 Hello, I do hope that you enjoy hearing this story. I am a part of it in the sense that I wrote it. It's the story about a people, the Abnaki, the Donland people, Abinmen and Don, Akemen and Land that for the most part were written about negatively in the early beginning if written at all. We were the people who met the Mayflower. History did not stack with that wonderful ship. The history in the eastern United States and in all the United States started with us. As a little girl I sat around a wood stove and listened to wonderful stories about generations of hunters and gatherers and Abnaki Indians before me and always said before I pass on to my reward if I get one, I'm going to tell the story about one of my ancestors and about the Donland people. Well I have seen 79 winters. I finally did it. I did it a while back and when we were able to go and appear places people seemed very interested in what I had to tell them. Prior to this the Abnaki people didn't have a voice and I was very proud to say that I would be the one to give them one. My story is from what I heard in the words that I heard it. My name is Trudy Ann Packer. I live in Lunenburg, Vermont. The lady and she was a lady that I write this story about was one of my great, great aunts. When we were able, my husband and I, to go with the powwow circle we sold many, many books. We were able to show teachers, even professors and veterinarians who said who are the Abnaki and it made me feel very proud to say you look at me and you see them. My story doesn't come maybe with the greatest grandma. I didn't write it for that. I wrote it to touch your heart and it will. I had my problems getting it published because nobody knew who Trudy Ann Packer was and nobody really cared. A lot of people that study Indian law and Indian culture were interested, but by novelizing my story, by bringing it alive, by adhering to the stories to what happened, I brought my story to life. My aunt Sarah that I write about and named the book for was a living lady and after 300 pages, I left her living at the end because some people when they leave this earth, they leave such a moccasin print that you never forget who they are or what they did. She did little things, kind things, helped people, helped animals, took a chicken, made baskets and had great respect for the Great Spirit. Her people had great respect for the Great Spirit and in my small mind, if in the beginning the white culture could have realized that many of the dances, the celebrations that they saw the native Indians of New England doing were in honor of their God. And I think he's one and I think when people honor him, he appreciates it and you know when the first white settlers came to this country, they did not find any atheists. They did not find a group of people who did not believe. They really believed. When they had to kill their food, they dropped to their knees many and said a prayer to thank the Great Spirit for putting that animal where they could use it for food and they thanked him. Now there's something very grassroots about that and there's something very remarkable. But I had never read this in any books and I said to myself, well, you know, your story is just a microcosm of thousands of descendants of American Indians and through the generations, the blood will thin, the hat never will, it's right there. It's beating to the beat of a drum like the human hat. And knowing that I probably would not be a big success with us, I would do one thing. I would give people that I had heard about all my life some dignity. I would give a basket maker who walked in dignity, who lived to see 108 winters, who changed because either you change or you die. We might have a hard time doing that if a superior group come in and said, hey, everything in your world is wrong. Some would say, oh, others just to put food in their children's mouths might say, okay, this is what we've got to do. But somebody had to say, here is a people that survived. They had to change their culture to survive and their whole lifetime and all the generations before them, they changed. And you know, we still have a lot of Native American descendants running around the United States of America. And I'm very proud of that because this was a people who could not write. We're illiterate, but they didn't forget too much. And that is what I wanted to do with this book. I want you to read something that you probably never had a chance to read. And I'm not the best writer in the world and only a high school education. But I knew what I was writing about, and I gave it all I had. And if you want to learn about one family who went ahead, said, we're not going to die, we're going on. And we, the descendants today, are very, very proud of all that they endured. And their honesty, their unpretentiousness, there are things in this book you'll think to your own Grammy and hear her words. Because they're basic. They're Indian, but oh, they're so Christian when you take it apart. So there, I don't know how many winters more I'll see, but since we cannot do the powwows anymore, our knees don't bend. Sometimes I forget what I'm talking about and have to rewind. But I think if you read my book, my words, and Aunt Sarah's life, you will never forget. Thank you. I'm Shirley Hook. I'm with the Kowasek-Dakowa, so the Castle Chiefs. And I'd like to introduce Trudy Parker. She's an elder in our tribe, and she has written a number of books. And her advice has always been good for our tribe. So this is Trudy Parker, and this is her book she wrote in Sarah. This would be going back for me, because all I remember is a Christianity and being taught Catholicism, and my father's people in their belief who were native peoples of Vermont, they were Native Americans, Abnakis, and they would be considered and were. They were called either heathens or people who didn't believe in a god or a hereafter, which was a terrible misconception. Because when the Vikings or whomever landed on these shores, they did not find a people that weren't God-fearing. The Native Americans, in their own way, they didn't have a Christian God, but they were smart enough to know that somebody, somewhere, was bigger and mightier than what they were. There were no atheists, and that was totally missed. If you take the basic simple facts of what an Indian believed and what a person who followed Christ believed, they were basically the same. Only the Indian did not have any commandments to follow. He didn't know what a sin was. He knew right from wrong. He knew he had a conscience. And that put him at a level almost with the Christian people. They could not understand it. There was such a divide between the two races. And from religion on, the Native peoples were not considered smart. They were smart. If we knew all that they knew about medicine, medicine wouldn't be the biggest business in the United States of America. You have to go out and back of your house and you could pick something like your great-grandmother did. And whatever she went out there to cure, she'd bring it back and you would be cured. They knew the land. They knew what was good for them and what was bad. They did not understand education. As I say, they were as simple as the grass. We had one word for one thing. We didn't have ten. You could find out if you were looking for a landmark, and an Indian told you, he'd probably tell you like Mount Washington, the Crystal Hills. So what would you be looking for when you were trying to get there, those Crystal Hills? If you were looking for Lake Champlain, he'd probably tell you, one down big water. But you could find where you were going. It wasn't anybody's name. There is no way that you could go back and undo what was done. It started in New England and just kept going. The fact that the Abnaki people, where he had to meet the Vikings and to meet the Puritans and the Pilgrims, they found a people here. If a plague hadn't come through a few decades or years even before the white people arrived on these shoals, history would have been totally different. Because some of the chiefs, while the captains of the Mayflower boat were on the boat, some of the chiefs were down in the swamp in Massachusetts trying to come up with some kind of a plague or something that would do them all in. They didn't have the power to do it. But everybody knows that some of these old New England chiefs were extremely mysterious in what they could do. They did have spiritual power, could turn water to ice by looking at it. So to be like that, you have to be strong. You have to be gifted, and these people were. But the Abnaki nation has come back like the phoenix. We could not come back as a whole people because that blood, like all Native Americans, is mixed now with everything. But it stays. It never dies, even if it's one drop. That drop is very precious. In my family, you would talk to be very proud of that, that one little drop. It may be all that's left, but it's left. And until the last of your family goes to sleep, it will stay. For all of our people, it's been going back. And education, our children weren't dragged off like the Western kids were, and sent to boarding school, and abused like no other Americans were. We did not experience that. We did not get our little mouths washed out with soap and water. We were not told, you know, you are not a demented people. You come from a proud people, and you be proud, and you hold your head right up. That was inherent in us, but never told to us. And now, through the grace of God, our people say, what were we like? We were like we are now. Some had hateful dispositions. Most were the most generous people that I have ever met. And they love to laugh. You think the Irish have got a sense of humor? Let me tell you, your Native American, when you gather around a fire, can hold his own. And they were not a people who liked to talk. They were not a pretentious people. What you see was what you got. If you couldn't handle it, well, that wasn't a reflection on us. That was a reflection on you. But now, all of our young people, they want to go back. They have the right to go back. I hope God will guide them every step of the way. When I do my talks, I always say, you know, I'm here, and I'm French, and I'm Irish, and I'm Scottish, and I'm Abnaki. And all of these things make me who I am. You take one away, and I'm not a whole person. I would like to read to you from my book The Warning in 1665. This warning was delivered by the great chief and medicine man of the Pentecost, one of the Abnaki groups, at a great gathering of New England tribes on the Great Plains above Concord, New Hampshire. It was in the year 1665 when Pasacanaway was nearing the 100th winter of his life. I never read this in a history book. I never heard about it. I want you to hear about it. I'm an old oak that has lasted the storms of many winters. My eyes are dim and my limbs tremble. The scalp locks that drive before my wigwam told the stories of my victories over the Mohawks who invaded our hunting grounds. Then in their place come the palefaces. The lands of our forefathers were taken from us. I tried the magic of my sorcery in vain. I who can take in my palm as I would aworm the rattlesnake. I who have seen the great spirit in dreams and talked with him awake. I, as brave as the bravest, as strong as the strongest, as wise as the wisest. I am like a reed before their tempest. Now my children heed my dying words. The oak will soon break before the whirlwind. I commune with the great spirit. He whispers to me, Tell your people peace. Peace is your only hope. Our forests shall fall before their mighty hatchets. At your fishing places they shall build their houses. We must bend before the storm. Peace, peace with the white man, is the command of the great spirit and it is the last wish of Pasacanaway. And so it is. Let me tell you about Chief Pasacanaway's last ride. He was old. He was a great leader among his people. And he could no longer take care of himself the way he should. He had outlived his generation. He was over a hundred. And he had a little wiki upset on the shores of Lake Winapasaki. And he couldn't keep his fire going like he used to when he was young and had use of his limbs and legs. So it was burning really low one night. And all of a sudden Chief Pasacanaway heard a howling. It was a wolf howling but it was different than anything he'd ever heard before. He thought a while and the next thing he knew the howling came closer and closer and the north wind blew across that mighty lake. And all of a sudden he heard a noise outside. And a wolf teen, a beautiful silver wolf teen had landed in front of his teepee. And he looked out and he said they kept looking up towards the Ajaya Chook, the Crystal Hills Mount Washington. And he said they're acting like they want me to get on that beautiful sleigh. That Travis sleigh that they had had the most beautiful furs he had ever seen. But this Travis had been sent for him, this beautiful sleigh. And so he went out and he got on the sleigh. And trappers who were camped along the shores of that mighty water. They heard this strange wailing and calling of the wolves. And they thought it a very eerie sound and for all their years of trapping and being out in the wind and at the mercy of the cold they couldn't get over that sound. They heard it. He passed a conaway, went out and he covered himself with the furs. And he said to the wolf teen, it take me away because wherever I'm going the Great Spirit has sent for me. And the wolves took off crying across the wilderness and away they went into the sky. When they got high enough in the sky the sled exploded like into a thousand stars and Chief Pasacanaway went home. It was his last ride but it was one that the long after he was gone that the trappers told their children, thank you. I would like in finishing up this to read to you the epilogue of my Aunt Sarah book. To me I had lots of stories throughout the book and I think it educated a lot of people. I think it made people think, really think. But more than anything else to me the best thing I wrote in this book is the simple way that I described Aunt Sarah's life. I'd like to read that to you. For 92 years this woman of the Donland supported herself by gathering the green gifts from the earth and making baskets. During the very final months of her life she was an invalid, confined to a homemade wheelchair in a rest home in the town of Lunamburg, Vermont. A man I know was just a boy at that time and Aunt Sarah was a patient being cared for in his father's rest home. He explained that every evening the other patients at the home gathered around the kitchen table for a friendly game of cards all except Aunt Sarah. She did not play cards but every night as the game began she would be wheeled to the table where she could sit unnoticed outside the circle of players and observe that game. Many times Aunt Sarah's head would droop and her old and bird-like eyes would close in gentle sleep but one cold night in February of 1931 Aunt Sarah's head dropped for the last time. She had died so quietly that no one realized that she had slipped away and gone to her last sleep except that small boy who noticed that Aunt Sarah's eyes were open. Aunt Sarah was a woman of peace and she died peacefully in much the way that she had lived the 108 winters of her life silently and with dignity outside another white man's circle looking in. Trudy Ann Packer.