This month the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs announced an American Abenaki curriculum. The commission leaders say this is the first curriculum for Vermont educators that has been designed by the four Abenaki communities in Vermont.
The commission chair and vice-chair say implementation of an American Abenaki Curriculum has been a long-awaited dream. Chair Dan Coutu says the idea of creating a curriculum focused on the history and culture of the state-recognized tribe has taken years to come to fruition.
“Decades ago there was discussion around this. And then back in late 2010 the idea of creating a curriculum was raised once again.”
Commission Vice Chair Jeff Benay, who is also chair of the American Abenaki Curriculum Planning Committee, continues:
“The idea for the curriculum started in 1997 and we worked with a couple of teachers and we developed something. But it wasn’t really as full an experience we had hoped for and there’s always been a sense that the Abenaki wanted their own story to be told. We thought if we could develop something that would really be compelling then school systems would be wanting to get it. And it has taken quite a long amount of time. But this is what we’ve hoped for.”
Coutu calls the curriculum – which is available to any Vermont educator who wants to utilize it – both groundbreaking and compelling.
“It pulls together information from hundreds of different sources and it ranges from old publications and also newer items. This curriculum provides the information and links to primary sources. That attention to access to primary sources has not been done before that we know of. In addition, the breath and depth of information provided by all of these sources is, certainly in my mind, phenomenal.”
Benay describes some of the curriculum’s core elements.
“You’re going to be able to go onto this and see in 1987 the Missisquoi tribe did what’s called a ‘fish-in’. So you’re going to actually be able to go on and see clips and you’ll actually hear the late Chief Homer St. Francis talking about what was the purpose of it. So it’s history really coming alive. It’s the four tribes that have developed this. It’s the voice of the Abenaki themselves and they’re telling their own experience.”
Dan Coutu says developing the American Abenaki curriculum is important because history has not accurately portrayed Abenaki culture.
“When I was a child the textbooks that I used to learn about Vermont history began by saying that when the settlers moved in Vermont was empty – nobody lived there. The culture of our government and the settler culture has worked very hard for centuries to erase native people as effectively as possible. And so this curriculum provides a counterpoint to that erasure and a clear body of evidence that yes we are still here.”
Benay adds that in the past when Native American history was taught in Vermont schools, it was often inaccurate or portrayed tribes of the American west.
“For so long kids learning in school in Vermont would not learn about the Abenaki experience. So if you looked up in the state of Vermont the Agency of Education or the Department of Education, what you would get when you looked for native Americans was the experiences of Southwestern Indians. So they’re going to get to see what does a native person east of the Mississippi look like, because they don’t look the same as their western counterparts. And if one of the things we do is that kids learn the differences and also then provide the context of things that have happened in this state that are not things that we are particularly proud of, and yet we need to learn from them.”
The lessons and curriculum is freely available to anyone online, according to Coutu.
“This is providing information about a culture that is critically important that it be preserved. There’s a culture here that has immense value. It has survived for geez, you know many thousands of years and it worked. So it’s the kind of thing that you don’t want to see disappear from the face of the earth.”
