Having researched the dynamic of white race-shifting into becoming "Abenaki" in the Northeast on multiple prominent people claiming to being "Abenakis" to the naive public of Vermont, etc. and recently having completed the genealogical mapping of Sylvain Rivard, I've decided to review Lisa Brooks and her husband Rick Pouliot's claims of identifying as Abenaki. I found them amongst the numerous Northeast 'race shifters' in Vermont and New Hampshire, to be just that: race shifters.
Richard "Rick" Daniel Pouliot Jr.
Like Sylvain Rivard in Quebec, Canada claiming to be "Abenaki" as well as of having an alleged "strong Abenaki heritage on his mother's side of his family" we see the same dynamics of appropriation and identity theft against actual Abenakis here in the Northeast.
1. Roch Manintoubeouich / Manitouabeouich & Outchibabhanoukoneau HURON2. Marie Olivier Sylvestre
3. Louis Prévost
4. Marie Prévost
5. Marguerite David
6. François Henri Zacharie Cloutier
7. Zacharie Cloutier
8. Prisque Cloutier
9. Anselme Cloutier
10. Philomené Cloutier
11. Beatrice Gagné
12. Rose Aimé Beatrice Bourque dit Bourke
13. Richard (Rick) Daniel Pouliot Sr.
14. Richard “Rick” Daniel Pouliot Jr.
Richard Daniel Pouliot Sr.
b: September 11, 1929 p: Worcester County, Massachusetts
d: July 5, 2009 p: Ascension Parish, Louisiana
Rick' father sure looks Abenaki don't he? Oh wait, he wasn't.
There are no other genealogical inter-marriages to any other Native line descendants in the genealogical ancestry of Richard "Rick" Daniel Pouliot Jr.
Rick Pouliot's Genealogical Mapping:
Rick Pouliot (Megantiquois Abenaki), the Chairperson and co-founder of Gedakina, Inc'd. Sometimes in articles, Rick Pouliot, cousin to Paul Pouliot, claims to be “Meguntuc Abenaki” whereas his cousin Paul Wilson Pouliot has claimed to be a "Laurentien Iroquois" or an "Abenaki" as well.
December 13, 2002
N-11748-0 12/13/2002 Gedakinna, Inc.
Officers: (Officer 1) Rick Pouliot, (Officer 2) Judy Ann (nee: Fortin) Dow, (Officer 3) Melinda Neff, (Officer 4) Susan Soctomah, (Officer 6) Natalie Michell, (Officer 7) Cathleen Wilson
1. Marie Kakesik8k8e Mite8ameg8k8e aka Mitcominqui WESTERN ALGONQUIN
2. Marie Madeleine Couc dite LaFleur (married FRENCH)
3. Marguerite Françoise Ménard dite LaFontaine (married FRENCH)
4. Marie Louise Boileau (married FRENCH)
5. Marie Louise Perrault (married FRENCH)
6. Michel Poirier dite Roy (married FRENCH)
7. Ursule Poirier dite Roy (married FRENCH)
8. Joseph Blain / Blair (married FRENCH)
9. Delphis (Delphin) Blain / Blair (married FRENCH)
10. Nora Alice Blain / Blair (married FRENCH)
11. Marie Elizabeth Lacassé (married FRENCH)
12. Judy Ann (nee: Fortin) Dow
Judy Dow = "Winooski Abenaki" (?)
I seriously honestly don't know how this works ...
because she has NO ABENAKI ANCESTORS
☝
Lisa (nee: Brooks) POULIOT (Abenaki) has accomplished an immense amount during her lifetime, all while being down to earth and humble. Though she is a Guggenheim Fellow, and has won the Bancroft Prize, she remains passionate about the simple things in life. She loves to garden, spend time with family, and track animal migrations.
She stays off of social media and does not own a smartphone, preferring nature over constant artificial stimulation. She is a beloved mom, sister, and aunt.
To review MORE about Judy Ann (nee: Fortin) Dow and her concocted "Abenaki" persona and self-promotion as such: Judy Dow Post of April 2019 this retrospective post has her Genealogical Mapping etc.
Rick Pouliot and Judy Dow of Gedakina Inc. DETAILS of Gedakina, Inc.'d.
So these Foundations etc have supported Lisa Brooks, Rick Pouliot and Judy Dow, and Bruchacs in their race shifting. Helped to benefit and promote them as "Abenakis" who none of them have Abenaki ancestry? How interesting !!! Do they know? Do these Foundations and Grant providers give a damn?
Geesh, Total revenues were $577,371 to $581,551 in 2017-2018. I am in the wrong business! It's PROFITABLE to claim to be an "Abenaki" these days.
Anyone can 'see' what is happening with these "1600's single "root ancestor" "Abenaki" descendants living here in Vermont and or New Hampshire with reviewing the genealogical and social histories of Rick Pouliot, Paul Pouliot and or Judy Dow.
The "Abenaki" appear to have assumed an "Abenaki" identity based merely on belief and story, promoting themselves to the naive public, (AND TO NATIVE PEOPLES!) based on their created-persona's, yet no one ever has apparently honestly looked at these people's genealogical backgrounds. Not even Vermont State Politicians.
It's called "cognitive dissonance" and politicians and grant providers etc, humanities departments etc would rather comfortably live with the colonizer lies rather than the TRUTH of the matter of Abenaki Identity Theft ...
Now let's review the retrospective details of "Abenaki" Lisa Tonyo Brooks:
Lisa Tonyo (nee: Brooks) Pouliot
Lisa Tonyo (nee: Brooks) is married to Richard “Rick” Pouliot, cousin to Paul Wilson Pouliot.
2005 -
"My father called Lisa every week at the Missisquoi-Swanton-based tribal office in the 1990’s and heard about the “upbuilding” project in which Lisa had been engaged. He would come to tribal gatherings at the old Fish Hatchery on the shore of Lake Champlain, back to the place, at the village center, where his own grandfather had been born. He took her upstream to the places along the Missisquoi River where he had fished as a boy, the places where they had gathered berries, and recalled the stories of huge extended family gatherings."
"Lisa asked her grandfather of the stories of maple sugaring, rum-running, and rabbit tracks “that linked up with other Abenaki families along the river of his birth.” Her sister visited Missisquoi, as a teenager."
"Lisa Brooks was trained in a PhD program, and could take a graduate course in Native American literature every semester. She had courses in Native history and linguistics and had participated in Cornell’s first graduate seminar in American Indian studies, which had formed the core of a newly developed graduate minor."
"Lisa was a visiting instructor at Colorado College."
"Lisa Brooks, Native American Studies Program at Amherst on Native American identity of place, The Common Pot."
February 22, 2008
When did "She:kon" (a Mohawk greeting of hello) become an "Abenaki" greeting (???)
Well Paul W. Pouliot DID in fact) get an "Abenaki" Cowasuck membership card from Howard Franklin Knight Jr. back in the summer of 1992 under the implied BS of being a "Laurentian Iroquois" created persona. (LMAO) and Howard, being another FAKE "Abenaki" race shifting appropriator believed it! I simply share this email of retrospect, out of the humor and absurdity of these race shifting "Abenaki" self-created-importance in their desires for Colonizer State Recognition back in 2008. So maybe Rick was just acknowledging his close cousin Paul's "Laurentian Iroquois" created "persona" (?)
[The red font colorization in the genealogical mapping is simply to 'walk' the lineage ancestry back to Native Ancestral connection in the 1600 or 1700's and or blue font colorization is visually to 'walk' the linage ancestry back to Captive Ancestral connection in the same time frame (1600's-1700's) within my genealogical program RootsMagic, that I use.]
March 22, 2008
7:30 p.m.
Ndakinna Education Center in Greenfield Center, New York, will host a panel discussion with three Algonkian Indian scholars: Lisa Brooks, Ph.D. (Abenaki), Marge Bruchac, Ph.D. (Abenaki)
Lisa Brooks spent a number of years working on recognition research for the Abenaki Nation of Vermont, St. Francis Sokoki Band, in Swanton, Vermont.
October 9, 2008
Harvard Gazette
By Emily T. Simon, FAS Communications
Power of the pen in early America
Lisa Tonyo Brooks Pouliot explores the uses and significance of Native American writing in Colonies
Brooks, who is herself a member of the Abenaki Nation, hopes that her research will have an impact on how early American history and literature is taught and studied.
2009 -
“Native Space” and “Ancient Ways of Travel on the Kwanitekw” in Where the Great River Rises: An Atlas of the Connecticut River Watershed in Vermont and New Hampshire. University Press of New England, Hanover and London, pp. 132-137, 187. Lisa Brooks, Donna Louise (nee: Carvalho) Charlebois - Roberts Moody, and John Scott Moody
September 08, 2009
Episode #19: Native Written Literacy, Resistance, and the Recovery of Native Space
Join your host, Dr. J. Kehaulani Kauanui for an episode featuring Dr. Lisa Brooks (Abenaki) on the program to discuss her new book, The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast. In The Common Pot, Brooks focuses on the role of writing as a tool of social reconstruction and land reclamation. She documents and analyzes the ways in which Native leaders-including Samson Occom, Joseph Brant, Hendrick Aupaumut, and William Apess-adopted writing as a tool to assert their rights and reclaim land.
Lisa Brooks is an Assistant Professor of History and Literature and of Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University, where she teaches courses in Native American literature, with an emphasis on historical, political, and geographic contexts.
She also serves on the Faculty Advisory Board of the Harvard University Native American Program (HUNAP). She co-authored the collaborative volume, Reasoning Together: The Native Critics Collective (2008). She serves on the Editorial Board of Studies in American Indian Literatures, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) Council, and on the Advisory Board of Gedakina, a non-profit organization focused on indigenous cultural revitalization, educational outreach, and community wellness in northern New England.
September 22, 2009
Episode #20: Gedakina: Revitalizing A Native Way of Life
Join your host, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, for an episode featuring the community work of a non-profit organization called Gedakina (g’ dah keen nah), which means, “Our world, a way of life” in the Abenaki language. Gedakina is a multi-generational endeavor to strengthen and revitalize the cultural knowledge and identity of Native American youth and families that are rural, urban and reservation communities from across northern New England. Our first of two guests on the show will be Rick Pouliot (Megantiquois Abenaki), the Chair and Co-founder of Gedakina. Over the past sixteen years, he has focused on programs and initiatives that positively impact First Nations youth and families. The second guest will be Jesse Bowman Bruchac (St Francis/Sokoki band of the Abenaki), who has worked extensively over the past two decades in projects involving the preservation of the Abenaki language, music, and traditional culture. In 2009 Jesse launched http://WesternAbenaki.com –a website offering a keyword searchable database of the language, lessons and a variety show produced entirely in Abenaki.
[Jesse B. Bruchac, his brother James and their father Joseph Edward Bruchac III are now members of the Nulhegan group based in Orleans County, Vermont, led formerly by Luke Andrew Willard and now by Donald Warren Stevens Jr.]
Spring 2011
Collaborating to Restore Native Voices
By Stephen Collins '74
When Harvard Professor Lisa Brooks was growing up, her father [Brian Basil Brooks], an Abenaki Indian, used to tell her, “There’s a reason American history moves from the Pilgrims right to the American Revolution. That was 150 years that the natives were in charge.”
In March Lisa Brooks gave the keynote address for Colby’s event in the Wabanaki- Bates-Bowdoin-Colby collaborative program, and she made a good start on her lecture title: Restoring Wabanaki Voices in Literature and History.
Lisa Brooks told stories and read preserved documents, awikhigan in the Abenaki language, that showed deep insights and nuanced strategies from the Native American side of negotiations over land and water rights and armed conflicts. She cited Wabanaki men and women from Maine’s Presumpscot River (which drains Sebago Lake through what is now Westbrook and Portland) and Casco Bay region and the Connecticut (Kwinitekw) River valley—leaders who understood and deftly navigated the push and pull of cultural conflict on the European-Wabanaki frontier.
July 10, 2013
2014 –
Lisa Tonyo Brooks, associate professor of English and American studies at Amherst College, will be speaking about her research on Farmington Falls Native American history. Her book, “The Common Pot,” is deeply rooted in her Abenaki homeland and has been widely influential in a global network of scholars. Brooks taught at UMF during the spring of 2012 with the Libra Scholar initiative, a program designed to bring scholars of national and international prominence to UMS campuses.
February 29, 2016
Lisa Brooks, whose Abenaki identity informed a large part of her own Goddard studies as well as her ongoing work as a scholar and professor at Amherst College, invited members of the Missisquoi Tribe of the Abenaki Nation to be honored at graduation.
I have been fortunate to participate in an extensive regional and global network of writers, scholars, and communities. While completing my undergraduate degree, I worked on aboriginal rights and land preservation cases in our tribal office at the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi. As an emerging writer, I was mentored through Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. After focusing on comparative American literatures and Native American Studies as a graduate student at Boston College and Cornell University, I joined the faculty at Harvard University, teaching a wide range of courses in Native American literature, transnational American history and literature, and Oral Traditions. During that time, I was deeply honored to be elected to the inaugural Council of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association and to participate in “a paradigm shift” within literary studies.
June 12, 2016
The Root Social Justice Center
28 Williams St., First Floor Brattleboro, VT 05301
DECOLONIZING OUR MINDS & SPACES: SOCIAL JUSTICE FORUM, 10AM-12:30 PM
FOLLOWED BY MAPPING YOUR STORY: WORKSHOP WITH ABENAKI ARTIST JUDY DOW, 2-5 PM
At this forum we will learn from Abenaki scholars Dr. Lisa Brooks and Judy Dow who have been working to reclaim the history of their ancestors and this land we live on.
Come back in the afternoon for a workshop on Mapping Your Story with artist Judy Dow.
2017 –
Lisa Brooks (Abenaki) is Associate Professor of English and American Studies, Amherst College, and Chair of the Five College Native American and Indigenous Studies Program. Author of The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast (University of Minnesota Press, 2008) and numerous articles and essays, Brooks also worked in the tribal office of the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi on aboriginal rights and land preservation cases. As a Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Fellow, Brooks is completing her current book, entitled The Queen’s Right, the Printer’s Revolt, and the Place of Peace (Yale University Press, 2017) and an associated website, which places King Philip’s war in Indigenous networks and geographies.
Lisa Brooks is an Abenaki writer and scholar – her father's family is from the upper Missisquoi River (in northern Vermont) and the Pemigewasset River (in northern New Hampshire). Her mother's family is from Koszarawa, Poland. She currently lives in southern New Hampshire with her daughter and her husband Rick Pouliot, nearby her extended family. Brooks is an Assistant Professor of History and Literature and of Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University, where she teaches courses in Native American literature, with an emphasis on historical, political, and geographic contexts. She also serves on the Faculty Advisory Board of the Harvard University Native American Program (HUNAP). As a young woman, she worked in the tribal office of the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi, on aboriginal rights and land preservation cases, including the protection of the "Grandma Lampman's" site while as an intern from Goddard College.
[Lisa Brooks-Pouliot is (or was) a member of the St. Francis – Sokoki group, led by the late Homer Walter St. Francis Sr, and later by his daughter April (St. Francis) Rushlow – Merrill. As is her sister Casandra Brooks]
Lisa Brooks, who shares Western Abenaki and Polish heritage recently won the 2019 Bancroft prize for her seminar work Our Beloved Kin:A New History of King Philip’s War.
August 18, 2019
‘Plains Speaking’ series to explore 1696 Plains massacre
PORTSMOUTH - During the months of September and October, Pontine Theatre will present “Plains Speaking: Portsmouth’s 1696 Massacre in Fact and Fiction,” a series of events exploring the history and legacy of the massacre that occurred on the Portsmouth Plains on June 26, 1696.
Working with Denise (nee: Beauregard) and her second husband Paul Wilson Pouliot, Abenaki specialists in Native plant use, as project leaders will lead a trail walk. Participants will enter an environment that retains features that existed at the time of the massacre and will learn about native species and their traditional uses.
September 26, 2019
On Thursday, September 26, 2019 from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m., Lisa Brooks, Abenaki scholar, historian and professor of American Studies at Amherst College, will provide a Native perspective of historical documents pertaining to the aggressions and outbreaks that took place in New England following King Phillip’s War (1675-78).
September 26, 2019
7-8:30pm – Lisa Brooks
Lisa Brooks, Abenaki scholar, historian and professor of American Studies at Amherst College, will provide a Native perspective on historical documents pertaining to the aggression's and outbreaks that took place in New England beginning with King Philip’s War (1675-78). Held at the Levenson Room, Portsmouth Public Library.
DAWNLAND VOICES: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from New England
Edited by Siobhan Senier
Page XXIV (24) Acknowledgements section
Paul Pouliot (Abenaki), Rick Pouliot (Abenaki)
Page 1 Introduction:
Lisa Brooks (Abenaki), now at Amherst College. With their help, I started finding writers: dazzling, contemporary poets like Cheryl Savageau (Abenaki)
Page 9 Introduction:
Lisa Brooks (Abenaki), whose knowledge of early regional Native writing is encyclopedic, strategically selected texts underscoring Abenaki commitment to tribal homeland, community, language, and story.
October 14, 2019
UNH Women's and Gender Studies Department@UNHFeminists
@UofNH and @indigenousnh
And you can read/follow work of modern Abenaki women, including activist/artist Denise Pouliot, historian Dr. Lisa Brooks, anthropologists Dr. Marge Bruchac and Dr. Donna Roberts Moody, poet Cheryl Savageau, and many more. Follow@DawnlandVoices for Abenaki artists and writers.
Birds of fake feathers, do indeed flock together!
November 05, 2019
Norwich University Newsroom
Norwich University presents “Reframing Early History: King Philip’s War and the Abenaki Nation”
Award-winning author, literary scholar, and historian Lisa Brooks, Ph.D., will speak at 7 p.m. Nov. 19 in Mack Hall Auditorium. (Photo by Amherst University via Twitter.)
NORTHFIELD, Vt. – Norwich University’s Sullivan Museum and History Center presents “Reframing Early History: King Philip’s War and the Abenaki Nation,” a talk by award-winning author, literary scholar, and historian Lisa Brooks, Ph.D., at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 19 in Mack Hall Auditorium.
This event, sponsored by the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences, is free and open to the public.
In her presentation, Lisa Brooks will share the vital context of the Abenaki country during the First Indian War, later named King Philip’s War. Drawing from her research and insights for her most recent book, “Our Beloved Kin,” Lisa Brooks will invite attendees to use important native recollection, rare documents and maps of native lands to reframe the historical landscape.
She will also familiarize the audience with Weetamoo, a female Wampanoag leader unknown in traditional history but well-known in native recollection as a true diplomat who was elevated as a leader greater than King Philip.
Lisa Brooks, a professor of English and American Studies at Amherst College, uses indigenous methodologies, including a focus on language, place, community engagement and deep archival investigation to “decolonize” history and open paths of inquiry.
“To bring engaging speakers and culturally relevant programs to Vermont and make these events public ... this is the purpose of the grant award from the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences,” said Kevin K. Fleming, president of the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences. “We are proud to support this event in the bicentennial Year of Norwich University.”
Interview of Professor Lisa Brooks:
Favorite Author?
It would be nearly impossible for me to name a single favorite author or favorite book. Perhaps it is because I teach literature, which means I am always immersed in dialogue with thought-provoking authors and books and engaged with students in discussing them. This means I am constantly being introduced to new works, and repeatedly returning to beloved novels, poems, petitions and essays, seeing them anew. One of the new novels that is stirring deep conversation in the classroom and literary networks in Cherie Dimaline’s post-apocalyptic climate change novel, The Marrow Thieves. I have come to love speculative fiction, and The Marrow Thieves is my current favorite, that is, besides the work of my daughter, Lillie Rose Brooks, who is writing a piece called, “The Legends Behind the Book,” in which a brother and sister find a book about traditional Wabanaki stories and are transported by the book through time. Still, I think I cannot choose a “favorite” because it would be kind of like trying to choose a favorite elder. I do know that I would not be a writer or a professor without the tremendous network of authors who have influenced, inspired and supported me, including the vast network of Native American writers, who I teach, in my classes, and who taught me, even when I did not know what was possible.
Research Interests?
As a writer, literary scholar and historian, I work at the crossroads of early American literature & history, geography and Indigenous studies. In my writing and my teaching, I like to ask questions about how we see the spaces known as “New England” and “America” when we turn the prism of our perception to divergent angles. Indigenous methodologies, including a focus on language, place, and community engagement, are crucial to my research, as is deep archival investigation. My first book, The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast, focused on the recovery of Native writing and geographies, including the network of Indigenous writers which emerged in the northeast in the wake of English and French colonization. My new book, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War, reframes the historical landscape of “the first Indian War,” more widely known as King Philip’s War (1675-8). Having become increasingly drawn to the Digital Humanities, I have had the privilege of working with an extraordinary team of Amherst College students and scholars to create an interactive website, “Our Beloved Kin: Mapping a New History of King Philip’s War,” which features maps that decolonize the space of the colonial northeast, rare seventeenth century documents, and digital storytelling designed to open paths of inquiry.
I have been fortunate to participate in an extensive regional and global network of writers, scholars, and communities. While completing my undergraduate degree, I worked on aboriginal rights and land preservation cases in our tribal office at the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi. As an emerging writer, I was mentored through Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. After focusing on comparative American literature's and Native American Studies as a graduate student at Boston College and Cornell University, I joined the faculty at Harvard University, teaching a wide range of courses in Native American literature, transnational American history and literature, and Oral Traditions. During that time, I was deeply honored to be elected to the inaugural Council of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association and to participate in “a paradigm shift” within literary studies. I was part of the collaborative group that published Reasoning Together: The Native Critics Collective, and contributed the widely circulated “Afterword: At the Gathering Place,” to the provocative, collectively authored American Indian Literary Nationalism. Building bridges among scholarly disciplines, I have published essays in Northeastern Naturalist, American Literary History, PMLA, Studies in American Indian Literature's and the International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies. I currently serve on the Editorial Boards of Studies in American Indian Literature's and Ethno-history, and am a series editor for Native Americans of the Northeast, published by the University of Massachusetts Press. I continue to be active in community-based projects and networks, especially through the non-profit organization, Gedakina, which offers programs focused on cultural revitalization, youth and women’s empowerment, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in Native communities across New England.
I came to Amherst in 2012 from Harvard University, where I was the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities, in part because of the close, collaborative interactions between students, staff and faculty at Amherst. For me, learning from students and colleagues and being intellectually challenged in the classroom is a highlight of teaching in a liberal arts environment. I am especially privileged to teach from within the Younghee Kim-Wait/Pablo Eisenberg Native American Literature Collection, housed in the Frost Library Archives and Special Collections, and to collaborate with archivist and scholar Michael Kelly and the phenomenal Frost staff not only in teaching students but in sharing this collection with tribal communities and NAIS scholars in the region and across the continent.
Tips for aspiring writers?
Writing for me has always been a tool for thinking, for working out ideas, for figuring out puzzling challenges, for wrestling with paradoxes, for asking difficult questions and for expressing difficult experiences. In the Abenaki language, we have a word, awikhigawôgan, which is the activity of writing, mapping, drawing. That activity is what I do, and what I encourage emerging writers, including my students, to do. We also have a related word, awikhigan, which referred originally to birchbark maps and scrolls, but came to encompass books, letters, petitions, artistic media, and many other forms of writing, mapping and drawing. At the root of this word is the suffix for “instrument or tool.” So, I encourage students and writers to see writing as an instrument or tool, to enable deliberation and discovery, not as something they have to produce. I like to think of writing as the means, not the end. Even when that writing takes the form of a book, like Our Beloved Kin, I like to think that this awikhigan will become a tool to stimulate readers’ own deliberations and writings, sparking yet another round of awikhigawôgan.
Awards and Honors:
Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Fellowship, 2016 - 17
Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Prize: Most Thought Provoking Article, 2013, for “The Constitution of the White Earth Nation: A New Innovation in a Longstanding Indigenous Literary Tradition,” Studies in American Indian Literatures 23:4
Libra Professorship, University of Maine at Farmington, Spring 2012
New England Consortium Regional Fellowship, 2011
Media Ecology Association's Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Culture: The Common Pot, 2011
Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Prize: Reasoning Together. Voted one of the ten Most Influential Books in Native American and Indigenous Studies of the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century, 2011
Roslyn Abramson Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Harvard University, 2008
Ford Foundation Post-Doctoral Diversity Fellowship, 2007 - 2008
Native Americans at Harvard College “Role Model of the Year” Award, 2004
Guilford Dissertation Prize for Highest Excellence in English Prose, Cornell University, 2004
Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, 2002 - 2003
John Carter Brown Library Fellowship, May - June 2002
Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society, Nov - Dec 2001
Frances C. Allen Fellowship, Newberry Library, July - August 2000
Jean Stroebel-Starr Memorial Award, 1997: “Apprentice of the Year,” Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers
Lisa Brooks is an Abenaki writer and scholar – her father’s family is from the upper Missisquoi River (in northern Vermont) and the Pemigewasset River (in northern New Hampshire). Her mother’s family is from Koszarawa, Poland. She has lived in many places in New England, but she currently resides in the Connecticut River Valley, where she works as an Associate Professor of English and American Studies at Amherst College. Prior to joining the faculty at Amherst, Brooks was John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. While an undergraduate at Goddard College, Brooks worked in the tribal office of the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi, on aboriginal rights and land preservation cases. She received her Ph.D. in English, with a minor in American Indian Studies, from Cornell University in 2004. Her first book, The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast (University of Minnesota Press 2008), focused on the role of writing as a tool of social reconstruction and land reclamation in the Native northeast. Although rooted in her Abenaki homeland, Lisa Brooks’ scholarship has been widely influential in transnational networks. She served on the inaugural Council of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA), and currently serves on the Advisory Board of Gedakina, a non-profit organization focused on Indigenous cultural revitalization, educational outreach, and community wellness in New England.
August 04, 2020
The conversation will be moderated by Rhonda Anderson and will feature Larry Spotted Crow Mann and Lisa Brooks.
Abenaki Professor Lisa Brooks talks about the Connecticut River not being a boundary in our view, but a super highway at about the 30 minute mark in this video. At our first site, Contoocook/ Hopkinton it is becoming clear that there was a village in west Hopkinton/east Henniker. So much of our lives transcended the colonial boundaries. Lisa brings the whole issue with colonial boxes for place boundaries into a clearer view. It's a challenge we face as we work to bring the story of a space to life in our project.
Lisa Brooks-Pouliot: “Some of those Refugees from the Connecticut River Valley. One of them by the name of Wawanolett, who was Greylock, went north to Missisquoi; where my family’s from” …
10. Austin Lambert dit Lumbra (married 9. Celia Hélène Buskey)
11. Lillian May Lumbra
12. Cedric Henry Brooks
13. Brian Basil Brooks
14. Lisa Tonyo Brooks
8. Marie Hélène Provost
9. Celia Hélène Buskey (married 10. Austin Lambert dit Lumbra)
11. Lillian May Lumbra
12. Cedric Henry Brooks
13. Brian Basil Brooks
14. Lisa Tonyo Brooks
Captive Line No. 1:
1. John Stebbins and wife Dorothy Alexander
2. Abigail Marguerite Stebbins dit Stébenne
3. Joseph Denoyon
4. Marie Josephte Denoyon
5. Antoine Sénécal dit Laframboise
6. Henriette (Hattie) Sénécal dit Laframboise
7. Joseph Rosseau dit Brooks
8. George Joseph Brooks
9. Cedric Henry Brooks
10. Brian Basil Brooks
11. Lisa Tonyo Brooks
John Stebbins, his wife, Dorothy, and their six children were all captured. Not one was killed, probably because daughter Abigail had married Jean de Noyon, a French coureur de bois (man of the woods), living in Deerfield, on 3 February 1704 -- 26 days before the fatal attack on Deerfield, MA. John and son John Jr. were redeemed -- the rest of the children stayed in Canada, became Catholic and were naturalized. Apparently Jean had promised a better situation to his bride than he mastered, for in 1708 his wife petitioned for permission to take a mortgage to buy land in her own name to support her numerous family. Her siblings are poorly documented, but marriages for some of them are on record and the name Stebbins, in various spellings, is in the Montreal directory.
When the 200 Canadians with 140 Caughnawaga and Abenaki Indians commanded by Jean Baptiste Hertel de Rouville attacked Deerfield MA in late winter on 11 Mar 1704, Jacques Denoyon was living there with his new wife, Abigail STEBBINS. They had been married by the protestant minister, John Williams. on 14 Feb 1704 in Deerfield. Although other families suffered severely from the Indian attack, the Stebbins family was not molested. The family of STEBBINS went to Canada with the French and Indian party, partly as captives, partly as relatives of Jacques Denoyon. In the attack 49 persons were killed and about 109 made prisoners. There were 133 survivors left in Deerfield, some wounded.
The captors and captives camped the first night about ten miles from Deerfield, deep snow making an attack on them unrealistic without snowshoes. They traveled northward to Canada in deep snow by the Connecticut Valley, the White and Winooski Rivers to Lake Champlain and then the Richelieu River. Enroute two prisoners made their escape, but 20 were killed. Of the remaining 87, fifty were redeemed before 1731. Most of the prisoners went with the Mohawks to Sault Saint-Louis (Caughnawaga) or with the Abenakis to Odanak/Saint Francois, adjacent to Saint Francois du Lac. The Stebbins were allowed to go to Boucherville after a short period and in Chambly likely under the charge of Hertel.
The ancestry of the STEBBINS family probably goes back to John da STUBING of Essex, England who is recorded on the chancery rolls in 1201, where there is a town or parish called Stebbing, or to RIchard de STEBING, living at Great Dunmow, Essex, England in 1275. No direct connection between the earliest known STEBBINS and the STEBBINS in America or Canada has been established.
Captive Line No. 2:
1. Mary Corliss
2. Clement Neff
3. William Neff
4. Benjamin Neff
5. Hannah Neff
6. Lydia Spaulding
7. Lydia Stone
8. Mary Jane Loucks
9. Hannah Madora (Dora) Perry
10. William Henry Perry
11. Kathleen Barbara Perry
12. Brian Basil Brooks
13. Lisa Tonyo Brooks
Mary Corliss had been captured in an Indian raid on Haverhill on March 15, 1697 during King William's War; and subsequently had escaped her captors.
Captive Line No. 3:
1. Mary Corliss
2. Mary Neff
3. Mary Button
4. William Neff
5. Benjamin Neff
6. Hannah Neff
7. Lydia Spaulding
8. Lydia Stone
9. Mary Jane Loucks
10. Hannah Madora (Dora) Perry
11. William Henry Perry
12. Kathleen Barbara Perry
13. Brian Basil Brooks
14. Lisa Tonyo Brooks
Captive Line No. 4:
1. Mary Corliss
2. Clement Neff Sr.
3. Clement Neff Jr.
4. Anna Neff
5. Hannah Neff
6. Lydia Spaulding
7. Lydia Stone
8. Mary Jane Loucks
9. Hannah Madora (Dora) Perry
10. William Henry Perry
11. Kathleen Barbara Perry
12. Brian Basil Brooks
13. Lisa Tonyo Brooks
Captive Line No. 5:
1. Mary Corliss
2. Mary Neff
3. Mary Button
4. Clement Neff Jr.
5. Anna Neff
6. Hannah Neff
7. Lydia Spaulding
8. Lydia Stone
9. Mary Jane Loucks
10. Hannah Madora (Dora) Perry
11. William Henry Perry
12. Kathleen Barbara Perry
13. Brian Basil Brooks
14. Lisa Tonyo Brooks
So ... now that the genealogical review and mapping has been done on Rick Pouliot and his wife Lisa (nee: Brooks) has been completed, HOW are is Rick an alleged "Megantic Abenaki" or his wife "Abenaki" ??? When their Native Line of descent go back to ancestors that were not Abenakis?! Their narratives are based merely on belief and subjective stories, perhaps a Homer Card of membership, and or simply something else. Dare I say these "Abenakis" in Vermont and New Hampshire aren't really Abenakis at all. They simply "bankroll" and BS the naive public, educational agencies, the Humanities Dept's, and children (and adults) into believing that they are "Abenakis."
This 'movement' within higher Education such as Amherst is allowing benefits for their race shifting, and it is NOT DECOLONIZING anything !! It's just promoting the race shifting dynamics of these so-called self-identifying "Abenakis" like Marge Bruchac et al who simply "attach" themselves to self-serving egotistical legitimate Abenakis and or other Native Peoples (et al) within Academia etc. Plus it is quite profitable I am sure. I mean really, (quote) "Dr. Margaret (Marge) Bruchac, of Abenaki Indian descent" in her Biographical Information http://www.maligeet.net/Biographical_Info.html First sentence is a lie. The genealogy has been mapped, the DNA testing done. Bruchac's were most certainly NOT ABENAKI, they came from Slovak ethnicity and Bowman's were derived from an illegitimate baptized boy named Louis whose paternal father remains thus far a mystery even to the Bowman descendants. Y-DNA is matching to Vaudry, from Lamberville, France. Most certainly the Bowman's tied to the Bruchac bunch in Greenfield, NY were not Obomsawin's of Odanak or any other Abenaki family! So how is Joseph, Marge Bruchac or his two sons and grandchildren of Abenaki descent?!!! It is all based on myth, subjective narrative and BS lies.
If anyone cares or has a mind to look at the genealogical documents of this research Lisa Brooks Genealogical Documents Etc.
NOWHERE does Lisa (nee: Brooks) ancestors back to her 2nd Great-Grandparents or those ancestors descendants IDENTIFY THEMSELVES or were identified prior to ca. 1980's as Indians/Natives/Abenakis. Everything I found INDICATES a clear FRENCH/ WHITE self-identity for all of those ancestral descendants of Mrs. Lisa Brooks-Pouliot; the same for her husband Rick.
It's ONLY contemporary descendants such as Rick and Paul Pouliot (and Lisa and Casandra Brooks) who seem to keep self-identifying post 1975 as "Abenakis" based on some very dubious subjective beliefs and narratives.
Genealogically speaking, their "Abenaki-ness" does not find support, objectively. If anyone DOES in fact have the ability to SHOW and SHARE these people are in fact Abenakis, by descent, please, I am open to amending this post.
Presently, it looks to me like they are in this "Abenaki" self-identity out of egotistical whim and for profit and self-importance. None of the above persons or family can legitimately objectively prove that they descent from the Abenaki. Or else they would.
As for UMass Amherst as an Higher Education Institution, IMHO, it has been and is a magnet for race shifting created "Abenakis" just like at Dartmouth College et al. These institutions CLAIM and IMPLY they are "decolonizing" education but I don't see it that way. The reality is, when Amherst has had so many women (the likes of which are above mentioned by name, usually women) who are so remotely descended from a singular "root ancestor" whom these people imply was an Abenaki, or that they themselves are "Abenakis" well ... these educational institutions like Amherst are merely giving benefit and promoting the dynamic of race shifting: wherein WHITE people reinventing themselves into becoming "Abenaki" ... it's profitable for both the race shifter, and the Colleges/Universities etc.
Marge Bruchac, Donna Roberts Moody, Lisa Brooks, et al ... have all went through or been attached to Amherst.
Dartmouth is another college that allows these state-recognized race shifters in Vermont to drag their nonsense into Academia and Schools around the USA. These race shifting "Abenaki" wannabiiak have been and are promoting themselves ... and indoctrinating naive American students to believe these race shifters lies and deceit. It all began in the mid-1970's. These colleges don't give a damn, and neither do some Abenakis who egotistically benefit as well by rubbing elbows with these "Abenaki" pretenders. Because it's profitable $$$ for both. Even the State's Humanities Departments and NEFA have given THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of DOLLARS to these race shifters in Vermont and New Hampshire. The list of names is quite interesting. Dare I say that the Vermont Folk Life Center also has promoted and benefited these "Abenaki" wannabiiak over the years.
Sort of reminds me of what Ward Churchill was doing too, come to think of it. Gray Owl, Iron Eyes Cody, Sal Mineo ... and even the Bruchac's and so many others.
Hollywood, Incorporated taught so many Americans how to 'race shift' and that it was OK to 'race shift' . A little make-up, a costume/regalia, a plastic membership card, a name change and suddenly one is a shake-and-bake instant Abenaki Indian, just like Sylvain Rivard in Quebec, or Lisa (Brooks) and her husband Rick Pouliot.
And guess who now operates Gedakina, Inc.'d? Judy Ann (nee: Fortin) Dow. http://gedakina.org/
She's benefiting from, and promoting not only herself, but also other race shifters: Judy Dow PROMOTING Bruchac's her fellow race shifting friends.
The book "Hidden Roots" and "March Toward the Thunder" written by Joseph Bruchac was a 'promotion' tool subjectively, that Bruchac' themselves by way of their Bowman ancestor Louis Bowman (1844-1918) and his mother "Sophie" Senecal dite Laframboise (allegedly somehow and in some way) were Abenaki Indians.
So some members of the Abenakis and some Penobscots and some Nipmuc's and some Passamaquodies, etc have in fact, been supporting, benefiting from and promoting 'race shifting' and those race shifters here in Vermont and New Hampshire .... just as in Darryl Leroux' book Distorted Descent which quite eloquently and objectively evaluates in depth the race shifting dynamic in the province of Quebec etc and the pop-up groups and players therein.
