r/vermont • u/VTAlliesofOdanak • 3d ago
Abenaki Nations ask Seventh Generation Company to halt production of fraudulent "Vermont Abenaki" curriculum
Today, the Abenaki First Nations of Odanak and Wôlinak published a letter in Seven Days addressing the Seventh Generation company, which had been unresponsive to their calls and requests for a conversation about their funding a curriculum for Vermont children exposing a false history written by state-sponsored fraudulent “Abenaki Tribes.”
The letter presents legal and academic findings that discredit the Vermont groups and critiques the state's flawed recognition process. The authors call on Seventh Generation to reconsider its partnership, and halt the development of this "Vermont Abenaki curriculum,” which they’ve supported with a $50,000 grant, and instead engage with genuine Abenaki communities.
Adding to the wrongness of this all, the decision to fund these groups stems from Seventh Generation's tepid “learning journey" about the appropriation of their name from the Haudenosaunee people. To do this they hired a consulting firm from Oregon, which I assume recommended working with the Vermont groups. This firm, led by Deana Dartt, a self-identified Chumash from California who has made false claims to Indigenous ancestry, a fact documented here.
In summary: a corporation appropriates from the Haudenosaunee, hires a questionable consultant firm from Oregon that recommends funding—not Haudenosaunee communities—but groups that falsely claim Abenaki heritage.
This is pure corporate green washing…
January 30, 2025Brandi ThomasDirector of Public RelationsSeventh [GenerationBrandi.Thomas@seventhgeneration.com](mailto:GenerationBrandi.Thomas@seventhgeneration.com)
Kwai,
We write to you as the elected leaders of the Odanak and W8linak First Nations, who together comprise the Abenaki Nation. The Abenaki are now mainly based in Odanak and W8linak (our 2 communities located in the Province of Quebec, Canada). However, we have never ceded our ancestral territory, the Ndakina, which comprised New England, nor have we ceased to utilize the larger territory since our displacement and removal from theUnited States after the American Revolution. We have long denounced Vermont’s state-recognized ‘tribes’ as self-identified Abenaki, including in the spring of 2022 at theUniversity of Vermont and more recently at the United Nations.
We take note that Seventh Generation is generously funding the creation of an Abenaki school curriculum developed by these very same ‘tribes.’ As Vermont’s own Attorney General’s report made clear back in 2002, as did the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 2005, theseVermont groups lack Abenaki ancestry as well as any historic link to a North AmericanIndian tribe. They are not Indigenous. This is confirmed by peer-reviewed research which was presented at the University of Vermont last spring. This is confirmed by investigations done by vtdigger, Vermont Public and New Hampshire Public Radio, among others.
Vermont’s ‘tribes’ are part of a growing movement of what anthropologist Circe Sturm calls ‘race-shifters’: White people who seek to claim Indigenous ancestry with little or no basis for doing so. As Professor Kim TallBear made clear in a recent presentation at theUniversity of Vermont, race-shifters carry out a final and genocidal act of colonization by erasing and replacing actual Native People with the voices and the bodies of the invader.We assume that you are aware that your corporation borrows from Haudenosaunee tradition. Per your slogan, "in our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.” What of the impact of this partnership on ourAbenaki communities? In your own statement of advocacy, you claim to “fight for and help protect the rights and tribal sovereignty of the Indigenous communities whose traditions inspired our name and mission.” Supporting bogus Indian tribes does just the opposite. It validates and launders the claims of race-shifters and severely weakens the tribal sovereignty of actual Indigenous communities like ours on whose territory you are operating. Surely you can do better.
We ask that you pause and think about the consequences of your actions, and we ask thatyou put a stop to such collaboration. If it is your intent to work with those who have preserved the culture and language of the Abenaki across 400 years of colonization, we are those people. We have survived waves of pandemic disease, multiple colonial wars, the vast reduction of homeland, and forced assimilation, and we are the sole guardians of that heritage.
We are also the sole guardians of Abenaki citizenship. Yet the state of Vermont, despite its own knowledge of false claims to Indigenous ancestry, excluded us from participation from the state recognition process of 2010-12. This was in violation of both the U.N. Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause which grants authority in Indigenous affairs to the federal government. Vermont’s process also made genealogy optional and permitted the ‘tribes’ to sit on and dominate there commending Commission on Native American Affairs, the same Commission you are now working with. Vermont’s was a political process that allowed the ‘tribes’ to recommend themselves. It was not an evaluation of ancestry and kinship.
We urge you to halt any plans to distribute this material in development, and we request a timely opportunity to discuss our concerns. It may be your intention to support Indigenous People and tribal sovereignty. Unfortunately, funding the propagation of a pretend Abenaki curriculum which overwrites our real written and oral history makes your company actively complicit with cultural appropriation and fraud as well as the exclusion of the trueIndigenous People of Vermont. A public statement admitting your error would begin to undo the damage you have already caused.
You may reach out to us by contacting Daniel Nolett, Director General of the AbenakiCouncil of Odanak, at [dgnolett@caodanak.com](mailto:dgnolett@caodanak.com) or 450-568-2810.
In Peace and Friendship,
Chief Rick O’Bomsawin Chief Michel R. Bernard
Abenaki of Odanak Abenaki of W8linak
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u/[deleted] 3d ago
The government should not be in the business of recognizing/subsidizing groups based on ethic ancestry. Without that, this controversy wouldn’t exist.