Vermont’s Abenaki tribes are once again called out as frauds at UVM symposium

The authenticity of Vermont’s Abenaki tribes was once again rejected by a Canadian sociologist on Thursday evening at the University of Vermont.

Professor Darryl Leroux said his research using an extensive Canadian genealogy database has shown the families in Vermont originally claiming to be Abenaki were “clearly French-Canadian.”

“There’s such obvious and compelling evidence these groups do not represent Abenaki people in any way and have no Abenaki ancestry,” Leroux said. “How did the state of Vermont recognize them as such and why did they recognize them after writing a report saying they were not Abenaki? That’s something I still don’t understand.”

Leroux said he has met with “a couple of” Vermont legislators about the issue but couldn’t get answers to his questions.

Pretendians threaten sovereignty of Native American nations in the U.S. and Canada

An audience filled the Livak Ballroom at the University of Vermont’s Davis Center Thursday evening for the third in a series of three presentations contending Vermont’s four Abenaki tribes are fake.

There were similar presentations in 2022 and 2023 at UVM.

Professor David Massell of UVM’s Department of History introduced the speakers for the event, which included Gordon Henry, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan’s English and American Indian and Indigenous Studies departments; Pam Palmater, a podcaster and documentary filmmaker who advocates for indigenous issues; and Leroux, an associate professor at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa.

Palmater is citizen of the Mi’kmaw Nation and member of Eel River Bar First Nation in Canada. Henry is an enrolled member of the White Earth Anishinaabe Nation in Minnesota.

Palmater and Henry kicked off the symposium by discussing how widespread the problem posed by so-called “pretendians” − non-native people who claim to be Native Americans − is in both the United States and Canada.

“It’s literally a threat to our sovereignty, our nationhood/citizenship, our culture and political standing in the future, so I feel passionately about the topic,” Palmater said of Native American imposters.

Vermont Abenakis can’t show they actually descend from Abenakis, according to Canadian professor

Leroux, speaking last, addressed the issue of Vermont’s four Abenaki tribes, which have received state recognition, but failed to achieve federal recognition, a decision that was initially backed by the state of Vermont.

“One of the primary reasons that really stands out in both the federal decision and state’s research is that the group wasn’t able to demonstrate they actually descend from Abenaki people,” Leroux said. “That’s the key. You have to demonstrate that at some point in time you actually had Abenaki people in your lineage. They have not been able to demonstrate that.”

Three of the four Abenaki chiefs in Vermont held a press conference earlier this week to denounce Thursday’s event at UVM and the ongoing effort by the Abenakis of Odanak in Canada to convince the state of Vermont to rescind its recognition of the Vermont tribes.

Canadian Abenaki chief says Vermont is ancestral territory

Rick O’Bomsawin, chief of the Abenakis of Odanak in Canada, was not scheduled to speak, but he stood up at the end of the event to say his tribe is willing to work with anyone to “bring the truth out about our real history and the important history of Vermont.”

“Vermont is our ancestral territory,” O’Bomsawin said. “We left this land in the hands of the good people of Vermont to take care of, to watch over, not to become us, not to take over our history.”

O’Bomsawin and a delegation from Odanak recently made their case against Vermont’s Abenakis at the 23rd session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

Contact Dan D’Ambrosio at 660-1841 or ddambrosi@gannett.com. Follow him on X @DanDambrosioVT.