 All right. Good afternoon, everybody. This is General Housing and Military Affairs. We are here today to start testimony on JRH2, which is the Apology for the Eugenics Survey. And we're starting later than we had scheduled due to floor work. So we're going to be going till about 4.30 this afternoon. And I've asked our guests, Nancy Gallagher, Judy Dow, and Mercedes de Guardiola, to just start the process of teaching us what this is about. And where this comes from, each of you have written pretty extensively on the Eugenics Survey. And I would love to just start our process of understanding what it is that we did. And I think just to frame it for you and to frame it for the committee, again, the reason this is important and became a priority for me is because this is we are apologizing for something that we, our predecessors, in the General Assembly did. We reacted to science at the time and UVM was the base of a lot of this work in Vermont. And a lot of the conversation was that we should trust the science. And we use that phrase now when it comes to not just COVID, but many things. And this is a case where the science was known to be questionable at the time. And we still, as a body, went ahead and did it. And so this apology was put forward last year. And it's done in a way that says that the General Assembly is apologizing for their actions in basically legitimizing the Eugenics Survey back in 1931. And that's something that we, as a body, have never done. But it affected so much for so long for the affected communities. And it's been, as we took testimony last week, there was an attempt about 10 years ago to do an apology. And here we are again. And we're going to start basically at the beginning. And with that, we're just going to hear from, I'm considering this group, the historians. It's not, they're not solely the historians, but they are, for our purposes, the historians to kind of give us the picture of what it was we were actually approving and what the outcomes were. And that's the beginning of, this is the, today is the beginning of this conversation on this bill. We will continue to hear witnesses over the coming weeks. We will probably hear back from Nancy and Judy and Mercedes at some point together or separately at some point to follow up on some information that has a better context once we hear more. I wanted us to start this process today. So with that, I have the way we have you lined up is that Nancy will start with you. Everybody in the committee received a copy of your book that you were able to provide for us. Thank you. And then we'll go to Judy and then Mercedes. And so, and basically for Zoom protocol, we, when we are, I'm just going to assume that you have presentations to make. And when we have questions, we can, depending on how the flow of the testimony goes, we can either have it during each individual, I don't want to interrupt anybody while they're, while they're talking and certainly save us, save our questions for the, for the end. If that's the way it works out. But for the, for the witnesses, I kind of, I have control as a co-host of who's, who's talking and, and, you know, whose hand is up and whatnot. I can see that. So we'll try to facilitate this conversation as best, as best we can on Zoom. But thank you for coming. All right. Let's start with Nancy. Nancy, welcome. If you just introduce yourselves and yourself and let us know what we need to know. Good afternoon. I am appreciative of the fact that people have taken interest in my work and my book. And I would like to start by saying I had actually started this research on eugenics over 25 years ago. So it's been a while since my book was published, I learned much, much more about what I would say were the impacts on families. At the time, I was working on a master's. I was looking primarily at the academic aspects of it, the history of what was happening in science and medicine at the time and in the eugenics movement and contextualizing Vermont against the, you know, against the broader scope of what was an international movement. What interested me particularly was sort of the irony about how Vermont was supposed to be so independent. These rugged independent people and this whole image of Vermont as pioneers carving out a life in the wilderness, what I call the wilderness myth and how that became a framework for first the eugenics survey of Vermont and trying to exclude certain kinds of people from Vermont or and secondly the Vermont commission on country life which is actually where I had started with a previous course on how that mythology or that that concept of Vermont and the kind of people that Vermonters were was pretty exclusive did not include a lot of the people who were not the good old Vermont Yankee stocks. I spoke to I don't know how many of you because I just was able to call in last year but if you were at my meeting last year and read the suggestions I had written some years ago what I wanted to make sure that any apology coming from the state was not solely about sterilization but the entire broad scope of harm that was done through the three-pronged approach of eugenics and the participation by the state which was namely propaganda, public what they called public education on eugenics but making sure everyone in the state understood there were certain kinds of people that probably shouldn't be part of Vermont. Secondly they had a public policy goal and that was to come the beginning of the state legislature legislative session and lobby for certain programs that were inspired by eugenics not just sterilization but also removing children from families that they felt were unfit families a lot of kids got put into institutions or adopted out for as orphans you know they were orphaned basically and so the policy and then their research program initially started in the 1920s with taking all these case files from both the Department of Public Welfare from state institutions from the Vermont Children's Aid Society and at that time the Vermont Department of Welfare encompassed all state institutions and penal institutions and so all the heads of institutions were on the board of the eugenics survey so the state was very much or state leaders were very much involved in the work done by the eugenics survey which Henry Perkins had started. I noticed in this draft that I was sent that a lot of my concerns that I brought up last year have been incorporated and I was pleased with that because so often people just look at sterilization and they don't look at the broader impacts and I think you have tried very hard to do that here and I submitted to Ron I don't know if you all got copies of it I had some changes that I wanted to make that I tried to highlight and so forth mostly wording but the first one what had to do with who was targeted and you mentioned Abenaki or Abenaki bands which certainly members of Abenaki bands were but that there were Indigenous family bands that are not today recognized by the state as Indigenous and I think we ought to definitely include those and so I would like to change Abenaki to either Indigenous family bands or Indigenous peoples and then I made a few other suggestions in there but the one that I felt important to say at the first whereas was that I think everyone in Vermont should understand the role that state government played and leaders and state government played so I said the University of Vermont zoology professor Henry Perkins established the discredited eugenics survey in Vermont and I would like to add with the participation and full support of leaders in Vermont state government and the Vermont Department of Welfare to collect evidence of alleged um delinquency dependency and what they call mental deficiency and this survey targeted members of Indigenous family bands for months Vermonters and mixed racial or French Canadian heritage the poor and persons with disabilities so that's where I would strengthen that point the role that it wasn't just about Henry Perkins of UVM they had their entire advisory committee had members of state government from every institution and so forth so I think because it's coming from the state we have to acknowledge that um and then the others were just uh small little suggestions I made in the text of some of the other documents but I'm glad that I think it's really important to to to acknowledge the fact that many families today because they were broken up they were some of them were actually lied to that their parents abandoned them when in fact their parents were put in prison and they were placed in institutions I think we have to recognize the broad broader scope of the harm as a result of eugenics policies which also included not just um sterilization but putting people in institutions and many of the so-called crimes that particularly that women were in the reformatory for women in Rutland were for sexuality living with someone they weren't married to having a child out of wedlock adultery those kinds of things if you look at who was in there at the time so I think those are things that um and some of those women their children were taken away and they never got together with them again so those are the kinds of intangible things sterilization is very tangible but those are the things that I think we need to bring forth in our apology now I didn't have a whole 25 minute presentation because you have my book and and but I will be happy to entertain any questions um about it sure yeah I'll start with one to simply you you started off by saying you know when you wrote your book um you know I I read your book or parts of it many moons ago but I didn't really have a living context for it until last year and when I revisited I I truly realized that um it it was very clinical in some ways it was very academic it was very straightforward but having had the context it was really quite moving all of a sudden all of a sudden right 20 years later um but you but you mentioned something about that like when you wrote the book you didn't fully understand the outcomes can you talk a little bit about that like what is it that over time you you really got a chance to see or hear perhaps from people telling you stories or picking up on further research oh yes well first of all the um as soon as my book was published and publicized quite widely I had a number of people called me up one man from Maine who said you could be talking about my family and lo and behold his family was the one that was called the Gypsies I got to know him and his relatives very well I was also um I think it was John Moody and Donna Roberts at the time told me you shouldn't talk about any of the people even if you know anything about them without their full participation and and approval and being a white Yankee Protestant I was well aware that what the story I had to tell would be to give sort of a who what where what actually happened what do we know about it from the records and then let that service framework for people who were affected by the survey to tell their story and I was gratified by the fact that many of them that many people told me later that that um gave them a framework to actually talk about their family's history and furthermore I worked let's see starting in 2004 Judy Dow and I worked together a lot on particularly on Burlington neighborhoods and her work with Native Americans we got to work quite extensively on more going into depth and the records and the families and so forth and so and her family many many members of her family her ancestry or in the eugenics survey records as well so um that gave me more insight into the long-term impacts and then you hear a lot of anecdotal things from people like uh the woman whose grandmother um wanted all her records to be burned there was a period of extreme silence they did not want to admit their lineage or anything for if their family had been impacted just by the intervention of social workers social agencies and so forth and the other thing that um well there was a family called the so-called pirates in my book I didn't give their real name because I didn't feel I should be giving real names in print until those people but one woman when I got to talking quite extensively extensively to her her family lived on the banks of the Otter Creek and her father was trapped for a living and her family was definitely impacted by this and it was from that some of the case files I saw on the Brandon waiting list her family and she told me what happened to each member of those people of of her family her uncle was put in virgins her mother was put or her aunt was put in um the women's reformatory and her daughter was adopted out her daughter was told that her mother abandoned her when her mother tried to get back in touch with her her daughter would have nothing to do with her another one of her uncles ended up running away from Brandon because he was going to be sterilized he was put in the Brandon training school and intelligence tests at that time I don't know if you've seen that period intelligence test but they're pretty much scholastic achievement tests so if you weren't in school a lot you wouldn't necessarily do very well on them and he ran away so he avoided sterilization and ended up having children the other boy who um was her uncle left Vermont as did she because they felt we can't live here anymore so you know it was and and they were of Native American ancestry you know so um and Judy and I did some work on with that family too you know looking at photographs of old photos of the Burlington harbor the house boats on the harbor and that sort of thing and Judy shed a lot more insight into some of those neighborhoods as did her parents so those are some of the things that I realized oh my gosh you know it was worse than I thought only in my imagination as I was writing the book could I imagine but when I actually got to know some some of the people I realized there's a pretty powerful legacy here and the trust is still very low for among for social workers and people trying in the helping professions just because that tradition of family stories gets passed out you know don't trust don't talk and don't trust that's sort of the the the thing that went on so representative Kalaki thank you and and welcome back Nancy and I just had the honor of reading your book last week so it's all very fresh for me and I appreciate that I also appreciate your suggestions for our resolution I do have one question about the legislature because I want to make sure I understand this the timing if I may and in 25 that senate passed the eugenics bill and the house did not pass that bill and then in 27 they tried again to pass the bill and it didn't come through but it was 1931 of the bill passed is that correct you're you're muted Nancy you're we can't hear you Mercedes can talk more about the 1912 bill and that was the first wave of sterilization laws across the country and a lot of them were thrown out by the courts as unconstitutional so eugenicists in America went back to the board and tried to develop model laws that could not be vetoed I think both well she'll talk more about 1912 but the governor vetoed it in 1927 they were going to bring it forth but they were starting the vermont commission on country life and they didn't want to bring up something negative at that time at that state so they wanted to wait till the vermont commission on country life had finished its work which was in 1931 and so in 1931 they went for sterilization again and it passed okay but but in 1925 I just want to make sure the house and the senate both passed the bill and the governor vetoed it that was in 1912 12 and what happened in 20 it was vetoed I guess in 1913 Mercedes would okay 1925 bill I'm talking about well that was the year that that Henry Perkins started the eugenic survey right and but but but I want to get cleared the senate passed it and the house of barbs and refused to pass it in that 1925 I don't think they it went up in 1925 it did go up in 25 I thought Barbara do you want Barbara do you want to chime in there you Barbara has a connection here well I was only going to say that I I too thought I had actually read that in the book that in 25 the senate had passed it I'm not through the book and I was interested in that time frame of the senate from 25 to 31 and would be frighteningly interested in how the votes were actually cast in the senate I come from that old Yankee stock so this is a very important and intimate piece of legislation for me a resolution so that I can hopefully continue a voice that I hope my family was making or make men's for a voice that they didn't put forward and in those times and since I was given the floor I would also just share that actually Sybil Smith who was cited as a social worker who came from Boston was my grandmother's sister so I yeah I am interested in this period very intimately and as I said I would love to be able to make amends and and be on the right side of an issue that I hope we were on the right side of in the past but I can't guarantee that Nancy the only reason I I I want to make sure I understand the 25 if the house refused to pass it I want to make sure the legislature is absolutely culpable we are today as culpable as those who passed it but I want to make sure we phrase it correctly because if it's not the full participation that the bill didn't come really through until 1931 I mean language is important so that's why I want to figure out this 25 1925 and it came from your book so I'll have to find it again Judy 1925 there was an attempt I can tell you who voted and who didn't I don't know that I just know it did not pass and because of what Nancy said they were interested in rural Vermont and other projects there were 17 projects within the Vermont eugenics survey and they wanted to get some those done and accomplished before they took the bill to legislation again and it successfully passed in 31 31 yeah okay thank you Nancy and I both have a newspaper clipping from that period of time that shows the specifics of numbers of what it passed by so one of us can look it up and send it to you I'm sure okay wow thanks all right and representative Murphy and then we're gonna pop over to to Judy I just was gonna close that with I did I had marked the citation of the vote and it was on page 84 of the book and it says the bill passed by the state senate on March 15th was immediately and soundly defeated in the house in a vote of 126 to 54 two days later all right so anything for Nancy right now can we move we'll move to Judy and then we'll we'll come back to Nancy if we have questions so Judy welcome back thank you it's been a while I was here 10 years ago when you addressed this issue and let me just say um I descended from both uh indigenous and french canadian families my mother was lacasse the last family to live at the euthan island homestead and my father was fortan a benekie uh french a benekie family that lived up on the cliffs overlooking the interval um I was raised with both learning both french canadian and indian way I spoke french as a child and I tell you this because I know in this state it's really important to know what people's genealogy is and sometimes to the point where it's enough to drive you're crazy but um I'm an educator I've taught for over 35 years and I'm currently the executive director of gedakna a native new england organization that helps women and their families to stop determine a good path in life and before I get started um representative stevens I'd like to make a comment on the comment you made to start off with trust the science um Nancy and I now you can see Nancy laughing that is really worrisome because Nancy and I are currently spending a lot of time dealing with crisper which is the latest science and that is dealing with creating a better baby um in some cases the department of defense is sponsoring um the creation of a gene that can make a lighter skin color why in the hell would we want a lighter skin color so people could suffer from skin diseases and cancers who knows right but there's some un uh there's some scrupulous um things happening with crisper that people many people are beginning to question so to honestly trust the science is a little problematic for me I'm sorry um but I but my my narrative will tell you why I don't trust I don't pass trust along very easily I'm going to read this to you I'm not quite as um prepared as Nancy was but um thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts um around this apology um because it was um devastating to me to hear the way it was handled 10 years ago and it seems like um it's much it's progressing much better now and I do appreciate that um I am pleased that you have once again taken up this important issue too of the eugenics story in Vermont thank you for your perseverance and thank you to Nancy for making this issue part of her life story as well I will try to tell you all the importance of my lived experiences in narrative format and show you how it connects to my suggestions for change and additions to the resolution I grew up in burlington from october cruelt to april vacation from school I went to public school for a little less than six months a year only to move to south euro for the remaining six months to learn from the land it was in south euro each year we were joined with family grandparents parents aunts uncles and countless cousins all came together it was there we learned how to survive in a complicated world in south there south euro on a dirt dead end road we lived as community in south euro I learned to live with and respect the land my teachers were the elders the land in the water that surrounded me with comfort and the gift of knowledge were my friends I was also there it was also there that I learned traditional ecological knowledge in south euro I learned how to sustainably harvest fish and hunt and today I serve on the vermont natural resource council and in the sea grant lake shamblain awareness and I've recently been nominated to be on the climate change committee so that all of that knowledge has allowed me and all of that learning has allowed me to give feedback to important issues today in south euro I learned how to sustainably harvest fish and hunt it was there I learned how to read the stories that the land in the water held it was there every sunday we gathered to hear the old stories and sing the songs it was there I learned how to adapt and survive you see we were the largest family targeted in the vermont eugenics records according to the eugenics records 623 people in my family were hunted tracked and institutionalized over a period of six generations these records dismantled my family piece by piece it's through family connections and oral stories I learned the many family members that were sterilized our family records started in cold spring harbor new york at the national eugenics records office where the vermont eugenics survey records reflected my first ancestor as one hung in the Salem witch trials at some point the records were transferred to vermont in which three large branches of the family living primarily in colchester and burlington were researched to create the family pedigree charts you see in the records today my family was declared to have huntington's korea a hereditary disease the records reflect 23 members of my family were presumed to have huntington's korea the records do not reflect any medical diagnosis but rather subjective commentary on the 23 people who died decades after the expected life expectancy for someone with huntington's korea to live they supposedly died from a hereditary disease that nobody in the family has today her interesting isn't it hereditary and yet nobody in this family has it today my grandmother was scooped up and placed in waterbury state hospital when my father was only five years old her whereabouts were unknown to the family my grandfather years later filed for divorce thinking my grandmother abandoned the family my father was placed in st. Joseph orphanage because my grandfather was unable to both work and tend to the needs of a five-year-old at the same time when my father was 88 years old i found my grandmother's death certificate it stated that she had died from pneumonia at the waterbury state hospital and her family was unknown i share this with my father and this was the only time in my life that i can remember him crying those bastards followed his tears and he never ever spoke of it again he died later that year he had spent 11 years of his life without a mother at a time when mothers are so important important to a young child at burlington high school my required reading in my junior year was we americans the cleavage of an american city by ellen anderson the assistant director of the vermont eugenics survey because many of my questions stood unanswered when i recognized my family in this book i was told my dear you must trust a textbook since then i have been on a lifelong journey trying to understand the vermont eugenics survey and that particular textbook it was in the burlington school district i learned not to question the teacher the land or what i read it was here i learned how to be cautious questioned everything privately within the family and be wary of people of authority and by all means never trust anyone it was in burlington i grew up with my father's stern words what is talked about in this house stays in this house fear of being targeted again was in our everyday life as my friend amy lovingly says today judy is a worldview disruptor you see my stories give us perspective that is seldom told and many times something people do not want to hear i've read your proposed resolution and i'm hoping you've read the chapter from global indigenous health teachers that i wrote and sent to you on march 11 2020 when you first took up the writing of this second attempt at a resolution i wrote this chapter explaining the impacts of eugenics and vermont today after decades of research i can certainly say you've come a long way from your first attempt some 10 years ago but you still have a way to go with this proposal i especially like the fact that this time you're using the word apology because that wasn't even included last time and the last resolve that is listed thank you for that the impacts are great and numerous and an apology should include all of of them stated correctly the three d's were defective delinquent and dependent the defect was not just mental alleged alcoholism sex improprieties physical defects hunting to korea and many more defects were listed while something as minor as a hemorrhoid were were even considered as a defect an alleged hierarchy of defects were created and implemented into the pedigree charts secondly the established date for the beginning of the vermont eugenics survey was indeed 1925 but the preparation began many years before with the building of so-called social welfare laws and the development of the vermont children's aid society please read act 92 a vermont law from 1915 that applies to and defines delinquent and dependent children after you read this you will clearly see that uvm professor of zoology henry perkins was not alone in creating the vermont eugenics survey the state of vermont is not innocent in the creation or participation of this survey perkins could not have created this egregious program on his own he needed money and he had a political agenda the state how moved both forward the survey did not target a benicom bands in all 44 boxes of records not once not once is the word of anarchy used they targeted indigenous people by writing to reservations to determine membership within a community they must be clear this must be clarified these people were referred to as french indians indigenous native or having mixed indian blood it would be a revision of history to add the word of anarchy now it would also lead to making other indigenous people invisible to this atrocity let me rephrase this because it's so important not once in 44 boxes of records do the eugenicists target a benicom or use the word of anarchy they targeted french canadiens french indians african americans irish and many other racial and ethnic groups simply because they were poor and did not live in the style white angostaxan protestants preferred or the old Yankee stock being poor was the one and only thing these negative eugenics records all had in common the records also included examples of positive eugenics positive eugenics would be families to be held up as a role model in the eyes of white angostaxan protestants in addition the first 1000 names in the records came from prisons and other institutions the remaining 5000 plus names came primarily from five large french indian families that intermarried and live surrounding the 1700 acres today called the burlington interval subsequently the eugenics created pedigree charts from these families that brought them backwards and lateral within their family to various other places throughout the state of Vermont many of these additional families were never investigated simply because of a lack of time in the closure of the project let's look at act number 174 you do realize it's still on the books today right in recent times the aclu became involved in the amendments to this law simply because it's still advocating for sterilization it just it's just been amended to target different people now you need to understand that 251 sterilizations the state of Vermont admits to is a pit once the law was passed it was open season with the signature of two doctors anyone could be sterilized or extramural or outside of institutions certificates were supposed to be recorded but i can give you many examples of where they were not this needs to be exposed as fact because it is fact and can be documented over and over again with good research the required time and energy needed to document these sterilization doesn't mean you can ignore them most importantly you've left out many wrongs that need an apology the three ds defects were numerous not just considered mental and as i showed you with my story above these so-called defects were also subjective the Vermont eugenics survey didn't start in 25 however preparation did start in 25 however the preparation became began in the 1880s with the beginning of social welfare laws and lists these lists were the root of the Vermont eugenics survey there was no HIPAA laws back then everyone shared files including the state of Vermont there is a legacy here prejudice and historical traumas have been passed down to several generations now i've taught in school systems for over 35 years in the teacher's room on a daily basis you can hear this legacy being passed on it must stop now our children are losing a proper education based on subjective comments from the Vermont eugenics record and by allowing subjective and inaccurate histories presented in their classrooms you have the opportunity to stop this as you should should know by this point in your life there is danger in the single story please make change by telling the other side of of the complete story the goals of the Vermont eugenics survey are not to we're not just to sterilize as many people as possible but rather to break up families continuity language culture heritage lifestyles and history these are the very hoops needed to get recognized today these goals were very successful there is an innate mistrust for people of authority the direct cause for a cycle of violence our prisons in this in this state are full of people that self identify as indigenous and descend from the targeted family i leave you with my final suggestions remove the word of enniquy and replace it with indigenous recognize the most damaging goal of the Vermont eugenics survey was not sterilization but rather to break up families continuity language and history please note and change the legacy thousands of families were broken up because of Vermont eugenics eugenics egregious and subjective behaviors these issues sterilization and the breaking of families together were so damaging to the poor living in Vermont recognize and mention the historical traumas that has been passed down seven several generations now this would be true reconciliation and could help with feeling this future generations take a look at act number 174 an act for human betterment by voluntary sterilization and amend it or remove it from the books it is still eugenical in nature recognize that Henry Perkins was not alone in the creation of the Vermont eugenics survey in rural Vermont a program for the future by 200 Vermonters a separate project funded created and implemented by the Vermont eugenics survey created a plan in 1931 that the state of Vermont still follows today acknowledge this and take a look at its deep tentacles that are impacting us now and some still continue to fight today thank you for your time and I hope you have listened well to my comments because our children are most precious gift and we need to make this right thank you questions yes thank you Judy and we do have your article from last year did you provide an electronic copy of your comments today to us no but I can yeah please do okay representative Hango thank you um I apologize for having my video off I have a bit of a zoom headache um um I want to thank you for your testimony and your suggestions we worked really hard to make a lot of changes last year on the resolution to make it better and I know we will do the same this year um I just want to take a minute to maybe dispel some of your fears about crisper it's something I know a little bit about because I have a son who's a research scientist finishing his phd thesis and he uses crisper in fact he's the recipient of a department of defense grant and those those grants in that technology are actually a great part of how we got to the covid vaccines that we have now so um I would like to hopefully dispel some of your fears that it's being used by the government um in such a detrimental terrible way there are many many good uses for the technology that we have these days um and if you want further clarification I can certainly speak with you at another time but thank you for our committee thank you I teach an ethics class at Mount Holyoke um on this very topic so I'm pretty familiar with it thank you um further questions for Judy right now Judy again as I mentioned at the very big top of this um we will as we our process will be gathering all this information and then coming back and looking at the words and so your suggestions will be kept and we'll be asking you about them and Nancy and Mercedes as well to make sure we we put something together that is correct I think there's really one just one option for me which is to make this correct um so thank you um Mercedes welcome thank you for having me and for inviting me to speak here today I for a bit of background I began researching this subject five years ago my work looks at the full history of eugenics in the state with a particular focus on how and why it developed as well as the forms it took I'll be speaking today about the broader state history and how the eugenics survey fits into that after completing my thesis at Dartmouth I published part of my work in the Vermont history journal I'm currently revising a book manuscript for publication in Vermont the state led eugenics movement took several forms methods include sexual sterilization of minors and adults segregation through institutionalization to prevent procreation family separation policies and educational campaigns eugenics is the idea of bettering the human race through selective breeding it was founded upon the belief that races are not equal is therefore key to understand local constructs of race to understand local histories as both Judy and Nancy have spoke to many early Vermont citizens line eyes their founders this led to the concept of the Bermontter also known as the old stock and green mountain boy and girl in later decades this these terms hearkened the white families with deep generational ties to Vermont it was a cultural ideal that excluded those that did not meet it those of different races and ethnicities particularly Abenakis indigenous family bands blacks and immigrants and white Bermonters on the basis of physical and mental ability health socioeconomic status behavior work and sexuality these exclusions guided who was targeted under eugenics under the guise of terms such as feeble mindedness and degeneracy what led to Vermont eugenics was not the celebration of founders but rather state leaders refusal to adapt this concept in the face of significant social changes in the late 1800s leaders began to fear for Vermonters more than half of Vermont's towns faced a falling population farms were abandoned and poverty was rising two new state institutions the waterbury state asylum for the insane and the reform school as well as the Brattleboro retreat were overcrowded though due to a number of unstudied factors including loose standards for admittance the institution's problems and their tracking of family histories seem to confirm the growing fear that the best Vermonters were fleeing the state and that the Vermonters who remained were weaker and becoming diluted by foreigners by 1912 governor john amade believed greater measures were necessary based upon two years of research he proposed three eugenical solutions to the legislature during his farewell speech marriage restriction segregation and sterilization the 1912 legislature did not consider marriage restriction as it was already accounted for in different terms under existing law they did pass the sterilization bill but the new governor alan m fletcher vetoed it upon the advice of the attorney general due to a number of concerns including constitutionality explicit segregation laws were unnecessary as superintendents already determined the length of state institutions they did however create a new institution the vermont state school for feeble-minded children at brandon despite its name it has a number of adults throughout its history early records confirm that school officials saw it as a tool of eugenical segregation its immediate growth likewise seemed to confirm ongoing fears records from other institutions demonstrate that if eugenical segregation policies were not already in place by 1912 they were utilized soon thereafter despite the failure to legalize sterilization i did find one case dating to the 1920s local officials and institutional directors had split up a mixed-race family by institutionalizing the children upon one daughter's return home as an adult they became aware she planned to marry instead of recommitting her probate records state that they had her sterilized the ease with which the officials handled the case suggests that there are more over the 1910s and 20s socioeconomic issues were worsened by world war one and the spanish flu new welfare programs were immediately overtaxed eugenicists believe that the time was ripe to try again the 1912 legislature had not challenged eugenics on any significant grounds leaving the argument open that further eugenical measures could be the only solution to the state's issues but as in 1912 institutional leaders were simply too overworked to take the lead so in 1925 the role fell open to a professor the university of vermont's henry f perkins believed that what vermont eugenics needed was a thorough study of vermont families to quote perkins was the seed deteriorating in quality or are vermonters neglecting to keep the soil of their seedbed the physical and social environment of their children rich mellow and weed free he began the eugenics survey vermont as both nancy and judy have spoke to leaders across private and public institutions served on its advisory board and volunteered full access to the institutional records as well as helping to lead the direction of the survey a team of women field workers investigated over 60 families to support the case for a range of eugenical policies they collected further information from towns and local gossips some willingly some not in the latter case field workers wrote of misleading their sources as to the true nature of the eugenics survey amongst the surveys many activities it created the vermont commission on country life an organization made up of 300 prominent vermonters to strengthen the old stock the survey used the commission's book in its eugenical education work across the state speaking to the early attempts to pass a sterilization law the 1927 attempt failed due to supporters lack of preparation and the legislature's own economic priorities the bill eventually passed in 1931 despite objection it legalized voluntary sterilization in cases where two physicians or surgeons determined that the individual was quote an idiot in the cell feeble minded or insane person likely to procreate idiot in the cell feeble minded or insane persons as supporters noted behind the scenes physicians and surgeons were unqualified to make that determination it likewise required that a certificate of sterilization be sent to the state following the procedure the legislature did not establish a method of oversight to ensure certificates were sent in or to ensure proper consent was given its work complete the survey closed in 1936 sterilization and segregation policies were ongoing over the next few decades physical policies and allegations of abuse continued at the institutions before they began to shut down in the late 1900s and early 2000s is difficult to identify eugenic cases due to record limitations and how cases were labeled as eugenics was the guiding policy and not the actual diagnosis or practice the term was rarely used informal casework the only surviving sterilization records we have come from the brandon school and date to the 1930s and 40s the superintendent was concerned about civil liability and kept records of alleged conversations obtaining consent the records document that school officials did not discuss the risks or include guardians in the room i've also found one record of sterilization undertaken by the vermont children's aid society which was a major supporter of the eugenics survey this particular case demonstrated both that the certificate system lacked enforcement and that the government knew that the certificates that did make it to the state are currently missing the length and successful implementation of vermont eugenics was in large part due to the state governments and prominent vermonters longstanding support for it while there was objection in the legislature and amongst the public state leaders from the local to gubernatorial level helped implement and carry out a range of eugenical policies and the impact over the resulting intergenerational trauma continues to resonate today the state government did not ensure their survival of relevant documents of the records that were kept many have been destroyed or lost because the state did not do so the full extent of vermont's eugenics is currently unknown so turning now to the proposed resolution i believe it does do a very good job of speaking to the state's support for eugenics and a longer history of discrimination i would recommend however that the committee consider adding additional acknowledgement that the state's eugenics work before and outside of the eugenics survey particularly the use of institutionalization as a eugenical measure my second recommendation is that the committee consider setting a precedent of language around those impacted it's difficult to reconcile an apology for state-led eugenical programs while still considering those targeted as patients of legitimate medical practices rather than victims and with that i'm happy to answer any questions this committee may have to judy um Mercedes i have a question where did you find in the eugenics records that are bringing he were targeted that abinac you were targeted yeah so i'm was speaking are you referring to the first part of my presentation yeah so i was speaking more to the longer history of eugenics in the state rather than the eugenics survey records in terms of the eugenics survey records the field workers really didn't go into a whole lot of detail about what they identified as you know indigenous bands and native descent they really didn't go into detail my opinion is they really didn't care they did attempt to track and reach out to reservations but this was more for their own records rather than a legitimate interest in where the native ancestry came from in terms of speaking to discrimination against the abinac in vermont this is something that victims of eugenics and descendants of abinaki bands today continue to attest to so i follow their lead in recognizing that this did occur which of course um lies to the problem that people are misreading and misusing the eugenics records because as i said one thousand names were because they were already institutions and prisons and um there were positive examples and they didn't acknowledge in many of the cases where they were going after targeted families that many members of the family were in fact what they would consider positive members of society right so and that was that's what leads to the confusion when someone says well the abinaki people are in the records that's what leads to that confusion because they might have been in the records 10 years ago one chief stood up and cried because of her aunts being in the eugenics records and they were in the records because they were both in prison yes the well as you're aware the eugenics survey the field workers began really with the records that the state um turned over fully and without hesitation and that was actually uh one of the institutional directors idea to give them all of these records to the field workers so the idea didn't the idea did not uh come from the eugenics survey field workers themselves um and because of that it really becomes a question of the chicken and the egg uh in this resolution i saw that there was some suggestion that inclusion in the eugenics survey meant that members would be targeted later for eugenical measures many of these people really were already in the state's records and were already being targeted by state leaders so as to whether the eugenics survey really was the deciding factor some of these some of the people i that were in the eugenics survey records and being interrogated by the investigators including children were later mentioned in the state's sterilization records that survived today and one of course in terms of sterilization records i'm only speaking to what currently exists via on the state side and not testimony from uh descendants today but whether the eugenics survey was the deciding factor is a bit unclear and we can't really make that determination right representative kawaki thank you verse 80s you know this is a group um this committee we worked on it last year we're going to work on it again and i've sort of been the one to reintroduce it so i'll be the one kind of compiling things so i sure would appreciate both judy's comments and your comments if you could share those with ron and i'm also interested you said you were editing a book if there's any chapters from the book because you would uh are ready to be shared i from my own education like nancy's book was terrific and i think all of us in this committee want to get this right and we want to do you know to get the full scope of it and so we're all learning and we're learning from three of you and many other people but uh the lived experience of this trauma that's happened so um any materials you can share please do it but you're with judy and mercedes and we have nancy's comments about what word she thinks the words matter here and so it'll really help to see your input to help us clarify it again so i just appreciate all the work three of you have done on this um and it's it's going to really help us as well so thank you okay representative plumley yes um thanks so much all three of you for spending time with us um i i had a quick question actually for mercedes i can you repeat the last question i mean sorry the last sentence in your testimony i want to make sure that i understand the point that you're making there in regards to the use of the word victims yes yes so this has come up in a lot of obviously many other states had eugenics policies currently and legally in many states people who were impacted and targeted under eugenics measures are still considered patients so whether that be a patient of sterilization or a patient of uh institutionalization it does imply this commitment medical uh relationship between a doctor and a patient or an institution and patient that really doesn't speak to the fact that in many they were targeted this wasn't in regards to their personal medical um records or for their medical benefit it was for the state's use and built upon a number of biases against certain people thank you i just wanted to make sure sure thing any further questions for right now we're going to have so many questions over the next few weeks um i have some additional comments um if that's possible sure um so mercedes touched on a period of time in the 1890s and 1880s and i just want to make sure you have this in your wheel horse or round horse or whatever it's called um in 1890 kebek passed a law and they promised people if they had 12 children they would get 100 acres of land if they had 24 children they would get 200 acres of land if they had 36 children they would get 300 acres of land um and so the records reflect that people tried really really hard to have 36 children and a family um and by nine 1894 a half a million acres of land have been given away as farmland in kebek and they decided they couldn't afford to give away any more land so they amended the law to say that those people would get 100 200 or 300 this depending on how many children they had and um once that money was given out which back then was equivalent to more than 10 000 those um franco kebek wha families came down here first to wunewski coltister in burlington and they worked in the mills and then on to springfield in manchester and lowell all the way down and laurence all the way down to providence road island and it's during that period of time that they started to make the um create all the social welfare laws that i was talking about so mandatory schooling true and officers positions for true and officers and things like that were created and um um arie marseille the prime minister in canada kept coming to these people like he would physically travel down throughout new england and he would say keep your language keep your culture keep your history intact and we will annex kebek to new england but he within five years he passed on and it never happened but that's why you saw a lot the creation of like saint joseph school and church and all of that because those french french indian people were keeping the language of french intact the culture and the histories and the religion and so in the 1920s and 30s when you walked down church street in burlington you heard french spoken 65 of vermont at that time spoke french and that was a huge fear for the old yankees the old stock was seeing these gigantic numbers happening so first you have le loin de deux enfants, the laurence of 12 children, then you have the revenge of the cradle and that next generation went off and had 10, 12 and more children as well because it was the only way they could make ends meet on those deserted farms that i think marseille was the one that talked about it it was the only way they could make ends meet so my mother came from a family of 16 my father from a family of 12 so that gives you an idea of how the robbing of the revenge of the cradle came was came right after following le loin de deux enfants and that greatly impact the fears that old yankee stock was reacting to because the sheer numbers were were taking them over representative triano yes i thought it was interesting journey that you mentioned cold spring harbour new york is that did you say that's where your family originated no that's where records started yes okay that that clears it up because nancy in her book mentioned the eugenics council that originated out of cold spring harbour so i guess they were part of this overall picture there i was also amazed somewhat that discussion that titty rooseville had with a brit that this comes from your book nancy that the brits who traditionally upper class served in the military and that they they discussed with titty rooseville that sending men off the war was not a good idea that because it eliminated the the better class of men and left the dregs behind i thought that was a really interesting discussion and concept that they had so it kind of amazed me as somewhat but you know i'm really very interested in this i'm i'm getting well into your book nancy and and i appreciate your research as well judy and thanks very much for being here you're welcome titty rooseville was a true eugenicist he's the one you know you hear he is like so famous for starting all those national parks and stuff like that and vermont was following the same pattern that he was establishing naturally nationally so in places where there were parks um like in burlington i'm thinking of charles blah the where the trucking places now on riverside avenue that was um in 1906 that became a park to prevent the gypsies from living there and selling baskets so what they were doing is we creating parks in the places where all these people were living and that's interesting i mean it you know photos of um titty rooseville with native americans are very common i mean they're you know if you read anything about them or possess any books i mean they're all they're photos everywhere of them out west and is on his many trips uh you know meeting with native americans so that is interesting but i did get the notion that uh he was definitely uh into the eugenics movement as well but i mean i also want to comment that you know here in hardwick uh you know french uh was spoken as well around that same time it there's a french um national heritage day or week actually every year here in hardwick which brings out a lot of families and you know during campaigning going through the town you run into a lot of french canadian families that are still here my uncle is from hardwick and he's the one who my mother's brother who came from a family of 16 and he moved to hardwick only to have 13 kids so i don't know what's been hardwick i missed that Nancy yes um one of the interesting things is a lot of people in the early conservation movement were also very much interested in eugenics and teddy roosevelt actually got into a giant argument with the president of stanford university who was uh for peace you know around world war one and he um mainly is war eugenic or not in fact this is the 100th anniversary of the second international congress on eugenics and if you look at their proceedings there's a lot of real interesting debate about war and eugenics and that sort of thing both pro and con and um and i think the national park service has actually come out on their website and they discuss how the um a lot of the national parks that there was another agenda there for kind of removing indigenous people particularly out west and they've actually come out and admitted that's part of what went on there so interesting i just wanted to say i didn't mean to leave you out mercedes i appreciate you being here as well and bringing us this great deal of factual information here to us i'm sorry jerry um i was just going to say um if you want to understand some of that conflict you should have dinner at our house sometime my husband's grandfather's first cousins with calvin coolidge and he and my children spent most of their summers with their grandparents in ledlow and they were docents in um at the calvin coolidge homestead and it comes for entertain entertaining conversation when calvin coolidge is presented as a eugenicist who attacked my family so um yeah you get back in history you can find some interesting context and stories from vermont representative murphy thank you and judy i i love that you brought that up because i had read that uh in nancy's book also i mean it again it's the mythology of vermont that everybody was wonderful and heroic and if all americans were vermonters the world would be lovely so i appreciate that you know we're all humans we all got all those parts and i i'm sorry and if you don't want to share it's fine but i did want to ask judy what year you might have been at burlington high school i graduated in 72 okay you're you're a shade older than i but i i was 75 and and certainly knew knew the dowel family name well that's my husband's family name okay i was a fortan um okay when i had um four younger sisters so perhaps you went to school with one of them i think i did fortan rings bell with an i yeah f or t i n yeah um and yeah and it's it's kind of a interesting story that whole story of burlington high school in that period of time because it was new the school was new um the they had been at edmunds before and we in 69 we had the colchester kids at our school so we had the largest graduating kids class with 700 and something kids and the next year colchester high school was finished so they they went there and so numbers dropped from that point to burlington high school yeah i think that my class was the last that was over 500 i think um because south burlington uh or rather uh mallet's bay what south burlington mouse bay opened there was another that opened that drew off another bunch but that's a little old beat old burlington history sorry folks yeah it's kind of interesting because burlington experiencing a lot of the same um racial tension and histories that they did back then and that story that nancy told about um you know having families burn their entire house it's left in their will we want all the contents of our house burned there are families that i know from the bay and from the north end of avenue um that that that was in their families wills and they never understood why until they were like in their 20s and 30s and were able to figure out so they have nothing left from the grandparents because the will set stated it had to be burned they wanted no no direct connection none with any ancestry representative khlaki mute thank you chair um what we're working on this and at the end of this resolution says further action is recognized as necessary and last week we had a bill introduction about setting up a truth and reconciliation uh commission task force to kind of define the parameters of what that could look like um this is what you all presented today is terrific but how would you envision a truth reconciliation task force coming out of this well i listened to that hearing that you had last week and i was concerned about a couple of things first off there was a mention of compared of investigating what they were doing in maine and because my organization um works in maine i spent a lot of time on zoom calls with maine and before covid probably half the year in maine i know that the truth and reconciliation program they have in maine is very problematic um even the movie that adam mazo made called the don land that talks about the truth and reconciliation process was problematic because he paid people he wanted to hear their story and not others and so so i would advise you to tread cautiously when looking at the main truth and reconciliation same with um the same with canada so i think it was 2007 to 2015 canada dedicated 72 million dollars to truth and reconciliation process in which they interviewed 6500 people who were forced into burlington into boarding schools and um listened to their stories and their the issues that they had and they created 94 statements and all of the statements um allowed the people to have things that would directly connect them with their traditional way of life so things like their language was taken in boarding schools their connection with land the how how they pray all of those things became statements in the truth and reconciliation process um and so again um i would look before you move forward i would have in mind that you're going to need money to back that up because truth and reconciliation won't happen without money and like i said between 2007 and 2015 canada spent um 72 million dollars and now there there's the the québécois are saying even that isn't working because the money's gone and there's nothing left no there's a lot to learn there's a there's a lot to learn from or actually there's not a ton of to learn from but there are plenty of mistakes that have been made um most recently in ashville north carolina um where similar um legislation within the city itself um talked about reparations for black black americans but this year because of budget reasons the money's not there and so you know i think we recognize that making a promise and apology without having some form of solid response is irresponsible um well thank you so much for coming in this is a lot for us to start with and um and we will have you back we'll be in touch um to follow up with more again as we create a better um context for what we heard from you and for what we'll be moving forward with um so i would like to thank you mercedes and judy and nancy for coming in um and representative murphy one more question actually i just wanted to thank all three of you for for not only coming in but for being patient with our schedule even and waiting two hours to give testimony that was scheduled a bit earlier in the day than then you managed to bring it to us and so thank you for your patience with the with our process thank you i'm glad you were at home and not in the state house waiting so um right before we go committee um we're not doing s14 today because of the delay in getting going here we will take it up first thing in the morning it should just be a relatively quick conversation and vote um so we'll take care of that in the morning um representative clack if you could stay after class that would be great and everybody else again thank you for all your work today thank you nancy and judy and mercedes for coming in and committee thank you that was a long time on the floor today so um thank you for that and make sure you get some rest tonight and we'll see you all taking this up too it's it's our privilege so we like we just need to keep working towards what the right thing is and and your guidance will be um appreciated as we go through and happy marty grotted everybody happy fat tuesday enjoy your pancakes thank you all right thank you