An Indigenous People’s Day Celebration
The Community Room, The Vermont History Center 60 Washington St. Barre, VT

10:00 AM-3:30 PM. October 11, 2025
Introduction & Backstory

The reality underwriting Vermont’s neglected Indian community is totally unlike the rather controversial public image advocated by University of Vermont scholars and department heads, the Vermont media, and even some Abenaki tribal leaders.  Discriminatory, eugenical standards regarding Vermont Abenaki identity demand that ethnic legitimacy flow primarily from demonstrable Indigenous ancestry and historical-cultural continuity; and to a lesser extent, from ancestral cultural competency and Indigenous community governance. The stereotypic “Vermont Abenaki” Indian deconstructed by local academia and media meets none of these criteria. Yet dedicated Vermont Indigenous people have taken their disregarded history, anthropology, ecology and geography into their own hands, — delving into government documents, collecting and curating collections of local aboriginal artifacts, images and writings, retrieving ancestral family practices, skills, photographs and memories, growing heritage crops in Indian ways, and creating new, heritage-based art.

This Indigenous People’s Day will offer interested Vermonters a short introduction to a hidden heritage. This vast, mostly native-generated “Indigenous information landscape” has been carefully sampled, curated, and organized by Dr. Frederick Matthew Wiseman; to offer a short, yet comprehensive introduction to compelling evidence and direct certification of resident Vermont Indigeneity in his new book Something of Value: The Vermont Abenakis: 1790-2000.

On October 11, 2025, Dr. Wiseman will present a day-long program in Barre that lets this Native-generated evidence speak for itself — through dynamic PowerPoint lectures, and direct, on-site encounters with foundational Vermont Indian artifacts, imagery, and official documents, on the historical and modern American Abenaki experience. This informative program will also provide opportunities for Q & A, impromptu discussion with attending tradition bearers, an opportunity to view the Abenaki Cultural Conservancy’s collection at the History Center, as well as purchase Something of Value and corroborating in-print popular and scholarly literature.

Supported in part by Vermont Humanities.

The Program

10:00-10:15 Welcome, Coffee & Donuts
Welcome from Community Leaders and meet & greet tradition bearers. 10:15-11:00 Introduction: What is a Vermont Indian? Discussion of the records of historical indigeneity in Vermont state and federal certificates and other documents. Primary source material such as birth certificates, Selective Service registration cards, Eugenics records; prison and medical records, and death certificates will be shared and explained. Examples of these important records are illustrated in the Vermont Birth, Eugenics, & death records: the revolution documents booklet available for sale.

11:00-12:00 Traces of an Indian Past: 1790-1970
Discussion of the written and testimonial record of resident Vermont people believing, making and doing “Indian things” in the 19th and 20th centuries. This historical material includes an indigenous Vermont language, apparently independent from Canadian Abenaki, 19th and 20th century basketmaking, hunting, fishing, architecture, and other minor activities. We also consider the physical and graphic record of cultural continuity, much of it referred to in Vermont Indigenous Material Culture, Abenaki Beadwork, and the in-press, Abenaki Basketry which will be available for sale.

12:00- ca. 1:00 PM Lunch Break “Lunch on your own.” Suggestions for takeout and
delivery available.

1:00-2:00 A Modern Vermont Indigenous Year, ca. 2010.
An introduction to the regionally unique horticultural/ceremonial calendar that has
persisted in Vermont and nearly New Hampshire until today, including unique landrace seeds, field preparation, planting, and crops, as well as calendrical and horticultural ceremonies, such as the Forgiveness Moon solstice-adjacent ritual, and the Field Blessing, Green Corn, and Harvest Ceremonies. This distinctive Vermont biocultural experience is placed in a larger regional context in The Seven Sisters… book, also available for sale in the MWR Headquarters gift shop..

2:00-3:00 The Vermont Indian Community: 1900-2010
A discussion of new insights into traditional 19th and 20th century American Abenaki community structure, governance, organization and settlement geography. Distinctive regional Indigenous sub-communities include forest camps, tourist-adapted encampments, complex linear arrays of tiny rural settlements and dispersed and
concentrated settlements within Euroamerican villages. To find more interesting detail on these Vermont Indigenous communities, refer to Chapter V in Something of Value.

3:00-3:30 Book Signing for Dr. Wiseman’s Something of Value Book.
This is also an opportunity to examine historical artifacts & documents, and to
purchase informational materials on the Vermont indigenous community.

Download flyer here