As Vermont’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission — the panel tasked with studying the historic impacts of racism, discrimination and eugenics on state laws — enters a new phase of its work, it’s facing criticism from Abenaki leaders over who is being included in that work.

Last week, the commission held an event on the steps of the Statehouse in Montpelier to mark the release of its strategic plan. It was the panel’s first major public event. The document outlines the scope of the commission members’ work and lays out a timeline, culminating in a final report expected sometime in mid-2027.

The event opened with a drum circle featuring youth from the Abenaki Circle of Courage, an afterschool program associated with the Abenaki Nation at Missisquoi, one of four groups that has been recognized as Native American by the state of Vermont, though not by the federal government. Brenda Gagne, chief of the Missisquoi group and the leader of the Circle of Courage program, also spoke. 

“We’re happy to be here today,” Gagne said, but “not happy of why it brings us here, and what’s happened in the history of Vermont to our people and people of color.”

The launch also featured about a dozen other speakers, many of whom represented other communities that the commission expects to be part of its work and who said they were excited the commission could soon start gathering testimony from the public.  

“We exist in pursuit of community-centered justice and holistic healing that prioritize impacted Act 128 communities,” the report’s mission statement reads, referring to the demographic groups outlined in the 2022 state law that stood up the commission.

Those include people “who identify as Native American or Indigenous,” people with “physical, psychiatric or mental conditions or disabilities,” those who are Black or “other individuals of color,” people with “French Canadian, French-Indian or other mixed ethnic or racial heritage,” or any other communities that the commissioners see fit to include, the law states. 

Beverly Little Thunder of Huntington speaks during a Vermont Truth and Reconciliation Commission event in Montpelier on Friday, October 11. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

But the panel’s focus on people who “identify” as Indigenous has drawn criticism from Abenaki leaders who have federal-level recognition in Canada and have continuous historic ties to territory that today includes Vermont and other parts of New England. Specifically, they said that directive has already led the commission to tie at least part of its work to groups that they assert cannot claim legitimate Indigenous ancestry. 

In Vermont’s case, the leaders said, those are the four groups that the state recognized as Native American in 2011 and 2012: the Elnu Abenaki, Nulhegan Abenaki, Koasek Band of the Koas Abenaki Nation and the Abenaki Nation at Missisquoi. 

“Vermont’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (VTRC) practices neither truth nor reconciliation when it works with these pretend Indians,” said leaders of Odanak and W8linak First Nations, which today are based in Quebec, in a public statement issued ahead of last week’s Statehouse event. By supporting the commission’s work, they said, “Vermonters with the best intentions are supporting theft and cultural appropriation, and furthering colonization.”

‘Tethered to myths’

Rick O’Bomsawin, the chief of Odanak First Nation, has repeatedly called for Vermont officials to allow him, and other Abenaki leaders based in Quebec, to have a greater role in the truth and reconciliation process. In an interview Wednesday, O’Bomsawin said that the commission has almost entirely continued to ignore those calls.

“We have not been invited to the table. We haven’t had a voice in this,” O’Bomsawin said. “It’s not right.” 

Commissioner Mia Schultz of the Vermont Truth and Reconciliation Commission speaks in Montpelier on Friday, October 11. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

The First Nation has maintained for years that many members of Vermont’s four state-recognized tribes are not Indigenous and, instead, are appropriating Abenaki identity in ways that harm Odanak and W8linak’s band members. Research from scholars on Indigenous communities in New England and Canada — as well as reports from the Vermont and U.S. governments — have concluded that there is little evidence to support the existence of Abenaki tribes in Vermont with ties to historic Abenaki groups. 

At the same time, Odanak and W8linak leaders, a Vermont Attorney General’s Office report and additional, newly-published scholarly research have concluded there is no evidence that Abenaki people were targeted for sterilization as part of Vermont’s state-sanctioned eugenics program in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The program did target poor and disabled people, many of them women, according to the recent research, published in The UVM History Review.

That’s contrary to claims by leaders of Vermont’s four state-recognized groups, who say that many of their members’ families hid their Indigenous identities during the 20th century in an effort to protect themselves from being targeted by that program.