Abenaki buy for­est and farm­land in Bar­ton

by Tena Starr

copy­right the Chron­i­cle 12-19-2012

BAR­TON — For the first time in two cen­turies, an Abenaki tribe in Ver­mont can claim tribal forest­land.  As of Mon­day, the roughly 1,000-mem­ber Nul­he­gan Abenaki own 65 acres in Bar­ton on the May Farm Road.  Ti­tle is held by Abenaki Help­ing Abenaki, a non­profit cre­ated sev­eral years ago to pre­serve the cul­ture of the Nul­he­gan Abenaki.

The tribe, which the state of Ver­mont of­fi­cially rec­og­nized in 2011, has been work­ing on the pur­chase for more than a year.  The Ver­mont Land Trust holds a con­ser­va­tion ease­ment on the prop­erty to make sure it re­mains un­de­vel­oped.

Tribe mem­bers will con­tinue, and ul­ti­mately ex­pand, an ex­ist­ing sug­ar­ing op­er­a­tion on the land.  It will also be used for a tribal com­mu­nity gar­den, said Luke Willard of Brown­ing­ton, for­mer tribe chief and a cur­rent trustee who was piv­otal in or­ga­niz­ing the pur­chase.

“All Nul­he­gan Abenaki land has been gone for a long, long time,” Mr. Willard said. “This is the first com­mu­nity-owned piece of land for the tribe in lit­er­ally over 200 years.  We’ve got a lot of cel­e­brat­ing to do.  This is a re­ally big thing for the lead­er­ship and the cit­i­zens of the tribe.

“It’s also a big thing for the town of Bar­ton and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties,” Mr. Willard added.  “The way we’ve set it up the land will be con­served for­ever.  We’re al­low­ing pub­lic ac­cess.  We’re not al­low­ing mo­tor ve­hi­cles, but foot travel, horse­back rid­ing, cross coun­try ski­ing, bird watch­ing, hik­ing within rea­son.  We’re will­ing to share the woods with folks.”

The land was paid for largely through fund-rais­ing and grants.  Prior owner Eric Lanou sold the de­vel­op­ment rights to the Ver­mont Land Trust.

“We worked hard to raise this money,” Mr. Willard said.   “But every­body loved this pro­ject.  Peo­ple wanted this to hap­pen.”

Tribe mem­bers plan to sugar on the land this spring, grad­u­ally in­creas­ing the size of the op­er­a­tion as time goes on, Mr. Willard said.  They’ll do it the old-fash­ioned way, with buck­ets rather than tub­ing.

Even­tu­ally, the Nul­he­gan hope to tap as many as 3,000 or 4,000 trees and to de­velop their own brand of syrup — not just pure Ver­mont syrup, which has its own fame, but the first brand of Ver­mont Abenaki-made syrup.  “This is go­ing to be the first maple syrup pro­duced by an Abenaki tribe in cen­turies,” Mr. Willard  said.

The sug­ar­ing op­er­a­tion will be la­bor in­ten­sive.  “Our in­ten­tion is to take folks who are un­em­ployed or un­der­em­ployed and put them to work for the sea­son,” Mr. Willard said.  “It’s go­ing to be done fairly old school.”

Also, he said the tribe will in­vite school­child­ren to come see how sug­ar­ing is done the old-fash­ioned way.

“And we want to have a small ex­hibit where folks can ac­tu­ally see how maple sugar was pro­duced prior to Colo­nial­ism,” he said.  “It’s very la­bo­ri­ous com­pared to con­tem­po­rary sug­ar­ing.”

Money from the sug­ar­ing op­er­a­tion will go to sup­port the tribe’s pro­grams, such as Nul­he­ganaki Youth Out­reach, which does pre­sen­ta­tions about Abenaki his­tory and cul­ture.  When that pro­gram first started au­di­ences were tiny, some­times no more than a half dozen peo­ple, Mr. Willard said.  These days pre­sen­ta­tions are made to much big­ger groups of 50 or more peo­ple.

“It’s grown in­cred­i­bly with zero fund­ing,” he said.  “So can you imag­ine what they could ac­com­plish in that pro­gram with $4,000 or $5,000 in rev­enue gen­er­ated from sug­ar­ing?”

The Nul­he­gan also op­er­ate a pro­gram called The Sev­enth Har­vest, which is ba­si­cally a com­mu­nity gar­den.

Mr. Willard said it started years ago, largely as a typ­i­cal food shelf to help the needy.  “We re­al­ized we were help­ing peo­ple who were down and out, but we weren’t re­ally em­pow­er­ing them to help them­selves,” he said.

By co­in­ci­dence, a John­son State Col­lege pro­fes­sor took an in­ter­est in the Abenaki gar­den­ing prac­tices, which were still be­ing used by some.

“He was un­der the im­pres­sion that these prac­tices were pretty much ex­tinct,” Mr. Willard said.  “When we re­al­ized that was the com­mon be­lief, we worked with JSC and got a grant from the Lake Cham­plain Basin Pro­gram to study these agri­cul­tural tech­nolo­gies.  It be­came ap­par­ent to us that these an­cient prac­tices could be ex­tinct in as lit­tle as a gen­er­a­tion.”

The study, com­bined with a de­sire to pro­vide health­ier food, led to a com­mu­nity gar­den at Mr. Willard’s home in Brown­ing­ton.

That gar­den will move to a clear­ing on the Bar­ton land.  It could pro­vide food for 15 or 20 fam­i­lies.

The rules for its use are that grow­ers must learn tra­di­tional Abenaki grow­ing prac­tices, if they don’t al­ready know them, and they must agree to pass that knowl­edge on to some­one else in or­der to keep tra­di­tions alive.

The lit­tle clear­ing with its rich soil was one of the rea­sons the Bar­ton land was so ap­peal­ing, Mr. Willard said.  “I looked at it, and I saw mound gar­dens.”

Al­though the land has prac­ti­cal uses, it also has more sym­bolic ones as well.

A tribe is not an or­ga­ni­za­tion; it’s a body politic, just like a town, Mr. Willard said.  But the Nul­he­gan have not had a com­mu­nal meet­ing place.

“There are Abenakis who own their own land,” he said.  “But we did­n’t have a com­mu­nity place to meet like towns do.  We were al­ways bor­row­ing places to meet.  It’s dif­fi­cult to main­tain a gov­ern­ment when you don’t have a cen­tral place.”

The tribe will use the land to hold meet­ings, events and cel­e­bra­tions.

“Part of our cre­ation story is that the cre­ator wanted us to be the stew­ards of the land,” said cur­rent chief of the Nul­he­gan Abenaki, Don Stevens, who takes a more spir­i­tual view of the ac­qui­si­tion.  “Af­ter the land was taken from our an­ces­tors, we were no longer able to be the stew­ards we were asked to be.  Our hearts are heavy with that bur­den.  With our own for­est, we can pick up the soil, feel it, smell it, and know that our an­ces­tors walked on this land and it is ours to pro­tect.  For this land, we’re able to ful­fill our promise.”

Gain­ing of­fi­cial recog­ni­tion for the tribe, as well as oth­ers in Ver­mont, was a long and con­tentious process.  Mr. Willard said that was, at least in part, be­cause some be­lieved the tribes would make land claims or try to es­tab­lish casi­nos.

Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth, he said.  The tribe paid for the Bar­ton prop­erty, which it in­tends to share with every­one.  “Our in­ten­tions were al­ways pos­i­tive.”

con­tact Tena Starr at tena@bar­tonchron­i­cle.com

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