Post by Okwes on Nov 24, 2005 12:12:09 GMT -5
A presentation of ‘Darkness’
Abenaki video previewed in Swanton next Monday
Written by Jedd Kettler
Wednesday, 23 November 2005
Left: Fred Wiseman
SWANTON: It has often been said that education is the most persuasive tool in winning a hard debate.
Fred Wiseman, the Director of the Abenaki Tribal Museum in Swanton and the Chairman of the Department of Humanities at Johnson State College, has spent the past year brewing history, archaeology and technology together into a mixture he hopes will teach younger generations about the history of the Abenaki in the Swanton area.
The movie that resulted from that long simmering is "Against the Darkness," a 38-minute educational documentary tracing seven generations of Abenaki from the 1790s to the present day, using artifacts, interviews and video. The movie, a work-in-progress nearing completion, will be shown in its latest draft form at the Swanton Historical Society next Monday, Nov. 28 at 7 p.m.
The film's subject — the existence of the Abenaki in northwestern Vermont for the past 200 years — has been one of intense political debate. But "Against the Darkness" –conceived in part as an answer to such questions – is about far more than politics.
"The idea is to preserve this stuff for posterity," Wiseman said last week, sitting in the living room of his Swanton home with this wife, Anna Roy-Wiseman, and stepson, Aaron York.
An evolving film
An earlier draft of the movie included political material that has since been removed to gain the support of the Governor's Commission on Native American Affairs and in hopes of raising money for some of its production costs.
The central history – the Abenaki have made this area their home for centuries and continue to do so – remains unchanged, though.
The video originally grew out of a pageant of historical Abenaki fashions held at MVU in 2004. Wiseman said he hopes it will yield a finished DVD, with accompanying CD-ROM for distribution to schools and libraries, by next year. The DVD will include commentaries and interviews by Wiseman, Abenaki craftspeople and other scholars. The CD will include supporting information and databases, a complete bibliography and existing scholarly articles.
The video is currently being edited by Wiseman and his son, Fred W. Wiseman, and graphic design is being completed by Johnson State College student Gyan Baird. An initial pressing of 1,000 copies is hoped for.
"Probably the most important thing for its eventual release," Wiseman said, is the right to use the music of Peter Buffet, the award-winning composer and performer whose music was featured in "Dances With Wolves," "500 Nations" and "Spirit." He is also the son of Warren Buffet, the investor and businessman considered the second wealthiest man in the world by Forbes magazine.
"I think he's very involved in promoting Native stuff, and we're kind of the underdog," Wiseman said.
Drawn in part by the ongoing battle for both state and federal recognition of the Abenaki, Buffet agreed to allow Wiseman to use his music in the video free of charge as long as he is credited.
"So that was amazing," Wiseman said.
Another change made to the film since the spring, when he first showed the video to the Governor's Commission, is the inclusion of an interview with slain UVM anthropologist and archaeologist Jim Petersen, who before his death in August was an outspoken advocate for the Abenaki.
Authentic voices
Wiseman hopes to include more interviews in the video, particularly with those who have first-hand memories of the Abenaki during the first 70 years of the last century.
While the more than 190 artifacts already featured are essential, Wiseman is hoping to include a more direct voice of the people and surrounding community.
"There's a lot more information out there in living memory than I think we know," Wiseman said. "I would like to have members of the community who remember pre-1970s. It's important to capture the memories."
To that end, Wiseman said he is encouraging those with such memories to show up to the Swanton viewing next Monday to tell stories for his video camera.
A younger generation of Abenaki is also featured in "Against the Darkness," portraying both earlier generations and themselves as the active Abenaki community of the new millennium. These are not just actors, and this younger generation is increasingly involved.
"Each one of these people... is not just an ordinary kid," Wiseman said. "There's a lot more to the video than meets the eye."
"These kids are going to be the next generation of Abenaki," added Anna Roy-Wiseman.
Important among those seen in the video is Wiseman's stepson, Aaron York.
"Aaron is the back-story to this video on a number of levels," Wiseman said. Like the other young Abenaki in the video, York's presence has a foot in the past and another in the present. York is also important in reviving tribal crafts, also prominently featured in the video.
In the past 15 years, York has worked to revive the "men's arts" — crafts including intricate chip-carving, snowshoe-making and canoe-building. While basket-weaving and other work traditionally done by woman survived much more intact, cultural and economic pressures pushed the "men's arts" into obscurity over the course of a few short generations.
York, one of the only natives now building birch-bark canoes in North America, has become an important resource not only for museums and other tribes, but for his own tribe as well.
Looking to the future
Eventually, Wiseman hopes to release a new kind of DVD of "Against the Darkness" that would expand the educational aspects of the project by leaps and bounds, and York's talents would be key in such an endeavor.
While next year could see the release of a DVD and CD, Wiseman said an emerging DVD format which holds about 10 times the information as current DVDs would fit the project perfectly, allowing for fully interactive access to information on all artifacts and documents in the video with the click of a mouse.
Clicking on a canoe, a paddle, a necklace or a basket seen in the video would lead into detailed information, interviews and supporting documents about the history of each item.
"This will be a fully interactive DVD," Wiseman said.
He hopes to have such a format available for the Lake Champlain Quadricentenniel celebration in 2009.
"So, there's a lot of research that has to be done," he said
Abenaki video previewed in Swanton next Monday
Written by Jedd Kettler
Wednesday, 23 November 2005
Left: Fred Wiseman
SWANTON: It has often been said that education is the most persuasive tool in winning a hard debate.
Fred Wiseman, the Director of the Abenaki Tribal Museum in Swanton and the Chairman of the Department of Humanities at Johnson State College, has spent the past year brewing history, archaeology and technology together into a mixture he hopes will teach younger generations about the history of the Abenaki in the Swanton area.
The movie that resulted from that long simmering is "Against the Darkness," a 38-minute educational documentary tracing seven generations of Abenaki from the 1790s to the present day, using artifacts, interviews and video. The movie, a work-in-progress nearing completion, will be shown in its latest draft form at the Swanton Historical Society next Monday, Nov. 28 at 7 p.m.
The film's subject — the existence of the Abenaki in northwestern Vermont for the past 200 years — has been one of intense political debate. But "Against the Darkness" –conceived in part as an answer to such questions – is about far more than politics.
"The idea is to preserve this stuff for posterity," Wiseman said last week, sitting in the living room of his Swanton home with this wife, Anna Roy-Wiseman, and stepson, Aaron York.
An evolving film
An earlier draft of the movie included political material that has since been removed to gain the support of the Governor's Commission on Native American Affairs and in hopes of raising money for some of its production costs.
The central history – the Abenaki have made this area their home for centuries and continue to do so – remains unchanged, though.
The video originally grew out of a pageant of historical Abenaki fashions held at MVU in 2004. Wiseman said he hopes it will yield a finished DVD, with accompanying CD-ROM for distribution to schools and libraries, by next year. The DVD will include commentaries and interviews by Wiseman, Abenaki craftspeople and other scholars. The CD will include supporting information and databases, a complete bibliography and existing scholarly articles.
The video is currently being edited by Wiseman and his son, Fred W. Wiseman, and graphic design is being completed by Johnson State College student Gyan Baird. An initial pressing of 1,000 copies is hoped for.
"Probably the most important thing for its eventual release," Wiseman said, is the right to use the music of Peter Buffet, the award-winning composer and performer whose music was featured in "Dances With Wolves," "500 Nations" and "Spirit." He is also the son of Warren Buffet, the investor and businessman considered the second wealthiest man in the world by Forbes magazine.
"I think he's very involved in promoting Native stuff, and we're kind of the underdog," Wiseman said.
Drawn in part by the ongoing battle for both state and federal recognition of the Abenaki, Buffet agreed to allow Wiseman to use his music in the video free of charge as long as he is credited.
"So that was amazing," Wiseman said.
Another change made to the film since the spring, when he first showed the video to the Governor's Commission, is the inclusion of an interview with slain UVM anthropologist and archaeologist Jim Petersen, who before his death in August was an outspoken advocate for the Abenaki.
Authentic voices
Wiseman hopes to include more interviews in the video, particularly with those who have first-hand memories of the Abenaki during the first 70 years of the last century.
While the more than 190 artifacts already featured are essential, Wiseman is hoping to include a more direct voice of the people and surrounding community.
"There's a lot more information out there in living memory than I think we know," Wiseman said. "I would like to have members of the community who remember pre-1970s. It's important to capture the memories."
To that end, Wiseman said he is encouraging those with such memories to show up to the Swanton viewing next Monday to tell stories for his video camera.
A younger generation of Abenaki is also featured in "Against the Darkness," portraying both earlier generations and themselves as the active Abenaki community of the new millennium. These are not just actors, and this younger generation is increasingly involved.
"Each one of these people... is not just an ordinary kid," Wiseman said. "There's a lot more to the video than meets the eye."
"These kids are going to be the next generation of Abenaki," added Anna Roy-Wiseman.
Important among those seen in the video is Wiseman's stepson, Aaron York.
"Aaron is the back-story to this video on a number of levels," Wiseman said. Like the other young Abenaki in the video, York's presence has a foot in the past and another in the present. York is also important in reviving tribal crafts, also prominently featured in the video.
In the past 15 years, York has worked to revive the "men's arts" — crafts including intricate chip-carving, snowshoe-making and canoe-building. While basket-weaving and other work traditionally done by woman survived much more intact, cultural and economic pressures pushed the "men's arts" into obscurity over the course of a few short generations.
York, one of the only natives now building birch-bark canoes in North America, has become an important resource not only for museums and other tribes, but for his own tribe as well.
Looking to the future
Eventually, Wiseman hopes to release a new kind of DVD of "Against the Darkness" that would expand the educational aspects of the project by leaps and bounds, and York's talents would be key in such an endeavor.
While next year could see the release of a DVD and CD, Wiseman said an emerging DVD format which holds about 10 times the information as current DVDs would fit the project perfectly, allowing for fully interactive access to information on all artifacts and documents in the video with the click of a mouse.
Clicking on a canoe, a paddle, a necklace or a basket seen in the video would lead into detailed information, interviews and supporting documents about the history of each item.
"This will be a fully interactive DVD," Wiseman said.
He hopes to have such a format available for the Lake Champlain Quadricentenniel celebration in 2009.
"So, there's a lot of research that has to be done," he said