NHPBS/GSNC
The State We’re In
Native Americans have always been a part of New Hampshire.
Click the link to watch the full interview on NH PBS's The State We're In.
Archeological evidence shows that indigenous people lived in New Hampshire for more than 13,000 years.
Today, about 4,000 Granite Staters, or .3% of the state's population, identify as Native American, though actual numbers could be double that.
The State We’re In host Melanie Plenda recently sat down to discuss the history of indigenous people in the state, and current efforts to recognize and celebrate that history and culture with historian Anne Jennison, chair of the state's Commission on Native American Affairs and Denise Pouliot, a member of the commission and the Sag8moskwa or Head Female Speaker of the Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook-Abenaki People.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Melanie Plenda: Anne, you spoke with our reporters with the Granite State News Collaborative about the erasure of Native Americans and their history in this state. Can you unpack that for us? What do you mean by that?
Anne Jennison: In the early 1500s there were fishermen coming over to fish and they tried to make contact with the indigenous people. There's a rich fishing ground for cod and other fish, so the earliest explorers came. There's been a long, long history of interaction. Unfortunately, one of the first things that happened were the indigenous peoples being exposed to diseases. There was no immunity and some numbers were reduced at that point. Then colonists came in the early 1600s and there was about 50 years of peaceful negotiations, both here in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, but as each generation of colonists had more children, the sons needed more and more land and started pushing for taking more and more land. That eventually led to horrendous tensions as all the whole Eastern seaboard peoples were being pushed off their lands. That led to six wars, seven if you count the American Revolution.
In the French and Indian war, the Abenaki sided with the French. They were caught between New England and New France. It was a battle for empires and the Abenaki had a slightly more cordial relationship with the French and sided with them, and the French lost.
12 years later when the American Revolution broke out the Abenaki were thinking that Great Britain was such a powerful military force that had been able to defeat the French that they would side with Great Britain. Some over on the east coast went to the side of the continental army, but at any rate we lost again. The Abenaki wound up being recognized as first nations people in Canada eventually, but not recognized in the United States even though we're still here. I'm terribly oversimplifying, but because there was this long term pattern of colonists and then early Americans and generations of early Americans needing more and more land, all of the Eastern seaboard indigenous peoples became very inconvenient.
In 1830 the Indian Removal Act was passed and I think most of us with the story of the trail of tears, but what most people don't understand is that that law applied to all indigenous peoples east of the Mississippi. There was a real danger of being deported from your own homeland. People moved into the north woods and into Canada and came back when they could; people who had intermarried and might appear more black or more white than indigenous hid in plain sight. My great great grandfather's mother's family was Abenaki, but the children were told very little. My mother grew up in Massachusetts during the depression in the 1930s. That's where the family had gravitated to at that point. If you told your children too much about their heritage, they might talk about it in school. If it became known that people were indigenous, that jeopardized jobs, being in peace with your neighbors, there was a tremendous amount of prejudice. About that time, that's when the last of all indigenous people came out, that's what the early Americans wanted to hear. It's what they continued to want to hear throughout the 19th century and early 20th century, that myth that there were no Indians here anymore, which is not so.
Melanie Plenda: From some of the reporting that I've done too, that fear of being identified as Native American, that lasted well into the 20th century. Am I correct about that? There were many families who still felt that well into more modern day.
Anne Jennison: Yeah. Children were being taken from their homes forcibly and either adopted out or sent to these residential schools that have been so much in the news in the last year or so. People were forced onto reservations. It was a very, very dangerous time. In Vermont, there was a eugenics project that targeted, amongst other people, the Abenaki. There were laws only passed in the 1970s and the 1990s that allowed people to practice their own religion. It was illegal to practice indigenous religion in the United States until the Freedom of Religion Act was passed. There were laws that were passed in the late 1970s that started to protect children. The Native American Graves and Repatriation Act was in the early nineties. It just really wasn't safe to be too indigenous in the United States.
Melanie Plenda: Anne, you're the chair of the Commission on Native American Affairs. What can you tell us about the commission's history and purpose?
Anne Jennison: The commission, in terms of the almost 13,000 years of presence here, is a blip on the screen, but it's a good one. It began as a statute into New Hampshire law, created around 2010, 2011. I only found out about it myself five or six years after it was created. It was a happy thing to find out that there was finally some recognition at the state level that there indeed are indigenous people in New Hampshire We're still figuring out the best use of this vehicle to educate people in New Hampshire about the presence of the indigenous people and to be of service to all of the indigenous people in New Hampshire, regardless of whether or not they're Abenaki.
Melanie Plenda: Denise, what about you? Why did you join, and what do you hope to do or accomplish as a member?
Denise Pouliot: I was actually part of the original group that got the commission installed, had the law passed here in New Hampshire. I was fortunate enough to be able to testify on the bill's behalf. The goal of the commission itself was to give a voice to the indigenous population who resided here in the state; not just the Abenaki voice, but all indigenous residents within the state. Our goal is to help uplift indigenous perspectives and values when it comes to environmentalism and sustainability. We wanted to show that we were not gone, that we were still here, and that we were part of the fibers that created this nation that we call the United States.
Melanie Plenda: One thing I would like to discuss is tribal recognition. New Hampshire has no tribes recognized by the state or federal government. Denise, can you explain what recognition is?
Denise Pouliot: Recognition is a process where the state or the federal government recognizes an indigenous tribe as being the tribe who originally inhabited the area prior to colonialization. We, as the Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook-Abenaki People, have filed for federal recognition, we were given petition number 151. We are working towards gaining federal recognition. New Hampshire, however, does not have a recognition process. New Hampshire would have to come together and determine a process if that's what New Hampshire decides it wants to do.We don't necessarily see the benefit in state recognition because state recognition doesn't give you the sovereignty or the status that federal recognition does. We believe in following the process that has been laid out before us so we're continuing with our research and fulfilling the requirements for federal recognition. In the meantime as that process is moving forward, we're working with the elected state officials here in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont to establish a partnership in the stewardship and the maintenance of our territory. We hope that that partnership will help create a better environment for all of us to live in.
Melanie Plenda: How long could that federal process of recognition take?
Denise Pouliot: It could take lifetimes. We really don't know when our number will be called. It's really up in the air. I wish I had a magic ball and I could give a figure on when a determination could be made, but unfortunately we're relying on the federal structure and that can be extremely slow.
Melanie Plenda: Is there one message you'd like people to be aware of regarding Native Americans in New Hampshire today?
Denise Pouliot: We're still here and we're actively involved in our community here in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and other states. We have a lot of initiatives that we've started; for instance, the Car Climate Change program, the Federal Forest Fire Management program, we're working on waterways, we have a planetarium show that's going to be coming out this fall at the McCullough Space Center, we have the Durham Dam Removal project. We're not just in the past, we're alive, we're thriving, and we're going to be here in the future working and living among you. It's important that people recognize that we're here and we are continuing to be stewards of the land and to work within our communities.
Anne Jennison: There's this stereotype of, you know, Indians wearing planes bonnets, riding horses that look very much like they would be at home out on the great planes. Because of years of intermarriage, we might not look the way someone might think a Native American person would look. Some of us look very indigenous, some of us look very white, some of us look quite African American. It depends on intermarriage, but none of that has to do with our culture or actual heredity.
We are, all of us, the sum total of all of our ancestors and every single one of them is critically important, or we wouldn't be here. I'm speaking for everyone, for every human being, but this is also true for the Abenaki peoples. We're trying to reconnect with the past generations to make a coherent body of knowledge that we can pass forward to the world. It's not only for the Abenaki people, it's for everyone. It's incredibly important to recognize that each group of people has a contribution to make, and that it's important that they not be denied.
I can’t tell you how many times someone has asked me, how Indian are you? I find that one offensive because that's part of the blood quantum requirements that the United States placed on indigenous peoples as a planned obsolescence program. Once tribes reach a certain threshold, some of them won't fit on their own tribal roles anymore. They're not Indian enough, and that's just sad. We are the sum total of all of our ancestors and the culture gets passed forward. That’s important. We're still here.
These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative as part of our race and equity project. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.