Tim de la Bruere: Abenaki people were excluded from the state recognition process. I was one of them.

This commentary is by Tim de la Bruere of Newport. He has served as a Newport city alderman and as a school board member for North Country Union High. He has worked for the state of Vermont as an emergency 911 call-taker and now works to make housing available for  all Vermonters.

In his commentary of April 29, University of Vermont historian David Massell writes that  Abenaki people were excluded from the legislative process that recognized Vermont’s four  “tribes” in 2010-12. That is correct.

I am Abenaki of Odanak First Nation, based in Quebec since our ancestors’ removal from New  England in the late 1700s. My great-grandmother Malvina (Robert-Obomsawin) Bernier moved  to Vermont in the early 1900s in search of work in our ancestral territories. My grandfather  Richard “Skip” Bernier is a well-known Abenaki of Newport who was featured in Vermont  Public’s recent podcast “Recognized.” In the summer of 2006, I was 24 and just out of college,  when Gov. Jim Douglas appointed me to the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs, whose mission is to serve the state’s Indigenous people.

The other Abenaki commissioner was Jeanne (DeForge) Brink of Barre, whose grandmother,  Elvine (Obomsawin) Royce was part of a well-known Abenaki family centered on Thompson’s  Point in Charlotte. In the monthly commission meetings, I and others struggled to make heads or  tails of whether anyone in Vermont’s “tribes” was actually Abenaki. Jeanne and I sought to make  sure that any legal recognition process would have rigor and legitimacy, requiring groups to  demonstrate their Abenaki ancestry.

Those views made us obstacles to be removed. In a nasty open letter to the governor in March  2008, the leadership of the Vermont “tribes” accused Jeanne and me of acting as “partisan”  agents for a “Canadian” Indian nation, namely Odanak, and so “distinctly hostile to Vermont  Abenakis.” As a young, gay man, I was treated as an outsider and with disrespect by certain men on the commission; in short, I was bullied.

Vermonters should note that there is no such thing as “Canadian” or “Vermont” Abenaki. Native  American nations predate Canada and the United States by several thousand years.

Since you can’t remove state commissioners just for having adverse opinions, the leadership of the “tribes” and the Legislature found a work-around. In May of 2010, led by Sens. Vincent  Illuzzi, Hinda Miller and others, the Legislature passed a law creating a recognition process in

which genealogy or proof of Abenaki ancestry were not required . That law also dissolved the  commission on which we served and formed a new one, which Jeanne and I were not invited to  join.

I was called to the governor’s office. His staff explained, with apology, that while my work with  the commission was excellent, the leadership of the “tribes” did not want us on the commission.  They did not want any participation of Odanak First Nation in the recognition process. When the  Commission began meeting again in September, actual Abenaki People were no longer present.

And no Abenaki has served on the commission since. That’s because the 2010 law establishing the new commission grants priority to the four “tribes” to select commission members.

The commission then moved ahead to recommend recognition. My grandfather and I were the  only Abenakis to testify before the Senate committee. One of the senators fell asleep during my  grandfather’s testimony and another was on her cell phone. When I went before the committee,  the chair, Sen. Illuzzi, did not call on me until the very end of the several-hour hearing. I had no more than a few minutes to speak. Even more memorable, after months of trolling me and my  grandfather on social media, members of the “tribes” followed me to my car, calling me “weak”  and a “fag.”

Other Abenaki, including Odanak’s elected leadership, were entirely frozen out. Odanak Council  members and citizens Alain O’Bomsawin and Jacques T. Watso drove to Montpelier to testify,  but were prevented from doing so . Abenaki citizen Denise Watso, a resident of Albany, New York, traveled to Montpelier with her sister Donna and cousin Susan Marshall to speak and were also turned away .

In this way were Abenaki people effectively excluded from the legal process that created four so-called “Abenaki tribes.” In this way did Vermont’s Legislature, advised and guided by self-proclaimed “Abenaki” and their defenders, take it upon themselves to decide who is Indigenous.  This, despite the state’s own historical and genealogical investigation that had already disproven  those “Abenaki” claims. This, despite the Bureau of Indian Affairs investigation that had done the same. Scholarship presented this past April at UVM confirms these findings.

State recognition remains a painful chapter in my family’s history and that of Odanak and  Wolinak First Nations. And state recognition should be seen for what it is: a stain on Vermont’s  reputation as a place of decency and fairness, an insult to Vermonters who favor honest,  evidence-based laws over ones founded on unsubstantiated family stories, and an affront to the  sovereign right of Indigenous People to determine their own citizenship.

I am grateful that University of Vermont faculty provided a platform for the Abenaki of Odanak  First Nation to speak at the Beyond Borders conference two years ago. I can only hope that  Vermonters are perhaps ready to hear the truth.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Tim de la Bruere: Abenaki people were excluded from the state recognition process. I was one of them. .