 We're going to start the meeting because we have a bunch of, we have several guests here and we should get started. Glad that you're here. And we'd like to hear from you. So go ahead and these are, do you guys want to introduce yourselves? I'm Paul Fastler from Brownton. Melody. Carol Williams from Albany. Eugene North from Swamp. Jess Robinson. I'm the administrative helper here on the commission of the State Archaeologist and Division of Historical Preservation. And then Fred Brownton from Cali. Frank Weisman from Swampton. Phillip Redd also from John Moody from Sharon. Thank you so much for having us. My name is Monica. I'm actually the commissioner of the Department of Disability. Angela Smith-Jang. And I work in the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living. I oversee our state and non-aging and our older Americans at work. So we're here actually today because one of the jobs of the department, and the acronym of the department is DAIL, just to keep saying it all the way out loud, but one of DAIL's roles is to support the programs around aging in the state of Vermont. So we have programs that support really high-end needs. It's a program called Choices for Care. But more relevant to this conversation, we are the administrators for the Older Americans Act, which is a federal act in national. Obviously, Vermont has its portion of the Older Americans Act. And that requires us to support individuals that I didn't make the age range, so don't kill the messenger. Sixty and older fall under the Older Americans Act. And there's a range of programs and supports and services that we are responsible to provide. And one of the things that we realized as we were putting together the next state plan on aging, which is due in 2019, was that we've never really had a conversation with this commission and with the tribes here in Vermont just to talk about the issues around aging. And if there is anything distinct and different that we should be paying attention to, that we just haven't really even thought about until now. So we wanted to just come in and open up the conversation, make sure that you knew who we were, talk to you a little bit, and Angela can do it about the state unit on aging and the state plan, and then really just hear from you. You know, are there things that we haven't thought about when we think about aging and staying healthy and staying in your own home and accessing the supports that you need to maintain kind of health and well-being long into your adulthood and beyond? Is there anything specific, culturally, to add Becky into the... There's more than one tribe in Vermont, right? I always want to make sure that I'm careful about that. To the tribes here in Vermont that we just haven't thought about, that we should be paying attention to in a different way. So we just wanted to kind of open it up and just see what we've been missing because I suspect a little bit, if not a lot. Well, I used to work for the aging and aging in the Northeast Kingdom. Oh, okay. And I also worked with a mental health clinic as an elder care clinician. I know that they long ago, when Marie Barton was there, she had wanted to do a project with Native elders, but my experience, and I'm a Native elder myself, my experience was that they did not so identify any time anyone from an agency or state came. There's a long shadow from eugenics and that was still operative. I don't know if it's as dynamic now because it's just about really another generation of elders now. But that was a strong factor and I know that because I declined to help with any special project in the Northeast Kingdom because of that, from my own casework population and knowledge of the culture, they did try a project out of the Swanton, St. Olden's area. Do you have so long ago, Carol, did you think? Roughly? Around 2000. You were taking here or two either way, but it was somewhere around there, I think. So whether the St. Olden's office has any record or whether they actually got something off the ground and did it or not, I really don't know because I then was shifting the job to the mental health clinic. But I'm in that population now and I don't find people as reluctant to self-identify, but they certainly will have done. So that would be the biggest thing up is not identifying that ethnic identity. If they're going to go to those offices and seek any of the programs, which a lot of them do, they just give their identity as white. Yeah, and I don't even know that we necessarily I don't mean to just jump right in, but I don't know that we necessarily need people to self-identify. I think it's more we need to build the cultural confidence so that we are just offering things and people take advantage of it as they so wish, not necessarily targeting. We could do that if you thought that made sense. I think the problem was in terms of some funding streams if they were serving a higher population of culturally identified people, they could get some extra funding. But that requires identification. Interesting. I mean, because Vermont, because we don't have federally recognized tribes, there's already a little bit of a ring there. We just don't get, you know, we don't get resources in that stream, right? But I'm into the thing that maybe through the minority. And I think we can get there, but I think we have to build, if we need to, if we want to, I think we have to build, again, just that kind of cultural confidence to start with and see what we might be missing and what we can offer just more universally, not necessarily worry about the... Right, but what I found was people, elders with some serious health complications were very resistant going to clinics because they were afraid to be identified. And like I said, I'm not sure that's operative now, but it certainly was 10, 12, 15 years ago. I think that you're still going to find that that is the case with many people. Like even visiting the Burlington Health and Rehab, it was, there was a few of our elders who were there that were, it was the first time in their life who they'd come out and just said, I'm an Avanaki person. And I very distinctly remember the woman sitting next to him saying, I shouldn't say that out loud. It's pretty dangerous to say that. And I was like, hmm, interesting. The first time you say it, someone immediately tells you not to. So I, and that was like two years ago. So I think you're still going to find that that is the case with the older generation. But people are changing a little bit because we are all changing. So there are four state-recognized bands, but there aren't just four bands. So there are some unrecognized bands as well. And I know Ms. Siskoi has this really great model. What's going on today, actually. Voices Against Violence is attending a cultural competency two-day training at our office. Part of what they asked for, and this was a good fit for, was what is it that is specific to your members or you have to remember, Swanton Village and Swanton Town make up approximately 6,000 people plus or minus. And on our tribal roles, the ones we know of that have actually come forward and said, hey, I'm a member of the, Ms. Siskoi, I'm not, it's nearly 3,000. I would estimate there's probably another 20, 25% that aren't even on our tribal roles. So one of the things that would be safe to offer to your agency is this two-day training where, if nothing, I mean, that's the most of what you would have to lose is, you know, two days of listening to us drone on about what it is like to be, you know, a member of the tribe and or a person of that culture in this population. So I mean, if at any time you want to explore that further, just reach out to me and I'm sure I can at least point you towards the folks that would be able to take care of that for you. Eugene is the chief of Ms. Siskoi. Okay. And one of the things that they're doing there is the cultural center is in the basement with the elderly home there. In Swanton. In Swanton. And so they, I know that Brenda was very active in trying to make sure that that model was still used because they do like elder dinners and they have the kids go up and in terms of culturally speaking, that's what we should be doing and it would be the older folks who are taking care of them and also who's passing on culture who has all of the information. So our elders are absolutely essential to us and so they have a model there for that reason. So Brenda Garnier who does the Avanaki outreach program, Title VII, is Title VII? Yeah. So they have that model for a reason and she can probably talk more about it but she's a really good resource. So Melody, the cultural center is in the basement of the senior center in Swanton? It's at the old school. What is it? It's an old high school. It's turned into a senior housing center. Yeah, it's a really great place. And in terms of one of the things we haven't talked about is disabilities. I think you'll find, so indigenous people have like the highest rate per capita of signing up for the armed forces. And so our warriors are very important and I think you'll find that in terms of disabilities and that is a, there's a connection there. There's some intersectionalities that should be looked at and then also in terms of disabilities if you look at who we typically see as our medicine people or people who are really integral that have been touched in a different way by the creator and so where one culture might see a disability, we don't and they are essential to our community and so when you look at like I know when I was growing up at Mrs. Goy, the medicine person there probably is considered on state assistance isn't that right Fred? Yeah, he's a burden. So, but for us he's an essential member of our community and he wouldn't be ever considered as having a disability for us. So we do look at it in a very different way. Does anybody else have anything else to add? You touched on it a little bit with that community and somehow building, I don't know for your programming with a one on one trusting with some way of building trusting relationships having the basis of the service people that are engaging with the population being native peoples so that there can be a level of trust so that it's definitely more of that community offering alternative programming if there are substance abuse mental health issues like Melody was saying it's not necessarily viewed the same way so that there's a different way of looking at those supports. I'm not saying it well you said it very well for what I feel the thoughts in my head versus yeah. And Lucy Cannon Dale she's the former chair here and she is a citizen of the Nohican band and she works with the veterans yeah she's at the hospital the VA she works with the VA and she helps people cross that are indigenous and she does ceremonies for them and so she's good contact and she's also a nurse and an all around awesome person so she's a good contact for that and there's also the thing if there are definite places where there's more concentration of native elders that would be helpful for us to know too because we can work with our network partners like the agencies on aging and others to try to do some of that work around having the right kind of training and the building relationships and having native elders perhaps be part of that work and so if the communities are concentrated in any way or is it really spread out like those are questions I just have to better understand how we can be supportive the state unit on aging overseeing the older Americans act it has a really broad sorry I'm just what he wants to say so that you can say it once they're done a really broad but you shouldn't mention your work it's a red road but still I have been trained in the red road for recovery with and I have used it with Native American elders here in Chittenden County sorry go ahead no it's great work is really broad in that the whole population and trying to ensure that we can support older Vermonters to age well and prevent a lot of need for higher levels of care and so the older Americans act programs are really trying to help people age and place age at home be as independent as long as possible so it includes services like nutrition supports home delivered meals or congregate meals transportation support a lot of in-home supports like case management personal care adult day those kinds of things and then health promotion disease prevention is another part of it so helping people stay active through evidence based programings to prevent falls to manage chronic disease those kinds of things as well as caregiver family caregiver support as we see our population aging we're also seeing a growing number of Vermonters who are family caregivers and so support with respite education training peer support that kind of thing for family caregivers as well and so our primary partners in community in the work of the Older Americans Act are five area agencies on aging that cover the state and their role is to act as that regional planner for their multiple county area in providing the services on the ground so we're kind of coordinating at the state level and they are really supposed to have their eyes and ears in the various communities and coordinating out those supports and services working with the network of providers so it's a big body of work and it all kind of culminates in a state plan on aging as Monica mentioned so we're working on developing our next four year state plan on aging which we look at data, we look at trends we look at where the key areas where we really need to see some improvement so for example we have a goal around falls prevention because Vermont has a really high rate of falls injuries and death student falls across the older population so really looking at ways we can expand programming and options and awareness around that that's just one example of the goals within the state plan I think that one of the things is different for us right now and that Angela and I have really tried to take on is that when people think about aging certainly in the state of Vermont and probably nationally as well there's this sort of fearful anxiety written approach to it versus people sort of understanding it as part of this very natural life cycle and how amazing it is to to get older and to know what you know and to have all that experience back it had to change a little bit of the frame because people tend to approach it as this time when people are needy and bedridden and weaker or less able less contributory and there couldn't be anything further from the truth especially in the state of Vermont you know we have one of the highest volunteer rates in the country and most of those volunteers are older when you think about civic engagement community engagement it's mostly our older that are doing that work so really trying to change the dynamic in the conversation so yes they're in any population at any age there are going to be kind of high end needs and as a society we need to take care of those needs and there is all of this richness that older Vermonters bring to the table and I don't we don't want communities to sort of forget that and to pigeonhole the conversation into what their needs are it's really more what do they bring back to the community and so trying to kind of flip that thinking a little bit is a huge part of the work that we're doing now at the same time that we have to maintain all those services and support so yeah those exist and there's this whole conversation and so trying to get the governor really on board with thinking about older Vermonters you know as he talks about the workforce issues we say you know you've got this whole group of older Vermonters who either don't want to be done working or can't yet be done working and we want to be honest and that's a whole workforce that we need to pay attention to so having him really get behind this award that we created that really honors businesses that have policies that support older workers you know more flexible policies better retirement programs you know the ability to telecommute all the kinds of things that make it easier to work and allow individuals to keep contributing back so trying to kind of flip the conversation a little bit is a big part is actually the biggest part of what we're trying to do in addition to I think everything else and framing everything like that versus everybody talking about getting older like it's this terrible thing because you know the news flashes that as soon as you're born that starts so if you're going to pretend that's not happening you simply kind of put bliders on and aren't paying attention to your own body until it's happening so I think trying to make that change has been big for us of course it forms well with our culture and our honor and we've you know I think that so my family is our immigrants and so we have a really different approach to that in my own family and so kind of bumping up against what's a little bit more typical has been is interesting you know it just sort of changes the dynamic all together and and I think that culturally we are so fearful of this that we aren't really approaching it with the kind of joy and opportunities that really should be a part of it and I think that then we create these really elaborate structures to take care of people that separates from community and so trying to really imagine communities that are inclusive and that works as well for the disability work that we do in the department you know how do you get people to really understand how much richer an experience is when it is inclusive of everybody so I think it does really correspond as well to more native values and culture typically and I think you'll find so there's a bunch of programs that you know vegans have fuel assistance and they'll actually go to different elders homes and they'll bring firewood and they'll stack it or they'll help them do whatever so there's a whole bunch of things that are happening that we're already doing but doing for our own folks and so one of the other things that you could look at is for us making sure that our elders that can't make it to ceremonies can get to ceremony so if there is a program where they can be transported I know my grandmother she there was an Avanaki gentleman who used to come and pick them up and they would bring them to like Doris Binkler house and they would they would do ceremony there and like it was kind of cool but it was actually bringing them to making sure that they could do sweat lodges or they could do whatever they wanted to do to take part in the community I think that would be kind of a cool a cool cultural piece is that making sure it's like going to church yeah you know what is going to church it's our church but there you go so okay and okay so you have 45 minutes if we take the last five minutes there for why is this going to add some to this conversation so there's only Margaret Higgins who works for the state she's an evaluator she's down at some of the Mon Hospital right now they're doing an annual survey of the Woodbridge Center we have and they're single and they didn't have an Avanaki elder who just fell three days ago broke her head so it was interesting talking with Margaret because you know she's there evaluating this facility everybody was incredible it's great but I think you'll find that Margaret who's Avanaki and there are hundreds of Avanaki people we know of who are in the professional services taking care of people and much like the veteran analogy that there are more veterans per capita and for Mon who are Avanaki or Native that's also true in the healthcare of the world that at least now where we are White River Junction DHMC a quarter of the people who work there and now they might be you know in the working staff cooking the food they might be nurses they might be doctors I mean they come and all of that is a vital part of how things get done in the Mon but it is extraordinarily understated Calvin Coolidge who's his grandmother was Avanaki and Moeka nobody knew about him until after he got done because he couldn't be in the present United States back in those days but there's a tremendous amount of potential and if you're in touch with Margaret I'm sure you'll be able to find her she should be able to really guide you through the state system of what's going on for Native people because she can do it for a full year much like much like and there's a lot of these facilities like if you go to Dartmouth they have opportunities say you're going in for surgery or something but they'll have smudge rooms so make sure that they can take part in the ceremony before they go in which is normally not as much anywhere as long as you do it without setting up for that yes you can end the board so it's UVM yes UVM you can do it it's case by case but we've done it many times that curves actually curves all of the hospitals, every hospital in the state of Vermont have participated in those kinds of that so I'm just going to leave you all with this you know it also has it just has the basic overview of the way you work that you do and thank you if you want the contract so one of the things you could do is you could I don't know if you have lists or anything that you maintain or newsletter or whatever each of the four chiefs it would be good to keep them on your lists because then if you want to reach out like Don Stevens is probably our most like active chief that goes out and does a lot of just about everything but all of the chiefs if they can be included they can get the information you want out or they can be set up like a focus group or something that you, if whatever you need then I would say reach out to the four chiefs and so they're in terms of being spread out because of the kind of questions you had the Cisco is super concentrated up in the northwest corner around Franklin County and then Noel Hegan is pretty concentrated around the northeast kingdom but they still have members all over just like all of us do and they're based in Jamaica, Vermont and everybody is all over the place and there's only about 100 people in it so, yeah and then the Coloss they're in based in around Pike, New Hampshire, Woodsville, New Hampshire somewhere there and the Orange County area is part of part of their we're right around where Blue Mountain School is that yes, so and if you need to if you want any other contacts I can get them to you which may no longer be in existence after this year so any last questions? any updates on the Avanaki cultural or generation project? just a little bit, we're tentatively planning the last weekend of August for two days we're paying a half we're going to try to it's not real firm yet but we're trying to get hold of an herbalist who will just will use the kitchen there and just teach people how to make teachers oils and sands use the herbs or preserve them so that as you're gathering you can go on with that is this for the people that had already taken part in the primarily at least, yeah but if someone else is interested up to a point, I think we could accommodate because it isn't requiring the previous involvement do you want how do you want to get that out the word, if you're well, I want to line up the teachers first and then maybe Carol can send it out email to you guys and you can spread it we would send the info to the tribal chiefs what's the limit on participants what's the limit on participants because we'd be staying overnight we can have up to 16, so we're going to have a couple of teachers imagine we could take 12 to 15 let's talk about this one monument road right now okay no, that's fine so we got a call from the Robertsons and we actually got a call from Highgate Town office who had been alerted by Mr. Robertson and Mrs. Coda at the end of monument road near the monument that something was going on with the land there they saw a bunch of rises we subsequently went up and went on the portion of the land just down the road back towards Highgate away from the monument going for some 125 feet there's a major crack in the soil that's appeared and it's pulling away from the bank and also lowering we immediately snapped into action called disaster I forget their acronym but Vermont Disaster Recovery not that we call FEMA absolutely but our local counterparts as well the rivers person from the environmental environmental group here at the state all went up and evaluated it and it's big it hasn't fallen into the river yet but it is a big area of slope failure about 125 feet long up to about 15 feet back and while there's been no archaeological excavations formal ever in that particular portion it's sandwiched between two known burial sites so we have every reason to believe that there could be some about Native American remains in that area we have pulled out all the stops we're talking to FEMA we're trying to get that event which we think was precipitated on a May 4th to 5th flooding slash wind event which caused the trees to pull over caused the roots to uproot and then the whole land start to slide but we've been going through various processes and it's still ongoing right now even if we did get the FEMA funding that's a reimbursement being that as the state have to come up with a large chunk of money we've had several consultants go out and try to give us you know, estimates they're high it's the only portion of the area that hasn't been ripped at and part of that is because we really only found out when we did a detail deed dive but after if you've been out to the monument there's some stone sort of you know, set off stones after that there's actually a 50 foot right of way that the Robinson zone and we own 50 feet then there's another person that owns 50 feet and then it goes back to us for two months and so because it's this private state conglomeration that the crack cuts across it's very it's becoming very difficult to figure out what FEMA will, what FEMA won't cover will they cover any of it because this is the only event that's being listed in Franklin County the storm event was originally only for Addison and Chitton we're also searching other avenues but we had a meeting with our assistant secretary yesterday so we're we're turning over every stone to try to get it done but you know, it's going headlong into various bureaucracies I don't think anyone's unwilling but it's what to do and at this point because it's so profoundly disturbed there's some people think there's nothing we can do even if we riprap it it's going to slide riprap it's where you take big big like boulders angular boulders and put them all on the bank so if you've ever gone armoring and we've done that with most of the state own portion going from the monument out to Dead Creek we did that a portion in 91 and a portion in 94 but because we bought this interim parcel afterward as part of the larger you know easement that the land trust bought that gave to us as part of Native site and potential burial protection just didn't riprap that little 50 thing because we couldn't get the permission from the private landowners now they're all very much involved they obviously don't want to lose this portion of their yards either but it's tricky if it was just private they could leverage various grants if it was just state there's less but it was possible but anyway it's a sure everyone we are doing over and above everything and I've got to give you know a lot of credit to Scott Dillon who spent a lot of nights and weekends and everything trying to draft letters you know just to do the rounds on the phone calls trying to do something but you know it's a bad time for this too because of the state budgets and everything's already locked down there's no chance for someone to write in a thing that's where we're at they've asked us to last night they sent me an email and asked us to draft a letter from the commission talking about the importance of the site to FEMA so that they could get funding and Pete Thomas did that right Pete Thomas is actually the FEMA archaeologist he's epic I look like that so I started drafting it so if anybody wants to help we're drafting it and it might behoove the msyscoy people to draft their own letter and send it by tomorrow morning by tomorrow morning and we have to do this tonight he wants me to draft it now with you and then bring it over there and I don't even know where over there is so what we're going to do is we're going to draft it and then I'm going to scan it to them in an email and find out why it's important and yeah from the indigenous perspective but from the commission there was a big email thread that was going throughout all kinds of all the different habaneki bands and discussing the potential of getting a cultural center going and so what I did is I took a document that years ago Melody, me and a student of mine who was in historic preservation Julie Singh did with a support as you can see of the 2010 Quadra Centennial the idea was that one of the outcomes of the Quadra Centennial was to be a Franco Vermont or French Canadian Heritage Center and an indigenous Vermont Heritage Center and there was a group of us in the Quadra Centennial Native American Quad group that were tasked with trying to develop a vision for what that looked like part of that was going around and talking to I think scores anyway if not hundreds but certainly scores just people asking them what their thoughts ideas and beliefs were and that generated a document which I reported on in 2011 to you guys so it should be in your archives some place but after this new flurry of activity I got back in a bunch of us in this email thread started creating ideas back and forth and it emerged very quickly that the idea that we had had early of a brick and mortar Euro-American style museum, museum was probably not going to fight for a whole series of reasons one of which was upfront cost and the second was maintenance who would be able to keep the lights on in Texas the idea was we would be able to afford a full-time person there even at a pittance pay and the consensus most people was unless we got a big grant we wouldn't be able to get this thing and B if we had to come up with some kind of an endowment we wouldn't be able to staff it and pay for it in the future so with that I wrote this as a rewriting of the original document with the input from all of the other contributors to that the big email discussion chain so the idea of it is there's needs assessment here the basic need that we had back in those days was political instead of being in a neutral place no particular tribe component it's got to be have a ceremonial component in other words a place for all tribes to come together to do inter-tribal activities it has to have community memory this was important I think this was one of your ideas because the Paschal Quadis and other tribes and all their centers they have community members a community memory kind of a module where they have pictures and other commemorations of important elders and others who have passed like at the Smithsonian with the elders wall like what we saw up in Paschal with all the baskets and everything set up as families lots of interesting prototypes number four was one that the chiefs seemed to have an interest in and actually that same concern led to the thing I reported to you on in January culture education the idea that Rick Holschow really interestingly rich excuse me is called essentialist Wabanaki or Abenaki training so what do we know historically, culturally that is local to our region as opposed to all of the external memories that are coming in from the Great Lakes, Pow Wow spirituality and things of that sort and so one of the ideas of a cultural center would be in Rick's riches words essentialist in other words it would give a potential for all the different bands to contribute their historical and cultural knowledge that is place-based here that can then be made available to everybody other than economic development stuff like that so these were the needs that were expressed years ago and kind of reaffirmed at least some of them in the early 2018 email so what we began discussing was kind of decolonizing this idea of a cultural center in other words getting away from a brick and mortar kind of a thing and so what some of us came up and Rich was very important in that melody and others contributing to this the idea of a place rather than a space start building from an environment a place that could first be just an area to have ceremony you don't need buildings you don't need anything then think about extending into if we've got a forest to alter the forest build an agroforest that could be used as a potential medicine woods to have areas where you could raise crops all of this is minimal most infrastructure and in a sense when you actually look at the essentialist from our data we have little on ceremony but in terms of land use, land tenure and things like that we have a huge amount that's if you remember our petitions we're mostly based on land tenure, land use place based cultural things and so this will kind of not mimic it but track that essential idea and then so I deal with landscapes and all these other components melody said that last month you brought up the idea here of that so I type this up and brought it to forward it to you this is a result of many years and it's been I don't think that building a heritage center is as difficult as people people say for example back in 1997 just me and my wife in $1800 we built the Avanaki Cultural Center at Missiscoe that was up and running and functioning for over 12 years until internal stuff we blew that out of the water and so it was three and a half months a lot of new paint and stuff like that so it can be done if this thing is we actually do get a space that is decent enough to house ancestral essentialist Avanaki things that I would be I still haven't donated all of my stuff yeah I still have probably about 3,000 objects and certainly another 12,000 images that could go into an archive here so but I donated quite a few things to the Historical Society Echo in the Maritime Museum a bunch of other things have gone to the Paso Iquati a lot of my Avanaki things I'm sending back to the tribes that they originally were produced by but we could outfit a nice place so that's what I wanted to bring is just share this history with you to see where you would like to go with it and our last point is Blessing of the Fields that would be you that was great actually brought some folks together does everybody know what they did for Blessing of the Fields can you 10 steps back what was it, what did you do what did you learn I'm going to go 11 steps back okay in trying to work with Fred Wiseman in reference to things that we wanted to do or bring back it's a process because we had for a while had leadership that was not interesting quite frankly and that's putting it gently people would just exclude that this was quite right from a great many things because there was no participation or no willingness to participate first thing that I mean I wanted to do was change that so in speaking with Fred what can we do is a great incredible repository knowledge and things we've done we sighed down and we said alright let's crystal kind of coin the phrase bring your native back and that's what we decided to make our campaign slogan so it was a trend of what can we do and then we kind of looked at the calendar and said okay in the at night calendar what can we do in correlation with that long story short incredibly generous he decided to give up his time every month to do and in the event whether it was talking at the tribal office or giving an event like a class or something well anyway he brought up the blessing of the seeds or blessing of the field and he told us up front this is going to take some dedication do you think we can do it and the hope spring is eternal so we're like yeah so we started off with a meeting and we had like 24 or 25 people and we said here's what's happening if you want to do this it's going to be here it'll be at this time you're going to have to learn this we have to make this and the training was event driven a come on by and learn a song or make regalia just you know for the sheer cause of doing it it was we had this event I will teach you what you need to know for that event which was great because you knew what you were going to be used so he came in Don Stevens attended one of them and we started with some singing and you know we did gosh maybe a month later we did a little dancing but it was getting people together so the 24 eventually dwindled down to 11 but it was what we needed for that event and we went to the interview which I had never been to before I had heard of it but never had been there and we practice our skills we made some needed items some regalia was made it was amazing to see we had somebody drop off a couple of bulk materials like the t-dresses were made out of this like curtain material or something it was like yeah but it was it was a full scale of it or something it was huge I'm like why would somebody drop this at our office we managed and I said we Ali was like amazing she's this little wind up robot like the energizer bunny that if you that's where she's OCP because if you put her on task she will just laser focus on this and she must be held alive with because she will just turn herself into that she's getting married this fall too I have to talk to them but so anyhow we took the stuff she made some wonderful dresses and you know Fred's wife helped and we made some discs and stuff out of feathers and it was a great time we got people together and all the while you were still learning the skill so we attended the interview which is my first time going we met a bunch of people there we conducted some interviews it was fun and you're still conducting a ritual that was very old and it was powerful and the most amazing thing was at the end of it I was hanging around and somebody was looking up and I don't remember who but they were like what kind of bird is that it was like a huge osprey and it didn't just make a fly by and go it kind of hung out for a while and so I mean it was impressive to see this at the end of your ceremony to look up and there's this huge bird of prey just circling around and it's a beautiful bird and on gorgeous day we got lucky I mean hey knock on fake wood we're not we're not going to have any serious weather and stuff for this event but it was powerful enough to me as an individual that when we discussed would we do another event it's like yeah absolutely because maybe it'll bring in 25 more people we might only end up with 11 but guess what that's 11 people we didn't have with these skills before so in the public I mean they were jumping up there bringing their seeds over to be blessed at the end people were talking and asking questions it was I feel it was a great event that was worthwhile and I would wholeheartedly support doing as many different events and reoccurring events as possible I question people of the school systems that are doing the secret rule stuff I told them to contact you for a blessing of the fields and some of the kids I know that go to the school house are there's a Passamaquoddy student and there is a few Avanaki students so I think you would be nice because the kids there's a couple kids there who would really love it anything that we can do to attract these kids is I mean personally that's one of my goals kind of many fences as well as bringing these younger folks in because that is the future and I mean we can sit here and say oh that's great but until you actually do something about it it doesn't mean, I mean you can put stuff on paper, you can talk about it all day until you put it to practice it's just off anything people can direct our way if there's any way they can get young folks involved awesome, well done I think Fred for his teachings and participation and Morgan Lampere is one of our tribal council members that he is a music teacher by trade he appears to be busier than a one-armed paper hanger and he would make time to come up for a while, it was each week and then it became like every other week or something to work on these songs and so being a teacher you kind of knew how to sit down about how to do something like this and say this is what we're going to do we're going to break into this he deserves recognition for his part so he did very well and Morgan was great and what I would like to add to this is in terms of the epistemological or the knowledge base that's behind it I shifted what I do a little bit after my January very talk that I gave here because I got some very negative feedback from several people about the thing that I was going to the harvest ceremony in other words where do you get this how does he know where does it come from what I'm going to do from now on is each one of the things that I do a complete document associated with complete citations to each part of it and where they come documenting and that's on the documentary and bibliographic notes so that there will never be any question about is this ethnogenesis or is this a sensualist okay so every dance every song every part of the organization is based on unknown Wabanaki and in some cases Abinaki andesis some from Odinak a little bit about 6% to maybe 10% is Eastern Abinaki and Pasamaquati the organization is based on the protocols of the laws of the confederacy to which the Abinakis belong and I don't think anybody will agree with the law that's our way of doing it so that was the organization and each individual component is documented and all the material all the music and everything is unfile and available so I just want to make it clear that from now on everything that we're going to go moving forward is going to be a sensualist in other words there's not going to be anything from outside of the realm of the Wabanaki area in any of the projects that I'm doing with the Missisgway and there can't be I mean everybody for political reasons is going to grouse about it but in terms of the documentary and spiritual or whatever you want to call it origins and provenance of everything is documented