the historian, the re-creator, the basketmaker and educator, and the elders all came Saturday to speak to those who sat beneath the tent in the dying winds of a storm named Lili. They all said that history here did not start with the arrival of the Europeans.
This was not an abandoned place, they said. The native people who left the remnants of their spear points at a camp site on the Ashuelot River at the end of the last ice age ... the people who came to the fishing grounds nearby and smoked their fish on a hearth 3,400 years ago ... the people who left shards of pottery 1,700 years ago ... and those who left fragments of deer and turtle bones 500 years ago ... they are the history of the landscape that still bears names like Ashuelot.
Eleven thousand years of continuous history — “that’s pretty deep presence,” says archaeologist Robert Goodby, who is busy proving through science what Marge Bruhac tells through story.
It’s not all the past, this “deep presence,” said John Harris, director of the Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place and Culture.
The Abenaki people escaped to Canada, fleeing the greed and disease that accompanied the Europeans, returned with the French to make war. And later returned again to settle among those who displaced them. Some never left.
They are still here. They never abandoned their homeland or their ancestors.
“They are living beside and among those who have dishonored them for four centuries,” Harris said.
@dropcap:He introduced elder” Donald Newell, a Penacook, and Beverly Newell, a Micmac. The couple live in Laconia and are the founders of the New Hampshire Inter-Tribal Native American Council based there.
@bodycopy:Donald Newell said that when the Europeans first made contact with the natives in the 17th century there were 12 major tribes in New Hampshire and seven in Maine. Today there are five tribes in Maine and three reservations. There are no tribes in New Hampshire and no reservations, he said.
Much of the work of the council is focused on the effort to register Native Americans, he said. The council sponsors an annual powwow in Laconia to raise money for things like scholarships.
“Our mission is to help native people,” he said.
Beverly Newell spoke of the “Indian” statue called Captain Jack that once stood at the Weirs in Laconia. Twice broken and twice restored, the statue has been moved, she said.
“This time they put him in the library, which is a good place for him,” she said.
She said a new statue is being cast that does not wear a headdress, but an animal skin, instead. The figure is wrapped in a blanket and has one arm extended “welcoming everyone to the Weirs again.”
The new statue is much more appropriate and this is the kind of project the Council funds, she said.
@dropcap:Harris also introduced Marge Bruhac, an Abenaki who is an historical consultant and traditional storyteller. Bruhac portrays “Molly Geet, the Indian Doctress” at Old Sturbridge Village. Her research in cultural anthropology at UMass-Amherst focuses on northeastern native communities, traditional stories and their connection to place. In 2000 she was chosen Storyteller of the Year for Public Speaking by the Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers.
@bodycopy:Bruhac thanked the elders for their presence.
Stories are more than just words spoken into the air, she said. They are a way to reach into the past and send breath into the future. Part of what she does, Bruhac said, is try to mend “the broken bits of the past that have come into our hands.”
There has been enormous desecration and “erasure of history,” she said. Native Americans have “been written out.”
But the Indians, who have been here for thousands of years, remain. They remain marginalized, she said.
Bruhac told a story from Deerfield where long ago a giant beaver came down the (Connecticut) river, saw the flat land and built a lodge so large it dammed the river and created a flood that destroyed the wigwams and the fields of the people.
The story centered on the efforts of the people talk to the beaver and try to restore the land, and the eventual supernatural battle that pushed aside rock and earth.
The body of the defeated creature turned to stone and the river was restored, she said.
From where the people planted their corn they could thereafter look east and see the creature in the mountains of the horizon, Bruhac said. The creature’s head is today called Sugarloaf.
The story is one of the oldest she has found, Bruhac said. It is a “creation story” first recorded by the English settlers who came in 1660 and named the place Deerfield because it had an abundance of deer.
About 12,000 years ago the last ice age glaciers formed the landscape we know. That landscape tells a story of a large glacial lake at Deerfield — a lake that eventually drained into the river.
“Who saw that happen?” Bruhac asked.
At Deerfield the Abenaki planted enough corn to feed the people and then some more to attract the deer to also feed the people, Bruhac said. The people were generous and they traded corn to the settlements of Europeans who were starving. Later the Europeans came to own the Indians’ camps.
The beaver were numerous at first and the white traders gave goods in return for pelts. Later the beaver were scarce and the traders were numerous and they asked for signatures on deeds to the hunting grounds in return for the powder and shot and kettles and blankets.
In signing the deeds the Abenaki generally reserved the rights to hunt and fish and gather nuts and berries and plant corn. This is evidence the people did not desire to abandon their homeland, the place where their ancestors are buried, Bruhac said.
In repairing the culture that has been so sundered, piecing together the stories that are the oral history of the Abenaki is one of the first steps in healing, Bruhac said. And this is why she tells them ... “in the hope that someone is listening.”
@dropcap:‘I work for the ancestors,” said Donna Roberts Moody, an Abenaki.
@bodycopy:Moody said she carries a sense of “survivor’s guilt” and she eases that pain by searching for what she calls MIAs — Missing Indian Ancestors. Her work is to restore the ancestors to “N’dakinna, the homeland of the Abenaki people since the beginning of time.”
What she does is called “repatriation.” She recovers the physical remains, ceremonial items and “grave goods” that have been taken from their resting places and she returns them to the earth.
“Thousands of sets of Abenaki remains are out of the ground and need to go back,” she said.
She returns them as close as possible to where they were originally buried.
She does this because the Abenaki people can’t move forward until the past has been taken care of, she said. The people don’t believe these are “just bones,” Moody said. There is still spirit and these are still “our living ancestors” who need to continue their journey, she said.
This past summer she did a re-burial in nearby Brookline.
“Twenty-one people were put back in the ground after they had been at Harvard-Peabody [museum] for 100 years,” Moody said.
Moody spoke about “historical grieving” and the personal effect of holding the remains of an ancient infant in her hands.
The number one disease affecting Native Americans is not diabetes and it’s not substance abuse. The number one Native Americans disease is depression, Moody said. “If you want to be an Indian get the Prozac ready.”
Everything comes from the earth, Moody said.
“When I walk in the woods I know I need to be careful because I’m walking over the bones of my ancestors and the faces of my grandchildren.”
Moody spoke about the history of the Abenaki, which is the history of this area and goes back to the beginning of time, she said.
“We are told in our history this is where we were created.”
@dropcap:Outside the tent where the speakers held sway, there were exhibits and instructions, Saturday. Judy Dow, an Abenaki, demonstrated baskets, their construction and the history of their use, ranging from food storage to tourist trinkets.
@bodycopy:The baskets were made of materials ranging from birch and pine bark to braided sweet grass, willow branches, grapevines, peeled ash wood and even pine needles.
Ken Hamilton, an Ottawa, provided a re-enactment of an 18th-century Abenaki encampment with displays of artifacts and trade goods, most of which were found in European museums and collections.
@dropcap:Pamela Derby of Winchester, an Abenaki, was not there to present anything or speak about anything, only to learn, she said. She has been researching her own history. Her family migrated down from the Abenaki settlement at St. Francis in Quebec three generations ago.
@bodycopy:Her great-great grandfather, Joseph Jolley, moved to New Hampshire and joined the Union Army to fight in the Civil War, she said.
“He had to renounce his heritage to enlist and on the enlistment papers they declared him a Christian,” Derby said.
Jolley had 16 children and lived in Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, she said. He is buried in Keene. Derby said she was pleased with the workshop.
“I think it’s wonderful,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed it thoroughly. This is a beautiful campus and the speakers are really good.”
Thursday, Oct 10, 2002
By Eric Poor
Monadnock Ledger
Monadnock Ledger reporter Eric Poor attended a day-long conference on Abenaki Indian history at Franklin Pierce College Saturday. This is the first story in a two-part series about the Abenakis in the Monadnock region. Next week, we’ll take a look at an Indian site in Swanzey, where FPC students have been doing research.
RINDGE — “Deep Presence” was the name given to the seventh annual fall conference presented by the Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place and Culture at Franklin Pierce College. Held in a tent on the slope toward Pearly Pond, Saturday’s day-long symposium examined the Abenaki Indian history in the Monadnock region.
How deep is that presence? How far beyond the names we say every day — Monadnock (Monadenok), Contoocook, Connecticut, Nashua ... ?
Storytellers, elders and archaeologists trace the history back to the end of the last ice age — some 11,000 years ago. That’s the age attributed to a paleo-Indian site on the Ashuelot River in Swanzey, one of the oldest such sites in New Hampshire.
The archaeologist would call these people the ancestors of the Abenaki. The Abenaki call everyone who came before them “ancestors” and regard them as living spirits on a journey. They struggle to piece together the fragments of the creation stories that are their oral history and tradition. These are stories that might pre-date that site in Swanzey.
There are some who can still tell the stories in the music of their native tongue.
The storyteller, the archaeologist, the preservationist, the historian, the re-creator, the basketmaker and educator, and the elders all came Saturday to speak to those who sat beneath the tent in the dying winds of a storm named Lili. They all said that history here did not start with the arrival of the Europeans.
This was not an abandoned place, they said. The native people who left the remnants of their spear points at a camp site on the Ashuelot River at the end of the last ice age ... the people who came to the fishing grounds nearby and smoked their fish on a hearth 3,400 years ago ... the people who left shards of pottery 1,700 years ago ... and those who left fragments of deer and turtle bones 500 years ago ... they are the history of the landscape that still bears names like Ashuelot.
Eleven thousand years of continuous history — “that’s pretty deep presence,” says archaeologist Robert Goodby, who is busy proving through science what Marge Bruhac tells through story.
It’s not all the past, this “deep presence,” said John Harris, director of the Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place and Culture.
The Abenaki people escaped to Canada, fleeing the greed and disease that accompanied the Europeans, returned with the French to make war. And later returned again to settle among those who displaced them. Some never left.
They are still here. They never abandoned their homeland or their ancestors.
“They are living beside and among those who have dishonored them for four centuries,” Harris said.
@dropcap:He introduced elder” Donald Newell, a Penacook, and Beverly Newell, a Micmac. The couple live in Laconia and are the founders of the New Hampshire Inter-Tribal Native American Council based there.
@bodycopy:Donald Newell said that when the Europeans first made contact with the natives in the 17th century there were 12 major tribes in New Hampshire and seven in Maine. Today there are five tribes in Maine and three reservations. There are no tribes in New Hampshire and no reservations, he said.
Much of the work of the council is focused on the effort to register Native Americans, he said. The council sponsors an annual powwow in Laconia to raise money for things like scholarships.
“Our mission is to help native people,” he said.
Beverly Newell spoke of the “Indian” statue called Captain Jack that once stood at the Weirs in Laconia. Twice broken and twice restored, the statue has been moved, she said.
“This time they put him in the library, which is a good place for him,” she said.
She said a new statue is being cast that does not wear a headdress, but an animal skin, instead. The figure is wrapped in a blanket and has one arm extended “welcoming everyone to the Weirs again.”
The new statue is much more appropriate and this is the kind of project the Council funds, she said.
@dropcap:Harris also introduced Marge Bruhac, an Abenaki who is an historical consultant and traditional storyteller. Bruhac portrays “Molly Geet, the Indian Doctress” at Old Sturbridge Village. Her research in cultural anthropology at UMass-Amherst focuses on northeastern native communities, traditional stories and their connection to place. In 2000 she was chosen Storyteller of the Year for Public Speaking by the Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers.
@bodycopy:Bruhac thanked the elders for their presence.
Stories are more than just words spoken into the air, she said. They are a way to reach into the past and send breath into the future. Part of what she does, Bruhac said, is try to mend “the broken bits of the past that have come into our hands.”
There has been enormous desecration and “erasure of history,” she said. Native Americans have “been written out.”
But the Indians, who have been here for thousands of years, remain. They remain marginalized, she said.
Bruhac told a story from Deerfield where long ago a giant beaver came down the (Connecticut) river, saw the flat land and built a lodge so large it dammed the river and created a flood that destroyed the wigwams and the fields of the people.
The story centered on the efforts of the people talk to the beaver and try to restore the land, and the eventual supernatural battle that pushed aside rock and earth.
The body of the defeated creature turned to stone and the river was restored, she said.
From where the people planted their corn they could thereafter look east and see the creature in the mountains of the horizon, Bruhac said. The creature’s head is today called Sugarloaf.
The story is one of the oldest she has found, Bruhac said. It is a “creation story” first recorded by the English settlers who came in 1660 and named the place Deerfield because it had an abundance of deer.
About 12,000 years ago the last ice age glaciers formed the landscape we know. That landscape tells a story of a large glacial lake at Deerfield — a lake that eventually drained into the river.
“Who saw that happen?” Bruhac asked.
At Deerfield the Abenaki planted enough corn to feed the people and then some more to attract the deer to also feed the people, Bruhac said. The people were generous and they traded corn to the settlements of Europeans who were starving. Later the Europeans came to own the Indians’ camps.
The beaver were numerous at first and the white traders gave goods in return for pelts. Later the beaver were scarce and the traders were numerous and they asked for signatures on deeds to the hunting grounds in return for the powder and shot and kettles and blankets.
In signing the deeds the Abenaki generally reserved the rights to hunt and fish and gather nuts and berries and plant corn. This is evidence the people did not desire to abandon their homeland, the place where their ancestors are buried, Bruhac said.
In repairing the culture that has been so sundered, piecing together the stories that are the oral history of the Abenaki is one of the first steps in healing, Bruhac said. And this is why she tells them ... “in the hope that someone is listening.”
@dropcap:‘I work for the ancestors,” said Donna Roberts Moody, an Abenaki.
@bodycopy:Moody said she carries a sense of “survivor’s guilt” and she eases that pain by searching for what she calls MIAs — Missing Indian Ancestors. Her work is to restore the ancestors to “N’dakinna, the homeland of the Abenaki people since the beginning of time.”
What she does is called “repatriation.” She recovers the physical remains, ceremonial items and “grave goods” that have been taken from their resting places and she returns them to the earth.
“Thousands of sets of Abenaki remains are out of the ground and need to go back,” she said.
She returns them as close as possible to where they were originally buried.
She does this because the Abenaki people can’t move forward until the past has been taken care of, she said. The people don’t believe these are “just bones,” Moody said. There is still spirit and these are still “our living ancestors” who need to continue their journey, she said.
This past summer she did a re-burial in nearby Brookline.
“Twenty-one people were put back in the ground after they had been at Harvard-Peabody [museum] for 100 years,” Moody said.
Moody spoke about “historical grieving” and the personal effect of holding the remains of an ancient infant in her hands.
The number one disease affecting Native Americans is not diabetes and it’s not substance abuse. The number one Native Americans disease is depression, Moody said. “If you want to be an Indian get the Prozac ready.”
Everything comes from the earth, Moody said.
“When I walk in the woods I know I need to be careful because I’m walking over the bones of my ancestors and the faces of my grandchildren.”
Moody spoke about the history of the Abenaki, which is the history of this area and goes back to the beginning of time, she said.
“We are told in our history this is where we were created.”
@dropcap:Outside the tent where the speakers held sway, there were exhibits and instructions, Saturday. Judy Dow, an Abenaki, demonstrated baskets, their construction and the history of their use, ranging from food storage to tourist trinkets.
@bodycopy:The baskets were made of materials ranging from birch and pine bark to braided sweet grass, willow branches, grapevines, peeled ash wood and even pine needles.
Ken Hamilton, an Ottawa, provided a re-enactment of an 18th-century Abenaki encampment with displays of artifacts and trade goods, most of which were found in European museums and collections.
@dropcap:Pamela Derby of Winchester, an Abenaki, was not there to present anything or speak about anything, only to learn, she said. She has been researching her own history. Her family migrated down from the Abenaki settlement at St. Francis in Quebec three generations ago.
@bodycopy:Her great-great grandfather, Joseph Jolley, moved to New Hampshire and joined the Union Army to fight in the Civil War, she said.
“He had to renounce his heritage to enlist and on the enlistment papers they declared him a Christian,” Derby said.
Jolley had 16 children and lived in Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, she said. He is buried in Keene. Derby said she was pleased with the workshop.
“I think it’s wonderful,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed it thoroughly. This is a beautiful campus and the speakers are really good.”
Thursday, Oct 10, 2002