 Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Ethan Allen homestead museum's monthly lecture series. My name is Angie Grove. I'm the executive director at the Ethan Allen homestead museum. And before we get an introduction to today's program, I have a few remarks about the museum. We are a community nonprofit museum and we bring this lecture series to you as part of our larger community enrichment program, which is sponsored by some of our community partners. I'm going to pull those up right here. So I'd like to thank our community partners at North Country Community Credit Union, MNT Bank, AARP, Vermont, and Town Meeting TV. Town Meeting TV records this program and puts it on their TV channel as well as allows us to put it on our YouTube channel so it can respond to people. So thank you to our community sponsors for this and all of our community enrichment programs. Second up, I want to tell you about some upcoming events at the Ethan Allen homestead museum. Our lecture series continues in April on April 21st. We will have Rob Grandchamp who will be talking about the history of Masons in Vermont. If you are a regular attendee of our program, you might have heard Rob Grandchamp speak last October and he spoke about the Civil War and he went off of no cards, no presentation and was engaging for the whole time. So he's a great speaker and he'll be coming back April 21st for our next month's program. We also have, coming up, our spring book club is meeting on May 5th at three o'clock and the book club right now is reading the whole Bernard Cornwell. This is a historic fiction novel. It is steeped in primary source research and it is all about a Revolutionary War battle that happened up in what is now Maine and which is part of the Greater New England. So a lot of similarities to what was going on in Vermont as well. Anyone is allowed to join us for the book club, whether you've read the book or not, and this is just casual conversation amongst people about books about history over tea and cookies. So that's what the museum on Sunday made sense. The last thing about the museum I'd like to mention is that we are gearing up for our 2024 season, so we are in need of volunteers. We have lots of different projects you can get involved in if you're interested in volunteering. We have volunteers work the museum at the front desk, give tours. We have an archaeology team of volunteers who are sorting artifacts. We need educators for field trips and we also have some historical research and some digitization projects going. So if you have any time that you're looking to give it back to the community and you might be interested in one of these projects, please email me at ethanownhomestead.com and I can tell you more about the project and send in the volunteer application to you. Okay, the lastly is not with the Homestead Museum, but with one of the organizations that we sometimes partner with. Since it's very much related to today's program, I thought this audience might be interested in the Bridging Perspectives series, which is with the Abnaki Artist Association here in Vermont. We've partnered with them on other programs and their director Vera has given our lecture last year in January as well. So they have this upcoming series and the one that's coming up right around this one is March 21st, Intergenerational Trauma, Healing and Resilience. And like our monthly lecture series, their programs are also being recorded, so you can also catch them after the fact as well. That's with the Abnaki Artist Association. Now I just really quickly want to talk about what my role is going to be in tonight's program or this afternoon's program. I'm going to act as the facilitator watching the chat box and then at the end of the program I will also then be facilitating the Q&A session with Joe helping call on hands and calling on questions in the chat box. So if you have any questions, please save them to the end. But if you do put a question into the chat box in the middle of the presentation, we will get to it at the end of the program as well. So you can type it in there if you're afraid you're going to forget it. So now I am going to step down and I'll come back at the end of the program to help with Q&A and I'm going to introduce the man who is them going to introduce our speaker. So I'd like to introduce Glen Fay. Glen Fay is a board member here at the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. He also is independently a historian, an author, a researcher and an all-around great guy and he has I believe seen programs by Joe before that he might tell us a little bit more about and it was Glen who turned our eye to Joe. So thank you Glen and take it away. Thank you Angie. It is my pleasure to introduce Dr. Joseph Bruchak today. Joe was raised in the Adirondack Foothills town of Greenfield Center by his maternal grandparents. He's the founder of the Greenfield Review Press which has published over 150 multicultural books and anthologies of contemporary poetry and fiction. Joe has earned his BA from Cornell University, masters from Syracuse and his PhD in comparative literature from the Union Institute and was named the 2023-2025 Poet Laureate of Saratoga Springs, New York. Joe Bruchak is a citizen and honored elder of the Nalhegan Band of the Kusak-Abonaki Nation. Joe can be seen with his son in the new PBS documentary Mananak, The Mountain That Stands Alone, posted on the website joebruchak.com. Our songs remember is a combination lecture and performance focusing on the ways in which the Abonaki oral traditions of storytelling and music play a part in the preservation of our indigenous ways. Incorporating, and I'm going to butcher this Joe, Park Hulligan the Drum and Abakangan the Flute, Joseph will take us on a journey to the enduring roots of the Western Abonaki nations, showing how songs carry the heart and meaning of this enduring Native American culture. Both English and Abonaki language will be heard throughout the presentation and several stories will be told that exemplify the way oral tradition has always served at least two purposes, to entertain and to instruct. I've seen Joe perform and I was left with the realization that this gifted man brings people together and we need more of that. Let's have a listen. Joe, you're on. Like why? He don't want. The reason so is up. I don't know. My name is Joseph with a piece of one. In the area called Saratoga, where the medicines bring place. A human being, one who stands up and tries to do right is what I am. I hope so are all of you. Of our older traditions, one of the ones that I'm very fond of is the way to open a gathering with the sound of the drum. For the drum is the heartbeat and that heartbeat is always held within us. That song of the heart is always being played, although sometimes we do not listen to it. And this song is one that would be used in a very simple way. When we traveled by the old super highways of the rivers and the lakes, we came to a community that was not our own. We would politely ask permission to lend our canoes by singing a song from the water. And those on land could respond with a song welcoming us. I should say that my son Jesse, who speaks the Abenaki language quite fluently and runs our Abenaki language program is both at our center and at the University of Middlebury, first heard this song when he was four years old. It was being sung as a Pasamaquati welcome to those of us coming from other nations to Pasamaquati ceremonial days in Pleasant Point, Maine. So this song. So I hope that I am welcome and that I've landed my canoe in a good way. By the way, I want to point out my drum. On this drum, it has four circles, one in each of the four quadrants standing for the four directions, standing for the four ancestors of grandmothers too, and grandfathers too. And also a teaching that was given me many years ago by Harold Tantequigen of the Mohegan Nation. He had this design across with those four dots on the wall of the Tantequigen Indian Museum. And he told me that the first one stands for the first step we all need to take to listen. We must always listen with both ears. Remember, we have one mouth and two ears. So listen at least twice as much as you talk. And then the second step is to observe, to look closely and make sure we know what we're seeing before we begin to speak about it. The third is part of what this story is about, part of what this day is about, this presentation, to remember. One of the most powerful things we can do is remember and by hearing and seeing that memory becomes clear. And then the last is to share, which keeps that circle going around. So listen, serve, remember and share. Memory is a powerful thing. Our song is remember. That is what I've called this particular presentation. And quite frankly, it's simply true that songs remember in our indigenous tradition, songs are not just words and music performed by people, songs are living beings. They're aware. They have existence beyond us as well as within us. Song is one of the most essential things that makes them human beings. Before we were human. So therefore, think of the song as a gift from creation that we must listen to carefully to understand. I'm actually going to not just look at our Abenaki traditions, but also draw in a few things from other places I've been and other people I've known. And one person I want to mention right now is a dear friend of mine, Kevin Lockea Inajin, the first to arise, his Lakota name. Kevin walked on in 2022. But his songs and his stories are still with us. He was a great flute player and a hoop dancer. And he told me a story that I've never forgotten. By the way, Kevin and I were performing together at the First International British Storytelling Festival in 1989. And we were taking to a place called Avebury Village, an ancient site, a site from thousands of years ago. And the first thing we did when we were there was to blow the ego bone whistle to all the directions. And we heard on the wind coming to us, a song. Kevin told me that many years ago, he was performing at the Mesquaki settlement. By the way, the Mesquaki nation in Iowa, made a nation in the state of Iowa is not on a reservation. It is actually privately owned land. Many times, including near the St. Lawrence Valley, decided they would not leave Iowa. And so they sold their horse herd and bought 70 acres. That was their personal land. That's where the settlement is. And today, the settlement is 7,000 acres. And the Mesquaki people are still there. By the way, if you know any of Benikey, you'll hear the key at the end of their name, which indicates they're Algonquin speakers, like our Benikey people. For Ki means this earth. And Mesquaki means Red Earth people. Well, before his performance that evening, Kevin walked out into the fields there in Tama, Iowa, where the Mesquaki settlement is located by. And he listened. And he began to hear a song. And he took his flute and began to play that song that he heard, thinking he'd been given a new song and feeling really blessed by it. So that evening at his performance, he told that story, played that song. And then afterwards, an elder came up to him and said, Oh, I am so glad you played that old song of ours. I have not heard it for 40 years. You see, the wind had remembered the song had remembered itself. So too, it was giving itself back again. You know, when I was living in West Africa between 1966 and 1969, the power of song was made clear to me on a daily basis. Songs were in every aspect of life, whether it was weaving cloth or pulling the nets full of fish from the Gulf of Guinea, or in the funerals that were as strong as the throbbing of the drums at night and voices were lifted. You know, one of the saddest things about the Western world, for example, that all too often was afraid of the power of traditional music. Drums were banned in so many places, including here. It was actually several decades ago when the drum was finally returned to both the Abenaki people of Vermont and also the two reserves of Wollinac and Odenac in Canada. At the same time, those drums were returned. My son, Jesse, was part of the forming of the drum groups in both of those communities. Homer St. Francis, who was the chief of the Mrs. Goy Band, then called the, a slightly different name, St. Francis Sokoke, because Sokoke is one of our original Native people who made up what became called Abenaki, which is a conglomeration of a number of different Algonquin-speaking nations, all related cousins to each other, pushed and changed in their location by the forces of colonialism, especially British colonialism. In any event, what Homer said to me was he remembered when he was a young man, if anybody in the town of Swanton, any of the Native people, played a drum within five minutes, the state police were at their door, breaking it up and confiscating the drum. The same thing happened in Canada. The two reserves, which were made up of refugees from New England at those reserves, if you played a drum, the Catholic priest would quickly show up and take the drum and stop the gathering. So what they learned to do there at Odenac was to use the rattle, because when you use a rattle, a rattle cannot be heard outside of your house where the song and the dance are taking place. And also a rattle can just be shoved into your shirt when someone shows up who shouldn't be there, and then you can take it out again after they leave and to make it even more interesting. What would happen is it had these gatherings, if they had someone outside watching for the priest and they saw the priest coming, they warned the people inside and immediately the fiddles would be pulled out, and by the time the priest arrived, they were all playing the fiddle and square dancing. By the way, there is a song that remembers that, which I heard performed one year when my family and I were actually performing a part of the summer celebration at Odenac. And that song, which is done with the rattle and incorporates the dance, sounds like this. If any of you are fiddle players, you recognize that is Turkey in the straw, one way in which subverting the traditional of the European becomes a way of maintaining the traditional of the indigenous. When I lived in West Africa, one of the greatest composers of songs in Ghana was an illiterate, I use that word, illiterate, because he was certainly literate, a song that could be named Akpalu. And when I wanted to encourage my students to recognize the importance of poetry, that it was part of the dance, heading down some of his songs, which are their power, their poetry was so eloquent, I've never forgotten many of those songs in translation as well as one of the things Akpalu said to me when I visited him and met him was that the songs come to me in the night and they will not let me sleep. Those songs would wake him up and demand that he listen to them and remember them so that he could sing them. I have to say I'm familiar with that experience. I have to give in often in the middle of the night to get up and write what has come to me or try my best not to think of music or poetry before I close my eyes. When song is there waiting for you, your life is different. Songs are often critical or satirical or they may say something which someone doesn't want to hear. By the way, Akpalu told me a story about that. He wrote a particular song that was critical of the local government and the local government of the town banned the song but one day as he was walking through the market he heard that song being sung by a man from the Hausa tribe, a person from a different language group who did not speak the heavy language yet was singing that song and that delighted the old songmaker so much that he decided that he would write this song about it that even law cannot stop the power of a song. As I've traveled I've seen this happen in many different ways and I've also seen people saying that something is dead and gone. That's often been said about our culture, our traditions, our languages, our songs. In fact they will never come in. In 1992 I traveled to the part of Manavot, the Canadian territory that was seeded as partially self-governed by the Inuit people in the late 20th century. I was there as part of a film project looking at ways in which the indigenous traditions and prophecies had great meaning to a modern world where ecological devastation was threatening all life and still is. While on Baffin Island I was told by my Inuit hosts that I could not hear drumming because it had been totally forbidden by the Anglican church. In fact they told me there was only one drum on that entire huge island so I heard and recorded stories from the elders but did not hear one traditional song being sung. Let's fast forward 30 years and search the internet today. We'll find in 2024 recordings of contemporary Baffin Island Inuit people performing traditional songs on the drum including one lovely clip in which you can see a small boy with his own huge frame drum playing and singing next to the elder who sings that along with him. You know the story of colonization of the Americans and colonization of what we're going to call Vermont on Indakina, our land, is one of constant dislocation and the attempt to dissolution of indigenous people. It's a story still being told to this day by colonial voices in many ways and one of the things those voices constantly say is stop beating that drum, stop singing those songs. Native music although it's been distorted and misrepresented is ominous to the majority culture sometimes. Of course often the only things that they expected us to do were war dances usually something we made up on the spotter which was not traditional and they had created in the movies in Hollywood a certain drum beat which unfortunately we can still hear sometimes being uh being imitated at the football games. But if you see people performing oh I should mention one other thing which is kind of cruel living up to or down to majority culture's expectations is long been a part of indigenous life especially in the 20th century. In Swanton for example decades ago one of the ways that local eventic artists could sell their work was by coming to the train station early in the morning wearing everyday clothing like that of a typical rural Vermont of that period bringing along their craft work in several bags and before the train arrived taking out from those bags stereotypical Indian clothing complete with tall feathered headdresses so they would look real when sold their artwork to the white passengers. In fact western-styled headdresses were worn by prominent male leaders Native American nation until the last part of the 20th century when more traditional headcovers began to reappear which you can see on our elders and our leaders today in Vermont the new old way of showing your indigenous connection. And I should point out too an interesting thing about those headdresses is that they were almost always made of eagle feathers but they were found primarily in that particular form along the tribes of the great plains not here in the northeast and the idea of the honor of carrying the feathers of the birds on your head ties into another level of song the idea that songs were given to us by the birds that the songs that we hear can come from the wind and the birds now there's a little problem with audio so if I play this flute I'm sure that may be a little bit distorted so I'm not doing much of that but I will say that the story of the flute is a story of music and memory. The flute which we call pekongan the hollow object you blow through pekongan the flute we were given to us by the trees and by the birds that came to be pecker made holes in the hollow branch of the cedar tree that was broken off on the end when the wind blew across it it made a sweet sound now there was a young man who had not been able to think of any way he could tell this one young woman how he felt about her so his grandmother said go into kinsikapi we live in forest and listen and then you may hear an answer to what you need and he heard when he was asleep a whistling sound a pretty sound when he woke up that sound was still there he looked up and saw a woodpecker on the branch of a tree a hollow tree branch a cedar tree branch and when your boss was making that sound changing as the bird hopped from one spot to another and he realized that was a gift being given him that song was given him by the tree by the bird and by the wind and so taking that branch from the tree the first flute so how it was fashioned and then he began to practice because he knew that even though he couldn't speak he could still breathe a little bit when he saw that young woman and he made up a song for her he played it for her one night that she was in her lodge with her parents and hearing that song somehow she knew who it was and went outside as he stood there in the moonlight asked if that song was for her and he managed to say uh-huh they got to know each other they married and then when they married that song became hers it was like giving an engagement ring but one big difference because when that song became hers no longer was it played on the flute instead she composed words for it and turned it into a lullaby a lullaby playing the sound of the rattle and one of the interesting things about contemporary native music or actually traditional native music now is that the oldest recorded songs on wax cylinders were recorded on or of lullabies native american lullabies and about 25 years ago my son jessie and a group of other people from indigenous nations of the northeast were invited to the american philosophical society the american philosophical society in philadelphia has quite a collection of indigenous materials including a lot of these recordings where they didn't know what the recordings were where they came from or what they were about and in listening to them jessie and the other people were from algonquin nations said no oh those are lullabies and one of them the panabscot lullaby is from our people the so copies of those songs were recorded and repatriated back to the panabscot nation a song that had remembered itself even through the medium of a wax cylinder recording so that idea of memory and song can incorporate contemporary things as well i remember morise jenis madhawilasas an elder who lived in old forge new york telling me how when he was a young man he took a tape recorder and went from one elder to another all around new england gathering their stories hearing their songs and recording them so they would not be forgotten but our human memory is really important i remember morise saying to me joseph i want you to listen well and remember what i tell you because one day my children who are not listening to me may come to you and ask you to tell them the stories i shared with you thinking a story and song i also think of language i think for example of my dear friend jenie break an honored basket maker a language keeper a person who for generations here in vermont taught many other indigenous people those skills and those ways including dances and basket mating making they had not kept perhaps in their families as they once had and she told me a story and it has a song connected to it the story is that long ago the 18th century when the then community of odinak was attacked by rogers rangers the people ran for sheltered across the river not realizing that the one little girl was left behind her name was molly odd when they realized she'd been left behind someone went back to get her and she came close to the building where she was and by the way in those years in the 1700s the 1800s the 1900s many of our indigenous people did not live in wigwams they lived in frame houses just like their neighbors who were european and he could hear her singing a song that she just made up at that moment about how lonely she was and how she had no one as a friend to help her of course she was then taken and rescued and survived and that song was passed on down i'm not going to sing it to you because it is a genie brink's family song but i will say that my friend rejano bombs when i've got a link on here by the way to one of the songs and honored elder and spiritual leader also told me that story and that it was remaining as um it was told in the abenake language which brings me to sisi lowa no net sisi a teacher of the language who passed away a couple of decades ago she and her son elie worked with my son jesse in teaching and learning the abenake language so the others were not forget by the way abenake is how we say it word speaking abenake abenake is the way it's spoken in sort of the english way so i'm using both terms here you'll know neither one is wrong but uh one of the things that jesse quickly discovered with the language is that one of the best ways to teach a language is through music music helps you remember so instead of just saying um say thank you olione very good say thank you now say you're welcome and don't mention it very good now say olione now say and a lot of times people don't remember so we made up a song olione and thank you olione and thank you anodama we liuladamina anodama we liuladamina very easy to remember just like counting bazook nis nasyao one two three four we sometimes go to schools and we'll be telling one of these stories or perhaps singing one of those songs and kids pick it up immediately walk by a classroom later in the day and hear a bunch of third graders without our being there singing one of those songs that jesse composed using the abenake language as a memory tool as a powerful way to keep memory alive one of the things that connects to uh to song of course is poetry and uh it was mentioned that i am the uh poet laureate of seratoga springs so it is my duty to read to you a couple of my poems which tie right in to what i've just been saying the first one is called park holy god park holy god is our word for the drum park holy god a hollow object that is struck park holy god drum your voice is the oldest one the rumble of thunder that brought for a strain the music of life each of us heard before we saw the light of sun or placed our feet upon the earth hearing that deep felt sound of our mother's heartbeat yours is a rhythm all of our steps follow whether old or young no matter what tongue we speak or what words we may use to name ourselves we're always carried by that beat if we only listen we will hear you calling calling us together and one more poem for you this is called pekoan god pekoan god of course is the flute pekoan god pekoan the cedar flute hollow filled with a flow of breath pekoan god gift of the birds long call of loom hawks high cry pekoan god bright threads stretched from one heart to another sweet courting sigh pekoan god music beyond words from the place where songs begin I think that it's important for us to see song not as something someone else does and also not to see songs only for specialists there is the lyric of a popular song from a few decades ago it's the singer not the song I could not disagree more the singer is part of the song but the singer is guided by the song the song exists beyond and past any singer if that song is true and so it is that our songs and our stories remember and I pass these words on to you I think I'll pause right now and see if there are any questions because the question often leads to a story and a story can take a while to tell so let's turn it over to the audience now and see what you have to say and what you'd like to ask me remembering that I know a little but I don't know at all and you can't even say I know a lot but sometimes a little is more than others might have on their hands so over to you so I'm going to remove Joe as the spotlight so that I can see more people so if you have your hand up in your camera um I'll be able to see you you can also use the hand-raising feature in Zoom or you can put a comment or question for Joe in the chat box what do you need me to be thank you water uh s Papineau I can't tell if that was you having a hand up or if you're just waving say hi but you can unmute if you have a question I was just saying hi hi thanks actually when I hear the name Papineau it reminds me of um my dear friend Dewa Senta Alice Papineau who is the head clan mother of the eel clan in Onondaga and Alice is one of the people who told me that we must always give thanks we must sing or speak our thanks for all the things around us I just remembered that because I was just drinking water you said Joseph when you drink water always thank you to the water because without that water we would not be able to live and water too sings to us we heard the music of the brooks we heard the music of the birds we heard the music of the wolves singing to each other and it is said among the Haudenosaunee that human beings were the last ones to be given song everything else and creation had song and until we learned to listen properly we did not have those songs thank you for that I agree the audience is thinking about um some questions or comments they might have for you Joe I am going to share once again um the links that you asked me to share Joe with everybody they're going to come in as three separate messages in the chat box so that first link right there is joebruhack.com f slash the poetry of pop one so Joe what does that link about it's about one thing that I did begin uh doing back in the 1960s and that is writing about the poetry of popular music and the way in which music is a very significant part of culture and links us together so in fact we've been re releasing some of those essays I wrote on my website joebruhack.com and I tie it in with other cultural connections which are I think often not evident to people they don't recognize that indigeneity is not just limited to indigenous people and that we all need human beings to become more indigenous to become more of the place more of saving and containing and taking care of the place as well as each other to not forget the message of the wolves when they sing together their voices become stronger as they join together and the wolves taught us to sing together they taught us to care for our young that everyone in that wolf pack is responsible for every co these are lessons that human beings are constantly forgetting all you need to do is listen to some of the political campaigns going on these days and you realize just how much that lesson is lost on far too many human beings that's a really powerful message for everyone here joe so and your own words how would you find the word indigenous yes I think that indigenous is a good word the thing is people still use the word indian even though it's a result of a misunderstanding that's been used for so long it's in the constitution it's in popular native culture indigenous people on this continent constantly refute refute refer to themselves as being indian and make jokes about it as well but that idea of one of my friends or in lions who was an elder of the on indoctrination said thank goodness they didn't think they were trying to find turkey i need to think about that one by the way humor is a huge part of people who are truly in touch with their culture truly in touch with the land and with family because if we take ourselves too seriously usually means we're out of touch with those things it means that we think we are the be all and end all individually and that um everything else sort of is superfluous to our own particular pleasure at our own particular place and I think that is a huge mistake to make and it's often used in fact um we're going through a new period of genocide where people are literally trying to wipe out other people who are standing up and claiming and recognizing their identity as indigenous by indigenous I mean by blood by family by land by culture all those things define us as indigenous people rather than the just um you know a genealogy or a DNA test which means nothing and that idea that all of us are linked together is something that we need to recognize at the same time that every individual is different and every culture is different and needs to be listened to and needs to be respected I see a hand up mark lumbard yes thanks joe so much for what you're offering I was just I just finished yesterday a book um um and now I'm going to forget the name of it um in any case I I share a connection to Syracuse not only the university which I noted you have a connection to but as a but as a native of Syracuse and growing up there was a great deal shared about about Syracuse being um uh being the place of the Anadoga yes but there was a sense that while there while the Anadoga were a part of the the larger era coordination there was this sense that there was a division between um between indigenous peoples and and not so much of the connection and I guess I wanted to talk something or hear you talk about what's the balance of that that we should understand better maybe have a better understanding of and then the name of the book by the way was On Savage Shores sure thing I have that book actually and you know which talked about not not europeans going to the savage no but native people going to native people coming to what they saw as more savage which was absolutely which was the european theater just a tremendous book but it did also wrestle with that issue of the you know where there was those uh sorts of um competitions but also connections between indigenous peoples okay well let me I don't know if you have a perspective on them but I'll give you a quick a quick rundown because this could take days to talk about quite frankly but to begin with there are many different indigenous nations in north america and they did not always all get along there is history for example of migration so the Haudenosaunee the Iroquois people migrated into the northeast and their cousins the Cherokee migrated into the southeast and established themselves in the center of nations that were already there Algonquin speaking nations often this caused conflict but more often than not people would settle in two relationships with each other and trade was a big part of that so understand that to begin with no one nation's story is the same as another nation's story and quite frankly today I think we need to recognize that no indigenous nation has the right to tell people in another indigenous nation whether they are legitimate or doing the right thing we need to respect those boundaries which is traditional and understood also traditional and understood was the fact that there was adoption very frequently when there was warfare between Algonquin and Haudenosaunee people if someone was taken captive they could be adopted and made a full member of that society to the point where they no longer considered themselves to be Algonquin or Haudenosaunee but their identity had switched they had a new name they had families and there's a very funny story to me a lot of europeans were adopted that way there's a long history of that in fact in most of our native nations we have some indigenous and some native ancestry and we have some european ancestry because of that process of adoption and intermarriage that took place in fact often my friend Tom Porter who was an elder of the Mohawk nation the Ganyanke Gaha the people of the Flint or the stone Tom had to marry someone who was Choctaw because in his community you could not marry someone who was from your clan there are only three clans among the Mohawk Turtle Wolf and Bear so he couldn't marry anyone from his clan secondly by the way Bear clan secondly he could not marry anyone who was a cousin first second or third cousin and it eliminated virtually every young woman who could possibly be a belt so basically he had to go all the way down south to find his wife who was Choctaw and he said it was meant to be they were supposed to be together so you see often our cultures were made in such a way that they were exo they would draw people from outside within the culture so it wasn't in bread it wasn't just always marrying within the same small circle which is very helpful the second thing and again this is a big generalization but the europeans introduced a number of things to north america that were devastating of course diseases that was terribly devastating and of course warfare the french and the english brought a world war to north america and many of our aveniki people ended up as allies of the french while others like the joden osoni ended up as allies of the british and that caused great division and conflict between us which some people were remembered to this day but in general in general i would say that there is an understanding that we all share certain values and there are many things within our cultures that cross one culture to the other so that said i would also point out that there were always ways to make peace that peacemaking was a huge thing among our different native nations and the idea of using the pipe as a symbol of peace not as something to be smoked for pleasure unless you were very old elderly people could smoke tobacco but not young people it was done sacramentally a way of having ceremony to bring people together and again i am generalizing because it's different from nation to nation but many of these things are quite similar so i think if you take a look at the anadoga nation the anadoga are the center of the hudino sony confederacy a long time ago over a thousand years ago those five nations were at warfare with each other terrible war like what's going on in the middle east and the creator just said set a peacemaker who brought peace to them by speaking of the importance of peace by telling stories about peace and then they planted a ceremonial tree an anadoga a great pine tree and it was a tree with four white roots that stretched through all the directions you could come and be in the shelter of that tree and live together in peace ideas of american democracy come in large part from indigenous roots algonquin traditions that new england town meeting is a direct steal from algonquin traditions and the idea of the uh 50 senators there were 50 representatives of the league of hudino sony there were two houses on either side there was on anadoga where they met and that idea that everybody would have a voice and would speak was very important uh a number of my hudino sony friends my friend rick hill who is a really wonderful guy and a member of the tuscarora nation rick told me that there were two big mistakes that the americans made when they adopted their constitution they forgot important things were part of the league of the hudino sony one the women have no voice in the american constitution when it was written it was all men it was all men women did not have a vote they did not have anything to say and among the hudino sony the women always choose the leaders and the women are the heads of the family the ones who control the land and the ones whose clan has passed down from mother to daughter or son not from the father the second thing that they forgot or got wrong in the constitution was slavery how could you say that a human being is like three quarters or four fifths of human being that idea that you could have slaves that they weren't really fully people my hudino sony friends to this day shake their heads and be illogic of that particular structure so i've gone a bit far afield but the point is that there was and there remains a great variety of families and cultures and traditions among our indigenous people of this continent languages as well but there was always a lot of borrowing and back and forth between us in fact um this was uh something i heard i've heard said by various various different elders that um if you look at the songs and the dances we have among the hudino sony i'll just continue talking about them they have something called the alligator dance there ain't no alligators wild in new york city or new york state even they say they're the sewers there were no alligators where did it come from probably from the people of the south it was a good song a good dance and so it was taken and it was adopted became theirs and that connection was was really important one funny story about about song and dance is when i was in the when i was in alaska about 1983 i was at a big festival my friend norah dowan howard who was a wonderful clinkett elder was with me and there were different native groups of different like shemishan and then clinkett and sawn who were performing as they did this parade down the street and i was standing with all these clinkets and all of a sudden along came a float with all these shemishan people on it and they were singing and dancing this song with great vigor and every clinkett became quiet i didn't say a word i looked over at norah i said okay what's the deal she said well we sometimes have these contests with each other and if one nation of our people here wins the contest they get to keep the song she said that used to be a clinkett song but now it's theirs and we can't sing it anymore because it is gone to live with them she said it's gone to live with them like an adopted person it has gone to live with them i i could keep going far too long so i'll just leave it at that by the way indigenous continent is another good book for people to look at as well as 1491 and 1493 which talk about the colombian exchange i think that those books as well as savage shores are good to look at and i also mentioned a book of my sister marge is which is called savage kin just a book about the relationship between an anthropologist or ethnologist and native people here in the northeast it's quite a book one and a word from the american anthropological society savage kin k i n worth looking at thank you mark for that question thank you joe for the answer joe i'm going to type the names of those books into the chat box here um so there's savage shores uh savage kin 1491 1491 1493 and indigenous continent indigenous continent written by a british scholar about the uh the native communities and the native cultures of north america well done book and angie it was on on uh on savage on savage shores thank you yes okay um while i'm looking for another hand up actually joe there was a comment in the chat box for you from margaret lampman and she wrote so much gratitude for the gift of your words and music this afternoon thank you oh and i agree all you need me don't buy thank you my friend so those of you who are um looking in the chat box you might have noticed that i added in some more links these are from joe so the the next link joe was important expressions slash phrases in songs can you tell us a little bit more about what what's in that link that's part of what jesse uses to teach the abenneke language and the way to remember things is to sing one of these songs and when he does the full language immersion at middlebury college this summer a lot of singing is going to be taking place and a lot of memory is going to be carried by those songs and jesse was supposed to be with us here today i don't know if you mentioned it to the audience or not but unfortunately he wasn't able to to attend right we're too popular he agreed to be on a panel in brahmat at the same exact time at two o'clock and we look at our schedule at oh my gosh this occasionally happens um so we we try to coordinate as as good as we can but sometimes one of us slips up and fortunately it's done it joe don't worry we're really but you know what this is just a good excuse for us to maybe get jesse to come on as another speaker absolutely next year yeah um okay there's another the next link that you share you wanted everyone to have you described it as all the foundational patterns of the abenneke language in one song as a musician yes his music has been a primary driver in language reclamation reclamation efforts min course song right so take a look at it that's a youtube video correct yes great okay uh there is a message in the chat box from vera shean she says quiet joe your lifetime of dedication to the community and educating the public is so greatly appreciated thank you my friend my other person my other self and there's another message in the chat oh that one's just to me scenes they're not seeing the links in the chat so i'm going to send the links in the chat again everybody um so the first one i'm going to send uh joe can you tell us more about this link it's by rey jean obamsuin as for rey john obamsuin rey john obamsuin is one of the people in the community of odinac in canada who has been extremely important in keeping the songs and the dances and the traditions alive uh genie brink whom i mentioned regards him as a mentor and so do many other people and i have the deepest respect for rey john and his teachings and i always think it's important that when we learn something from someone we don't forget to mention them i'm always mentioning names and it's not meant to be name dropping it's just meant to be acknowledgement i always say that when you learn something that is a tradition from another culture you have a responsibility to do certain things one you need to acknowledge where it comes from two you need to know not just that one thing but all the background that makes it understandable for often people misunderstand things because they don't know the full background and then thirdly you need permission you need to have people say to you it is okay for you to share this i'll give you an example about 25 years ago i was working with symphony space in new york city to put together a series of programs called coyote walks around with traditional stories and songs and dances around the american continent and one of them was about the great plains and we had a number of folks from great plains travel nations who were performing and as the mc i was supposed to introduce people and maybe tell a story and one of the men um whose name was albert white man he was a champion uh bronc rider among the northern shyan told me i will teach you Joseph i will teach you the grass dance song for we are going to do a grass dance but you must promise me never sing that song unless there is about to be a grass dance and a grass dancer has asked you to sing it so i have sung that song three times in my life i've told that story three times in my life but i can't tell it right now because there's no grass dance going on so i think that's important for people to recognize and not to think that um you can just reach out and take something that's not the proper way to do it always give back more than you get thanks joe that's a good reminder for everybody in all context uh there's another message in the chat for you it's from dawn liana and willard p buddy now i don't know if don liana or willard would like to uh unmute and and say it out loud or if there's another avanaki speaker here maybe pat holly or vera might be willing to jump in i'm happy to unmute and say hi quiet quiet joseph chat was liwal al domina jesse quiet quiet oh you love domina thank you so much for that another message in the chat for you joe is from betsey fair she said thank you so much to joe and today's organizers i'm so appreciative of the chance to learn more about avanaki and other indigenous cultures okay if you have a question please either put it in the chat box or wave your hand in front of your computer screen mark go ahead just uh joe i noticed on your connected to the piece you had done speaking some about uh the iliad and the odyssey i did notice that there was a place for contact if we have other questions about culture would you mind if we dropped you a line to ask those that you you know when you have a chance to get to them absolutely i've got a feature in my joe bruschak dot com website where you can ask me questions in fact i got one today which i was kind of amused and pleased by my dad was a professional taxidermist and would actually uh wrote me a note saying they had a deer head my dad mounted in 1975 and they wondered if i'd like to see pictures of it and i said you bet actually 1956 excuse me 1956 so i love the fact that the world can be connected together in this way and that we can use it in a positive way there's far too much negativity on the internet and on various uh sites that you can find but i think if we use it as a way to enlarge our conversation and to share with each other and to ask questions if we have a question and i will always try to give an answer or at least say i don't know if that's the case for that question mark thanks for answering that joe okay everyone we have our last question um and before i read it out loud i am going to share my screen one more time um and this is mostly for the purpose of recording this program so all of the people who are not live with us who are watching this later can see all of those links that i shared in the chat box so i'm gonna leave that up for a minute while i find that question in the chat box i'm not sure i can find the chat box while i'm sharing my screen so if you're watching this as a recording and you want to type up those links go ahead and hit pause on the youtube video right now so that you can keep those or take a picture with your phone yeah that's another way so um this last question of the afternoon is from carol fornir and joe she says thank you for this engaging and deep learning talk can you speak to the indigenous communities in the adirondack region of history as well as the stories of the adirondacks region thank you yes actually yeah another book indigenousness which is by uh melissa otis and it's about the indigenous communities of the adirondacks and it's a really good book i i don't know anything else like this so i recommend this book and i actually write a lot i've got more that's going to be coming out about the history of our people in the adirondack region and saratoga region if you take a look at joe bruschak.com you'll find a few things but i would recommend this book of melissa's we had her at our our docuna education center when the book came out and she did a superb program so um the urocoin and algonquian people of the adirondacks rural indigenousness thank you joe and if you didn't already catch that i did type that into the chat box really quickly um so that you can look in there too if you need to see a visual okay so thank you everyone for attending this program i do really quickly want to announce that our april lecture will be in person so we're going back to in person at the museum on april 21st and again that's for the history of masons in vermont um with rob grand champ as our speaker um but before we all sign off can you please give a quick thank you to our presenter today thank you so much to joe very good i'm seeing lots of applause in the videos and joe there's a lot of positive messages in the chat box that are coming in as well from to all the people i know even you share hi everybody awesome oh joe okay joe is there any last message you'd like to leave us with for the afternoon well what we say uh to people as we're parting is uli farm kani which means have a good journey but i would also add uli galwi may you sleep well uli guasi may you dream well well thank you very much for those blessings joe thank you everyone for attending this program and i hope to see you at some of our upcoming events as well have a great day thanks and joe energy thank you everyone joe i don't know if you can see the chat box i can read out some of the messages for you if you like yeah what would you do that i don't see it right now absolutely diana would said thank you joe you're an amazing storyteller and i always enjoy learning from you vera wrote looking forward to seeing you on april fourth remembering the dawnland mark osbourne said thank you so much for sharing joe carol fornier said thank you joe nancy ravinelle said kachi willy me joe judy tomas says thank you so much for sharing your culture joe i appreciate you and you're sharing with all of us al bellucci said thank you for this awesome sharing don leona and willard p buddy um said kachi will newy and then they said geesh they gotta get their spell check to learn abinacchi so i know uh there's some people who might still be logged in because they may have just stepped away and maybe not realize programs ending but there's anybody who's um still on the program right now and had a specific question feel free to unmute and jump in thanks for that nice intro glenn i appreciated it you're welcome you deserve it and thank you for putting up with us you were really good at it glenn it's good to see you again thank you yeah and and thank thank you angie and joseph and and uh i don't know if veera had anything to do with this broadcast or not but i really appreciated it always and i can't say it in the language my kids can jesse's taught that yep that's our pleasure thanks for attending and joe one last message in the chat box from s papano so thank you so much so happy i found this great great okay well with that i think i'm gonna have us all log off and enjoy it sunday you can see all yoni and see what i want to see yoni