Embedded Files
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
Survivance: Adapted by White Earth Anishinaabe writer Gerald Vizenor, in this context refers to the conjunction between resistance and survival – calling attention to the fact that not only have Indigenous peoples survived the genocidal ambitions of settler colonialism, but have continued to enliven their cultures in fluid, critical and generative ways.
Settler-colonists: A person of white-European descent who participated in a distinct type of colonialism that functions through the replacement of indigenous populations with an invasive settler society that, over time, develops a distinctive identity and sovereignty, e.g., Canada, the United States, Australia, and South Africa.
Wabanaki Confederation: An allied group of tribes in northeast New England and southeast Canada, including Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Pennacook, Sokoki, Cowasuck, Missiquoi, and Arsigantegok.
N’dakinna: The traditional homelands of the Abenaki People, encompassing lands that are today Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, plus the provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and New Brunswick, Canada.
“All we ask is that you acknowledge that we exist, we are not some footnote ... we are alive and well among you.”
“All we ask is that you acknowledge that we exist, we are not some footnote ... we are alive and well among you.”
In the 21st century, native people live and work in the Merrimack Valley. Pennacook people, and members of other tribes, continue to speak native languages, practice cultural traditions, and keep alive the memories of their ancestors.
During the 19th century, politicians, historians, and writers created a national narrative that depicted native people as "vanishing Indians." These actions "wrote" modern native people out of existence and denied them the agency to tell their own stories, thus creating a fiction of native extinction that remains in many communities today.
Beliefs like this disregard the role that white settler-colonists played in the murderous wars and diseases that led to the dramatic reduction in the numbers of native people during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Hundreds of years of shady land deals, reneged government treaties, and forced integration were integral to the displacement of native people.
Today, native people in New England and across the United States continue to assert their autonomy, claim their culture, and fight to reclaim parts of their traditional homelands.
Primary Document
Primary Document
The following is an excerpt from the 2009 Goals Statement of the Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook, Greater Abenaki Nation of the Wabanaki Confederation of N’dakinna. The Cowasuck Band is recognized by the state of New Hampshire.
“There is a growing effort to bring history back into focus and to correct many misconceptions about the relationship of Native People, such as us, and the founding of the United States. We were not killed off by disease or warfare and did not disappear with the colonization of this country. Many of us became the individual fibers of the weave that made the cloth of the United States and Canada. We are among you, working beside you in all walks of life. Unless we told you who we were, you would probably never know us.”
Definitions: https://globalsocialtheory.org/concepts/settler-colonialism/, https://decolonialdictionary.wordpress.com/2021/04/15/survivance/. Quote: https://www.cowasuck.org/statement.html. Image: Flag of the Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook Abenaki People.
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