I was taken aback a few days ago to discover that the blog posts on JoeBruchac.com for April 7, April 8, and April 10 use substantial amounts of material from this website in discussing the Abenaki leader known as Gray Lock and the history of Schaghticoke, N.Y. Collectively the posts on JoeBruchac.com promote Joseph Bruchac’s books along with the idea that he and his family (sister Margaret and sons Jesse and James) are Abenaki scholars who are experts on everything related to Native American history and identity. This alleged Native American identity has been challenged by Chris Churchill of the Albany Times-Union and others; the blog helps to counter those challenges. It includes a number of posts about Schaghticoke which try to show that the Dutch settlers who eventually took over Schaghticoke, including some ancestors of the Bruchac family, became Indigenous through their proximity to Abenaki neighbors. It also includes posts relating to Gray Lock that likely were inspired by a conflict over a so-called “Abenaki totem” depicting Gray Lock in Burlington, Vermont. I suspect that the posts are an attempt to show that the Bruchacs know more about Gray Lock than Gray Lock’s own descendants who oppose the structure. The April blog posts use my transcriptions of the Albany Indian Commissioner records to bolster these claims. This creates a dilemma. This blog will take a more political turn briefly in order to deal with it.
COLLUDING WITH PRETENDIANS HAS SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES
The Bruchacs are among the many people in the world of academic and popular writing who claim to be Indigenous even though there is overwhelming evidence that they are not. They are members of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation, part of a coalition of groups of Non-Native people in Vermont that formed beginning in the mid 20th Century. The members studied the Abenaki language and culture with people from Odanak, an Abenaki community in Canada founded in the 17th century that became a refuge for Abenaki displaced from Vermont and elsewhere by English settlers. After learning some Abenaki language and culture, the Vermont groups tried and failed to get federal recognition as an Abenaki tribe. They also failed to get state recognition but then somehow obtained it on another attempt.
Odanak has opposed the efforts of the Vermont groups to be recognized as Indian Tribes. In response the Vermont groups accuse people from Odanak of being “foreigners” even though they learned Abenaki languge and culture from Odanak, and Vermont is located on original Abenaki homelands. For a short introduction to the situation, see this video with Abenaki Counselor Jacques Watso and this editorial by the Odanak Abenaki Tribal Council, as well as this report by Professor Darryl Leroux, who has demonstrated conclusively that the Vermont groups have essentially no Indigenous ancestry. Leroux’s synopsis shows that the Bruchac family has more than 99 percent European ancestry, with one 17th-century Mohawk ancestor who married a Dutch trader.
Pretendians in the academic world and elsewhere have serious negative effects on Indigenous people, as explained in this recent study by the Yellowstone Institute. If those who know better remain silent, or brush off pretendian claims as foolish but harmless fantasies, it hurts Indigenous people and also erodes the integrity of scholarship and of academic institutions in general. This includes historical research and writing by pretendians who distort the record to support their claims, introducing false data and interpretations that are then replicated by other scholars who take them at their word.
Much of the Bruchac family’s writing attempts directly and indirectly to support their claims to authority on all things related to Native Americans, including Gray Lock and the history of Schaghticoke. They use their self identification as Native American to add to their authority, and they use the authority to bolster their claim to be Native American. The result is a mix of historical reality and delusion that is confusing and that causes harm to Abenaki people. The Bruchacs’ use of the Commissioners’ Records is one small part of a bigger picture. For years they have made free use of the cultural heritage of the Abenaki, Mohawks, and many other Indigenous peoples, churning out hundreds of books, articles, and blog posts that appear to legitimize their claims to be what they are not. In this way they have created a vast quantity of material that is well suited to feed AI bots that make these claims look valid in response to online queries. And yet the claims are false.
THE BEST RESPONSE TO FALSE CLAIMS IS ACCURATE INFORMATION
Should I try to stop the Bruchac blog from using my work? The amount of material copied and pasted, especially in the post for April 9, raises some interesting copyright issues, but for now I won’t try to use them to get the posts taken down. In some cases I think the materials from the AIC Records may contribute some information that helps to counter the Indian by proximity narrative. If people who read the Bruchac posts click the links to this site, they will at least have a chance to explore a record that speaks for itself. However I still feel a need to make my position clear, in order not to collude with the overall assumptions of the Bruchac website. Therefore I am going to treat the posts on JoeBruchac.com as a kind of writing cue, an excuse to point out the issues in the hope that others speak up as well.
TODAY’S TAKEAWAY: HISTORIC PROXIMITY IS NOT A BASIS FOR IDENTITY
The bottom line here is this: The Dutch settlers who lived as neighbors of the Abenaki people at Schaghticoke did not become Abenaki themselves by way of proximity. Initially, following King Philip’s War in 1676, the Dutch merchants of Albany did agree with the Mohicans and Mohawks to encourage Abenaki refugees from New England to move to Schaghticoke, assuring them that they would have land there to live on. Then over time the Dutch settlements expanded and took over the land set aside for the Abenaki, who began to leave. Many moved to Odanak, where conditions under the French regime were more favorable. During a French sponsored raid in 1755, the raiders took the remaining Abenaki to Odanak as well. These events did not create any basis for descendants of Dutch settlers to claim an Abenaki identity or to write as authorities on Abenaki history.
The Albany Indian Commissioners 