50books_poc | 5. Frederick Matthew Wiseman, The Voice of the Dawn: An Autohistory of the Abenaki Nation

By page 3, I knew I was going to like this book.

The tradition of Western science is unidirectional from subject (Abenaki elder, archaeological site, industrial raw material) to the collector/researcher to the publisher. From there it goes to the teacher (college professor) or media person (Nova scriptwriter) and finally to the multiethnic American community, the ultimate consumer. As viewed by the consumer, this is a process of enrichment. But viewed from the perspective of the elder who has lost legal control of her life story, the backfilled hole that was once a site, or the plant crucified on acid-free paper in some paradichlorobenzined herbarium cabinet, this may seem exploitative to say the least.

What a breath of fresh air Wiseman is. With penetrating insight, he identifies and rejects those stale old views, and goes on to show us how it ought to be done. He guides us through his people's history from the depths of time to the present day in a voice that is urgent, sensitive, and quite likeable. He makes no false pose of neutrality -- he is pro-Abenaki and puts his own and his people's views first -- yet he explains competing viewpoints more generously than most writers who do claim to be neutral. It feels like seeing in color for the first time, when before all you knew was black and white.

"Tradition of Western science", you just got served.

The Abenaki Nation is native to what is now called New England. The first third or so of the book discusses the history of the people before extensive European contact, and I loved the way it was written. Wiseman doesn't set up a dichotomy between science and "Indian beliefs", but clearly accepts them both as valid without unnecessary contortions or explanations. He uses geology, climatology, and fossil records to shed light on traditional Abenaki history, so that you get passages like:

Twelve thousand winters ago the White Bear and his brethren had dwindled, their melted flesh filling the oceans. The newly risen Great Sea rushed into our glacially depressed landscape, bringing cold salt water to supplant the fresh water of the now depleted Bitawbagok. The lifeless Northwestern Sea rose 250 feet above modern lake levels. A millennium later, mollusks, fish, and sea mammals had turned the quiet waters into a bounteous, productive seascape.

A clumsier writer might make this sound affected or "new-Agey" (something Wiseman has no patience for), but instead it is refreshing. It shows us a way of thinking where Native voices and traditions are accepted, not marginalized, and can be incorporated into academia on an equal basis. Wiseman is Abenaki and a scientist, and there's no conflict in that.

The section discussing European contact is told mostly from an Abenaki point of view -- why not, since the European viewpoint can be found everywhere you turn? -- which made it much more engaging to me than I usually find narratives of that period. The shifting alliances and influences are interesting, and so is the all-too-brief discussion of the role of Catholicism in Abenaki culture. French Catholics were the Abenakis' allies, and some Abenakis chose to venerate Jesus of their own free will, either incorporating him into their existing religious beliefs or converting entirely. I would have read a whole book just about that.

I admit I was a little worried that the section on the 20th century might not be interesting. Pfft. Did I forget whose book I was reading?

I knew there had been issues with the state of Vermont (where I live) refusing to recognize the Abenakis as a legally valid tribe. But it goes so much further than that. In the 1920s there was a concerted effort to get rid of "undesirables" in Vermont, which included Indians. It was interest in this period that prompted me to read the book in the first place, actually. There's not a huge amount on exactly how the ethnic cleansing was carried out (though Wiseman recommends other books about it which I will read), but there is a lot of information on the consequences.

Basically, the Abenakis went underground. Some of them hid in wilderness areas (until wildlife refuges came along), some fled to more Indian-tolerant places, and some stayed in Vermont but concealed their identities. Some passed into Anglo society. Others became "Gypsies" and "River Rats", pretending to be French Canadian or otherwise "foreign". Yet they kept knowledge of their old traditions and passed them on, even when they could no longer tell their children what those traditions and stories really meant.

So, yes, now the Vermont government tries to deny their claims of having a continuous history of living here, which is only true to the extent that Vermonters *drove them out*. And even that isn't really true. They've always been here, and only now are they able to come out of hiding.

There is much discussion of exactly how the Abenakis have managed to do this and how far there still is to go. The politics of designing a tribal government from scratch are tricky indeed, with a lot of egos and personality clashes involved. Wiseman was there for a lot of this, and manages to make it engaging (as stories about drama among people you don't know often are not).

After the main narrative, there's a huge section of notes, bibliographic information, and lists of museums that display Abenaki materials with discussions of whether the exhibits are respectful or problematic.

I can't think of anything negative to say about this book. The only things that are left out are left out on purpose and the reasoning is explained. He does not discuss the catastrophic smallpox epidemics of the contact period, because some Abenakis believe it is harmful to talk about it. He also doesn't talk about burial customs, because some find it disrespectful. I can't really call this a flaw. (I would also liked to have more information about how the Abenaki language fits into the otherwise well-studied Algonquian family, but the stuff I'd be interested in would probably be too technical for a general-audience history book.)

When I was growing up in California, my God, the attempts to educate us kids about Native people were just *bad*. Always stuffy and boring, always implying there were no more Indians, never with any material by Native writers. They basically treated Indians like dinosaurs, but a lot less cool. Oh, look at this basket in a glass case. Look at this teepee built by white people. (Did Native Californians even build these? Who knows? Who cares?) Look at these life-sized models of paleo-Indians as though they're representations of some extinct beast. Isn't this interesting?

No. No, it wasn't interesting, and it wasn't right. This was the "enrichment" Wiseman spoke of with (I imagined) a grim smile, the false belief that you can enrich your children by teaching them to hold living people at arm's length.

Have you seen the Kushner play Homebody/Kabul? I'll never forget the Homebody's rapturous line: "I love love love love the *world*!" How awful, I thought, that person in her armchair imagining that she *loves* the places she reads about in her antiquated books (it is so telling that she specifies that she only likes the antiquated ones). You can't love what you refuse to know. And you can't know people by clasping your hands behind your back and politely peering at them as dusty, taxidermied exhibits inside a glass case.

Wiseman's book blows all that away. It's an excellent book, and one that I really needed.

(eta tags: a: wiseman frederick matthew, history, native-american, abenaki, vermont)