New ‘American Abenaki’ curriculum, focused on Vermont, draws rebuke from Abenaki nations based in Quebec
A map at the Musée des Abénakis showing Odanak and Wôlinak First Nation’s ancestral territory across present-day Canada and New England. Photo by Shaun Robinson/VTDigger
Leaders from four groups recognized as Abenaki by Vermont’s state government have created a new school curriculum about their communities’ history — but the material includes few references, they said, to two Abenaki nations centered in Quebec.
The distinction is notable because leaders of those Quebec-based nations continue to assert that many members of the groups in Vermont can’t claim legitimate Indigenous ancestry. Instead, the leaders from Odanak and Wôlinak First Nations say, members of the Vermont-based groups have been appropriating Abenaki identity and culture.
As the Quebec-based nations have made their case ever more forcefully in recent years, they’ve drawn sharp rebukes from leaders of the Vermont groups, who have moved to, as they tell it, defend their culture from attacks levied by former allies.
Those groups, headquartered throughout Vermont, are the Elnu Abenaki, Nulhegan Abenaki, Koasek Band of the Koas Abenaki Nation and the Abenaki Nation at Missisquoi.
The new curriculum, announced earlier this month, is called the “American Abenaki Curriculum.” Its development was overseen by the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs, which is a branch of state government tasked with advocating for the state-recognized groups. Some commissioners are also members of those groups.
The educational materials include numerous digital resources and discussion topics for students in grades 3-12. Its central question, according to its website, is, “How have the Abenaki people survived and adapted to their environment for thousands of years?”
Odanak and Wôlinak’s tribal governments, in Canada, say they were wrongly excluded from the process of developing those materials. While the First Nations are headquartered north of Montreal, they have members in what they maintain is unceded territory in the northeastern U.S., including in Vermont.
The two nations’ governments issued a joint statement earlier this month assailing the American Abenaki Curriculum and calling it a “rewriting of history.”
“There is no such thing as ‘American Abenaki,’ as Abenaki identity and Ndakina — the ancestral homeland of the Abenaki people — predate colonial borders and cannot be redefined by modern administrative categories,” the nations’ press release said.
“Presenting a curriculum in the name of a reconfigured identity to meet institutional imperatives amounts to trivializing the rewriting of history and normalizing cultural appropriation in public and educational spheres.”
Authors of the new curriculum said at a press conference Dec. 18 that they did not involve leaders from the Quebec-based nations because they were focused on history that is unique to the Vermont-recognized groups. The curriculum includes some of the same sources that the groups submitted to the state when applying for tribal recognition, the authors said.
The point of the curriculum is to focus “on the experiences of Vermonters,” said Dan Coutu, chair of the state Native American Affairs commission. Odanak and Wôlinak leaders “have their own voice,” he said, while the Vermont groups “have our voice.”
“They have their voice free to speak up, as they have. And now, it’s our turn,” Coutu added.
Vera Sheehan, a member of the Elnu group and one of the curriculum’s authors, said its website was largely complete but that more “bells and whistles” would be added in the coming months. The authors plan to create a printed version of the materials and launch a statewide outreach campaign to teachers, according to a press release from the Native American Affairs commission.
The press conference announcing the new curriculum turned contentious toward its end. After two reporters asked questions about the material, Denise Watso — an Odanak citizen who lives in Albany, New York, and said she was attending “as an observer” on behalf of the First Nation’s government — stood up and lambasted the curriculum as misleading.
At that point, several people began speaking at the same time. Two other people then stood up and criticized the presentation, saying that it was wrong for Odanak and Wôlinak First Nations not to be consulted. Watso was escorted out of the room by a security guard.
The rollout of the curriculum is likely to spur at least some discussion in the Vermont Statehouse, too, after legislators return for a new session in January. That’s because Rep. Troy Headrick, I-Burlington, plans to introduce a bill that could, if passed, prevent the material as it’s been written from being used in schools.
Headrick’s legislation would require consultation with — and an endorsement from — Odanak and Wôlinak on any curriculum about Indigenous history before that material was used in any Vermont school, according to a draft of the bill.
“We’ve given these state-identified groups a foothold through the state recognition process,” Headrick said in an interview. “And they’re exploiting that foothold in a pretty significant way — taking control of the narrative in ways that completely erase any narrative provided by the Abenaki at Odanak and Wôlinak.”
Headrick said his bill has two additional sponsors, one Democratic and one Republican, though it’s not clear the proposal will have a clear path forward this session.
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Headrick introduced a separate bill at the start of the 2025 legislative session, which ended this past June, that would create a task force to reexamine the state’s past tribal recognition decisions, among other points. The bill, H.362, got only a brief introductory hearing this year and did not see any substantive committee discussion time.
Conor Kennedy, chief of staff to Democratic House Speaker Jill Krowinski, said on Tuesday that he was not sure yet whether Headrick’s legislation would see more committee attention in the upcoming legislative session.
At the same time, the curriculum’s release comes as Odanak and Wôlinak leaders have made earnest appeals in Vermont this fall, including to state legislators, for the past tribal recognitions to be reconsidered.
In October, the nations published a lengthy report that used public records to examine about 15 generations of ancestry for five prominent members of Vermont’s recognized groups, including Don Stevens, chief of the Nulhegan group; Brenda Gagne, chief of the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi; and Shirly Hook, chief of the Koasek group.
The report also examined the heritage of some members of groups that claim Abenaki descent in New Hampshire, but that are not recognized by that state’s government. It concluded that all of the people studied were nearly 100% European.
Genealogical research for the report was conducted by Darryl Leroux, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa who has previously published research concluding that many members of Vermont’s state-recognized tribes have no ancestral ties to historic Abenaki communities.
In a column published last month, Stevens, Gagne and Hook blasted the report and its findings as “junk science, compiled with bias and full of factual and interpretive errors.”
Odanak’s tribal government has emailed a link to the report to every state legislator in Vermont and New Hampshire, according to Suzie O’Bomsawin, the government’s assistant general manager.
Earlier this month, meanwhile, the First Nations launched a campaign on some of Vermont’s major television stations — ABC22, FOX44, WCAX and Vermont Public — which makes the case that the state-recognized tribes are not legitimate Indigenous communities. The campaign is set to air for a year, according to a press release.
“It is essential that everyone understand the reality of our identity,” said Jacques Watso, one of Odanak First Nation’s tribal councilors, in the release. “We will continue this work with consistency and determination. The truth cannot be ignored.”
