On a sunny afternoon in September, indigenous scholar and educator Judy Dow led my Burlington City and Lake Semester class on a tour of the Old North End.

Wearing dangly feather earrings and a shirt with birds on it, Dow led us through the “Mocassin Village”, pointing out houses where Abenaki people once lived and created their community in semi-secrecy.

Dow told us these Vermont Abenaki were victims of the eugenics movement of the 1920s and ‘30s that targeted “unfit” people for forced sterilization. She said she was Abenaki and I and other students believed her.

Why wouldn’t we? Burlington School District teachers have invited her and other members of Vermont’s state-recognized Abenaki tribes to speak with Burlington students numerous times – to tell their story of how they have come out from the shadows, reemerging in the 1970s, after being in hiding for more than two centuries, to explain how they have reclaimed their rightful place as Vermont’s indigenous people, sharing with schoolchildren about the hardships and power of being Native Americans.

In 2002, a report by the Vermont Attorney General’s Office stated that these Vermonters had insufficient evidence to prove they were Abenaki. In 2007, the Bureau of Indian Affairs issued a similar finding, denying them recognition by the federal government. Then, in 2011 and 2012, the Vermont legislature reversed their earlier decision and officially recognized four groups of Vermonters as “state-recognized” Abenaki. Odanak First Nation, an Abenaki tribe, and other undisputed Abenaki people from Canada and Albany, NY, were not allowed to testify in the process at the state legislature.

Since then, genealogical records and scholarship from the vast majority of Canadian, American and indigenous researchers have led to the consensus that the members of all four of the Vermont state-recognized tribes, almost every one of the more than 1,700 people who claim to be “Vermont Abenaki”, are in fact of French-Canadian or other European descent.

So far, this recent scholarship has not convinced the Vermont Legislature to revisit its state recognition.

Don Stevens is the chief of one of the state-recognized groups in Vermont. He says that his group has legally been recognized as Abenaki and that this conflict is an “internal, personal fight between indigenous people.”

“It’s just their [Odanak’s] opinion. They should have no bearing or authority on any of us,” Stevens said. “They don’t think we’re real, but that doesn’t mean that that’s the case.”

Stevens sees the Burlington School District as a supporter of the Vermont Abenaki. He has worked with teachers and classes throughout the district.

The Odanak and Wolinak Abenaki First Nations in Quebec sent an open letter to Vermont educators in February, 2024, protesting “the teaching of false histories of our people as well as the platforming of those who preach and profit by appropriating our heritage and history.”

The letter asked Vermont teachers to “teach actual, evidence-based history,” and to “no longer make space for the performance of appropriated and invented Abenaki rituals, music, dance and art. We ask that you stop platforming and elevating those who claim to represent us.”

The letter named Joseph Bruchac, Don Stevens, Judy Dow and other members of state-recognized Abenaki groups in Vermont.

“None of these people have Abenaki ancestors. None speak from an indigenous perspective. None are our kin,” they wrote. Recent research from Canadian Abenaki leaders examined genealogical evidence of state-recognized Vermont Abenaki leaders. This report, using 434 root ancestors that span 14 generations, concluded that Joseph Bruchcac has 99.9% European ancestry and 0.1% Mohawk ancestry. Using 1,215 root ancestors across 16 generations, the report also found that Vermont chief Don Stevens has 96.9% European ancestry and 3.1% African ancestry. Two women from 1620 and 1650 make up his only Indigenous ancestry, the report said.

When my BCL class prepared for our tour with Judy Dow, none of the materials mentioned the decades of appeals from long-established Abenaki groups in Canada claiming that the Vermont tribes are fraudulent and this conflict was never discussed.

University of Vermont professor David Massell is in UVM’s history department and is the director of their Canadian Studies Program.

“I no longer believe that we are doing the right thing by recognizing white settlers who say they’re Indians—but are not—as Native people,” Massell said. “I now see that as excluding actual indigenous people from our conversations, and as a history teacher, I see that as doing exactly the wrong thing. It is not my job to teach myths and fairy tales in the classroom.”

Teachers at BHS are not as certain as Massell.

Jory Hearst teaches English 9 at BHS. When I was in 9th grade, she helped organize storytelling and drumming with renowned author and member of a Vermont state-recognized Abenaki group, Joseph Bruchac. And last year, Hearst helped to organize a talk with Daniel Nolett, director general of the Odanak Abenaki Band Council in Quebec.

“We, I would say, within English 9, don’t feel like it’s our job to decide whose voice is authentically Abenaki and whose is not,” Hearst said.

In addition, Hearst believes being from the local community is valuable.

“Judy Dow lives in our community; she is a community member,” Hearst said. “Odanak, their ancestors are from here, but they don’t live in our community. And I do want to be mindful of not doing more harm to people who live here.”

Like Hearst, Burlington City and Lake Semester co-head teacher Dov Stucker also does not believe he gets to define who is Abenaki.

“I’ll start off with the easy one,” Stucker said. “Not me.”

Stucker declined to answer any questions about Judy Dow and he described himself as having “a very limited set of choices.”

“[One choice is to] stop talking about local indigenous culture entirely – which is sad to me. It feels like a form of erasure. It feels unfair,” Stucker said. “But maybe that’s the right thing to do.”

Megan Camp is the Program Director and Vice President of Shelburne Farms, a nonprofit education center that helps to fund Burlington City and Lake Semester. Shelburne Farms said they have not directly worked with any Odanak Abenaki people as a part of their educational programs, however, they did host a campfire about Abenaki life with Don Stevens, chief of the Nulhegan Band, early this October.

Camp also doesn’t see it as her or Shelburne Farm’s role to decide who is Abenaki and who is not.

“It isn’t necessarily what our mission is as an organization,” Camp said.

CVU Librarian Peter Langella said he is trying to make sure that educators have the best resources possible on this issue so that students get accurate information. One of the ways he does so is by organizing trips for Vermont librarians to the Odanak First Nation Reserve. Burlington High School librarians have attended some of these visits.

“In saying, ‘oh it’s not our job to decide,’ I think that [teachers] are just allowing the status quo to continue,” Langella told me.

In fact, Langella has also removed Joseph Bruchac’s books from the CVU library after the indigenous book recommendation service he uses stopped recommending them. This resulted in backlash from state-recognized Abenaki groups, who suggested Langella should be fired. Despite this, he stays firm in his stance.

“If we can’t get settler colonialism correct – that our whole country is based on – then how can we get anything else correct?” Langella said.

Autumn Bangoura, Equity Instructional Leader for the Burlington School District, has helped coordinate work with the state-recognized groups throughout her career and said she respects the work the Vermont Abenaki do.

In 2019, when Columbus Day switched to Indigenous Peoples’ Day in Vermont, Bangoura helped schools across the district make signs and learn about important Abenaki plants. These lessons were instructed and led by state-recognized Vermont Abenaki people, including Judy Dow.

Although Bangoura recognizes that the Vermont Abenaki may not have blood ties to federally recognized Abenaki groups, and their connection to Abenaki ancestry is disputed, she believes there is value in the knowledge they provide.

“They know a lot more than me or any of the educators here, they speak the language, study and understand,” Bangoura said. “So completely severing ties might risk completely erasing any Indigenous Studies in Vermont.”

Bangoura thinks it’s best to incorporate the voices of both state and federally recognized Abenaki groups. She has designed a lesson for teachers that includes both perspectives.

“And it’s like, here, you read this one, read this one, what’s their argument? What’s their argument?” Bangoura said.

When Joseph Bruchac came to talk with my ninth-grade class in 2023, I was entranced. He played the drums and sang in a way I had never heard before. He told us stories that made us laugh. The experience was enjoyable and moving. Two years later, despite the increased scrutiny, he said he still feels accepted in Vermont schools.

“I haven’t actually felt that there’s been any backlash against me in terms of the educational institutions of Vermont,” Bruchac said. “And I have a lot of friends who are teachers and writers in Vermont, who are still very close to me.”

Additionally, he compared indigenous culture to sexual orientation – each person is entitled to have an individual identity without judgment.

“It wasn’t something that we had to legislate or condemn people for,” Bruchac said. “Each person is an individual whatever their identity is – and being able to say who you are is very important.”

I visited the Odanak Abenaki community in Canada to talk with Daniel Nolett, the Odanak leader who spoke last year at BHS. He brought me through the modest neighborhood surrounding a central churchyard where the stop signs were written in French, English and Abenaki. Almost every person we passed, sitting on their porches, walking by, or passing in a car, called out to Daniel by name to say hello.

One of the first things Nolett showed me was a family portrait. He pointed out every person and how he knows he is related to them.

“In all of these family trees, I can find a link to every one of them in two, three generations up. That’s how we connect,” Nolett said.

Nolett does not believe that the state-recognized tribes in Vermont have the ability to trace their family genealogy in the same way.

“They’re related to each other, true, but to no Abenaki whatsoever,” Nolett said. “None of them can come up with any pictures like this.”

Nolett claims the Vermont Abenaki are simply lying. Nolett believes that for educators, this can be hard because the state-recognized Vermont Abenaki groups “are quite active.”

“They’re, I like to use the word, they’re bullies,” Nolett said. “They’re pushing their narratives. They’ve been telling these lies for so many years that now it has, in Vermont, become the truth.”

Denise Watso is another member of Odanak Abenaki who lives in Albany, New York.

“I couldn’t go to Vermont ever because of this issue. That’s how traumatic it was for me,” Watso said. “I couldn’t even see a license plate that said Vermont.”

Watso has tried for years to get the story of the Odanak Abenaki heard in Vermont.

“It would trigger, oh, my god, I’d have to think about it again and be distressed, emotionally distressed, because there’s nothing I could do,” Watso said.

Massell said that a lot of liberals (including himself in the past) are easily “duped” because they are “frightened at asking somebody who they really are, and especially around native identity.” In addition, Vermonters like the idea of having Abenaki in our state.

“It makes us out to be the people who didn’t remove our Indians, the people who want to do the right thing by our native peoples,” Massell said. “But neither of those things are true. Indian removal happened in Vermont by 1800 and, as Vermonters, we were involved in that, or our forebearers were.”

Against strong opposition in Vermont, Massell invited representatives from the Odanak First Nation to a conference at UVM in 2022.

Harper Roof ‘26 said she was “shocked” to learn that there was even a controversy.

“I’m very baffled by that,” Roof said. “I wish that I had known before [we went walking with Judy Dow]. If something is true, we shouldn’t be ignoring it.”

This story was originally published on BHS Register on October 24, 2025.