“In recent years, members of these groups have gained more and more rights, such as free hunting and fishing licenses and property tax exemptions. They have also gained greater recognition in society. That’s not counting grants: last year, for example, one of the Abenaki tribes, the Nulhegan tribe, received more than $350,000 from the government to document its culture. Some Vermont Abenaki also have the ear of state politicians: they benefit from regular meetings with the governor and weekly meetings with elected officials to discuss issues that affect them.”
[…]
“For years now, many people have been raising questions about the legitimacy of these groups. One such critical voice is Darryl Leroux of the University of Ottawa, who has been working on the issue of diverted ancestry. In a scientific article he has authored and which is soon to be published, he has examined the case of the Vermont groups, specifically the Swanton group. He argues that the majority of people who claim to be Abenaki in Vermont are in fact of French-Canadian descent. The fact that the vast majority of genealogical records are in French and located in Quebec could be a barrier to research. If the records were available in Vermont, I have no doubt that historians would have discovered long ago that what these organizations [Vermont tribes] are saying doesn’t make sense,” he says.
