The Abenaki Land Link Project
By Emily Wanzer
May 5, 2021
Food means connection—to each other, to our own bodies, and to the earth. In an increasingly uncertain and unstable world, many communities all around Vermont are creating, discovering, and revisiting strategies for building more accessible, just, and resilient connections. The Abenaki Land Link Project is an exceptional example that recognizes our interrelation while getting good food to some of the people who need it most. It highlights indigenous sovereignty, partnerships, and culturally significant food and points us in the direction of a better Vermont.
The Abenaki Land Link Project is a partnership between the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation, Rooted in Vermont (a project of the Vermont Farm to Plate Network), and the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont (NOFA-VT). Beginning in spring 2020, fifteen growers—gardeners, homesteaders, and farmers—all around Vermont planted traditional Abenaki crops to be harvested in the fall. The seeds provided by the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk included Koasek/Calais mix and Calais flint corn, Algonquin squash, and true cranberry, skunk, and Mohawk beans. Most of the food grown from these seeds will be returned back to Abenaki citizens, especially to elders, those with disabilities, and those who are food insecure.
In his role as Chief of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk, Don Stevens grapples with the question, “how do we help our citizens gain access to natural foods, but also to live in the means that our ancestors did?” In Vermont, native people are disproportionately affected by poverty and health issues, especially diabetes and heart disease. Growing, connecting with, and eating traditional Abenaki food could be a way to combat this disparity. Chief Don thinks that “there are specific crops that we have that we want to keep control of or be stewards of because they were given to our ancestors to feed us and we can process them. It’s unique to our bodies.” These seeds, that have been passed on for generations, are at the core of the project.
Chief Don speaks about how stewardship is fostered by cultivating thought processes that decenter ownership and extraction. The Abenaki people in Vermont today are survivors of hundreds of years of a ruling culture that tried to drive them to extinction though war, disease, familial separation, and the eugenics movement of the 1900s, and is still failing them today. For Chief Don, this project is about working within the system to survive, so that “our kids can be proud of who they are and won’t become extinct.” It also offers an opportunity for non-native Vermonters to give back to First Nations People who helped and provided for European settlers. That opportunity in and of itself is a gift. Through the seeds, the growing process, and the native crops, participants in the project can learn different ways of connecting to our food source. They can learn, as Chief Don says, that “you are but one strand in the web of life and not dominion over it.”
Complementing this food security work are Chief Don’s efforts to regain access to land that his tribe once stewarded. This year, he helped to secure free hunting and fishing rights for state-recognized Abenaki citizens. He has also worked with corporations like TransCanada and FirstLight to get gathering permits for his tribe on private-owned land. Similar permits followed for state land managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Agency of Natural Resources, and Vermont State Parks and Recreation areas, as well as for some federal land including the Mohegan Basin in the Silvio O. Conte refuge and the Green Mountain National Forest. The tribe can use these permits to gather food (such as nuts, berries, leeks, and fiddleheads), medicines, and materials for crafts and art.
Chief Don has many goals for the future. He hopes to gain more access to lands with fewer hunting and fishing restrictions for his tribe and wants to continue working with non-native people to grow Abenaki foods to help feed his tribe. Unfortunately, because he doesn’t get paid for this work, the reality is that Chief Don “can’t do native things full-time… [but] by partnering,” he says, “I’m able to help our people.” Ultimately, he would love to identify a product, such as a Nulhegan cornmeal, that could provide a revenue stream to the tribe. Another mutually beneficial endeavour, going “above and beyond,” as Chief Don puts it, would be employing indigenous people as consultants (for cleaning up Lake Champlain, or for food sovereignty programs, as examples) and educators for students of all ages throughout Vermont.
These ways of thinking that Chief Don and the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk are offering at the center of this project are incredibly valuable to us all. In a society dominated by white supremacy culture, indigenous wisdom and frameworks of thinking can offer a path towards liberated culture, mutual aid, and the survival of life on Earth. Chief Don says that when people come to him questioning ‘what happened to the world, why did things go sideways?’, he can tell them that his people know exactly what happened, but they had no way of preventing or changing it. To begin unlearning in the context of this project, non-native people must work towards an understanding of the overall philosophy of the tribe’s thinking, while also holding the recognition that there is not one monolithic indigenous experience and that Chief Don is speaking on behalf of his tribe, the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk-Abenaki Nation.
The Abenaki Land Link Project was never mandated or prescribed by external institutions. Instead, it was centered around what Chief Don was looking to do for his tribal citizens, with other parties, such as NOFA-VT, brought in as partners as the need arose. Shane Rogers, communications manager for Farm to Plate (Vermont’s food system plan), was clear that this project is not about charity, nor showing off social justice projects, nor speaking for all Abenaki folks. He says that it is about building resilience in the food system and ensuring that people don’t fall through the cracks. For the white-led organizations that are involved, part of this work is recognizing the “really horrific relationship” between European colonists (and later the United States government) and native people and examining the ways in which that relationship is perpetuated today. Shane sees this project, if carried out with careful intentionality, as the first small step in repairing and healing those relationships here in Vermont.
NOFA-VT was able to utilize their network of homesteaders, gardeners, and farmers to expand the reach of the program beyond that of any individual college or commercial grower. Livy Bulger, NOFA-VT’s Education and Engagement Manager, says this feels more powerful. Food provides connective tissue between people, and that connection has the potential to foster empowerment. While Shane and Livy are excited by the progress made with the project, they recognize that this project is a step, not a solution, and the only way to move forward is to continue listening to Abenaki leaders through every step of the process.
In a post-pandemic world, the group plans to host a community harvest festival open to the public where all can celebrate and share in the culture with the gift of a meal, storytelling, and harvest demonstrations. The state and dominant culture is still failing indigenous people, as it has failed them for hundreds of years, all of us—especially non-native white people—have work to do in every aspect of our lives to build solidarity, trust, and radical acts of allyship (connection). The Abenaki Land Link project is a reminder that this work can and should be a joyful part of our everyday lives. As we all work to build a reciprocal relationship with food, land, and other people, I invite you to draw on these ideas and collective wisdom. There is incredible beauty in that by doing right by others, we do right by ourselves. When we follow indigenous leadership, we actively build a better world through nourishing acts of connection and community care.
