June 09, 2021
VTDigger Newspaper
Jeff Benay: Abenaki relationship with UVM goes back 35 years
My Response to Vt.Digger on August 09, 2021:
Reading the June 09, 2021 editorial article by Jeffrey Benay astounded my mind. Literally!
Mr. Benay repeats the often-said 'mantras' that the St. Francis-Sokoki group were "always here" etc. He also claims that Gregory Sanford, VT State Archivist had found the boxes of the Eugenics Survey of VT records.
This is contrary to the promoted narrative Kevin Dann publishing that it was he himself, that had found those V.E.S. (VT Eugenics Survey) records in the summer of 1986. Or am I missing some key component of possible collusion or confusion on the part of elderly Benay here?
Apparently, I surmise, that Benay is merely misremembering who actually brought the boxes of V.E.S. materials (that have been used for these "Abenakis" political agenda to whip up public sympathies over the years) to the attention of Homer and his band of "Abenakis".
Benay also FAILS to mention that Donald Warren Stevens Jr. CAME from and of, literally OUT OF Homer's group prior to going over to the Nulhegan group, whilst Luke A. Willard had been appointed the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs, in their agenda to "stack" the VCNAA (Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs) with their own Alliance's members (and their allies).
Don Stevens had worked on the Abenaki-Self-Help Association, before becoming a "Chief" of this so-called Nulhegan group that had been created in the summer of 2004 out of the Clan of the Hawk group that had been led by the late Ralph Skinner Swett. Ralph's group had been created out of the late Howard F. Knight's shenanigans, which also retrospectively, had been created out of Richard "Black Horse" Phillips shenanigans due to Richard's dissatisfaction with the late Homer St. Francis Sr. of Swanton back in the late 1970's.
William Haviland and Marjorie Power were strong advocates for Homer and his group over the years since the mid-1970's and had written the Original Vermonters book in the early 1980's.
These two Homer-advocates (nor anyone else for that matter) had never seriously looked at the genealogical side of these French-Canadian descendants who now -post-1975 claimed to be thee Vermont "Abenakis" all hiding-in-plain-sight apparently.
Michael Oatman, had taken pieces of the Eugenics Survey (i.e. files/documents) out of those V.E.S. boxes and began re-inventing (for public shock value and "Abenaki" sympathies) the V.E.S. narrative, i.e. erroneously claiming that Adolph Hitler had been communicating with the V.E.S., which Jeff Benay in his editorial perpetuates.
Yet the big whopping lie, was that the V.E.S. had been 'targeting' these "Abenakis" in VT, because they were Abenakis.
In actuality, the V.E.S. had been composed of K.K.K. advocates and racists, who were nefariously yet working for the V.E.S. and were "quietly" targeting Black-White intermarriages ... and their offspring/descendants of some families, deemed of "interest" ... such as the Phillips family of Franklin and Chittenden Counties.
Of which, Don Stevens Jr. descends from!
He claims the Phillips family were and today are thee Vermont Abenakis.
I have documented genealogically, historically, and genetically that such is NOT the reality at all.
http://reinventedvermontabenaki.blogspot.com/2018/07/
In fact, the progenitor, Antoine, of the family was, in fact, Black (i.e. Negro).
Antoine born about 1814 (not 1785) had married to a French woman Catherine Emery dite Coderre in ca. 1830 who had had been born in 1806 to two French-Canadian parents!
I even sought out two direct-male-descendants of this couple, in order to, at my own expense, attempt to derive an answer, as to whether or not Antoine was, in fact, paternally descended from ... Africa and or the West Indies. Indeed, the results confirm through FTDNA that Antoine and ALL his direct-male-descendants have the Y-DNA haplogroup of B-M181, which is derived from Africa. It is found within direct-male-descendants of those transferred into SLAVERY here in the United States.
FTDNA's Haplogroup B page refers to Africa because it deals with 'deep ancestry' ...
"Y-DNA haplogroup B, like Y-DNA haplogroup A, is seen only in Africa and is scattered widely, but thinly across the continent. B is thought to have arisen approximately 50,000 years ago. These haplogroups have higher frequencies among hunter-gather groups in Ethiopia and Sudan, and are also seen among click language-speaking populations. The patchy, widespread distribution of these haplogroups may mean that they are remnants of ancient lineages that once had a much wider range but have been largely displaced by more recent population events."
Of course, in the 1980's and 1990's, the St. Francis-Sokoki group led by Homer and then "Blackie" Lampman, and later still Homer (again) ... didn't have the Internet access.
They didn't have Ancestry(dot)com.
They didn't have genetic DNA testing either.
All they had was their faulty beliefs and perceptions.
In their race shifting ways, reinventing themselves into the "Abenaki" of VT, it was and is today, still profitable to identify "as Abenaki" and have that laminated membership card from one of these CPAIN "tribes" in VT/NH.
These VT/NH families that Benay mentions were in the V.E.S. records were not in the SURVEY, because they were Abenakis ... but rather it was, indeed, because they had been drunks, adulterous, incestuous, and considered ne'er do wells, in their respective communities, in a rapidly changing Northeast, especially Vermont in particular. And if you think/assume that I am being "hateful" or racist, or biased or bigoted by saying as I have... well see for yourself, what the actual documents say and show!
St. Francis and Hoague Family Eugenics Survey Records
It was/is clear from the V.E.S. records that the St. Francis family were FRENCH-Canadian in their ethnic identity prior to 1974, per the records of the V.E.S. and those records that the SURVEY had been seeking and obtaining from other VT agencies. Even the VT Attorney General's Report of 2003 and the two reports from 2005-2007 i.e. BIA Reports, CLARIFIED as much!
Clearly the V.E.S. boxes of pseudo "research" of the 1920's and 1930's is just that. While such records have sat in State Archive Custody, they literally "rot" and break down.
While people have literally stolen some pieces of the V.E.S. Records for their own reasons since 1986, the State has refused to preserve them, microfilm them, protecting those very records. Labels fall off, and the files are thrown back into the boxes in disarray.
True, researchers like myself, have paid hundreds of dollars for digital duplicates (PDF's) of the V.E.S. record files themselves (Woodward, Sweester, Phillips, Ways, to name just a few), yet each time someone does this, the records themselves deteriorate with each handling by the public and/or the very archivists hired to protect them from deterioration.
The V.E.S. Records are a matter of public record yet the state had (in the 1990's) attempted to 'pirate' them away, keeping them 'pseudo-secret', while Homer and his "Abenakis" went about their created narrative (along with Benay's support etc) implying that their ancestors (usually their lateral relatives) had been targeted for sterilization, "because they were Abenakis" and due to that, they all had to hide-in plain-sight, their alleged true ethnic identities as Abenakis.
OK, lets say, for the sake of argument, what Benay argues in his most recent editorial article, is hypotheticall, "true" ... subjectively as it is regardless ... that the V.E.S. targeted Abenakis within the State of Vermont.
Question: What about 30 years BEFORE the V.E.S. (ca. mid-to-late 1800's) when Abenakis were coming to VT from Odanak, an Abenaki Community comprised of Abenakis having fled the States here in the Northeast after the Revolutionary War?
Odanak has been in existence since 1675! Abenakis didn't hide in plain sight clearly. They sold baskets throughout Vermont; Nicholas Panadis and other Abenakis attended the Abnaki Boy's Camp on North Hero, had a camp in Highgate, VT up to the early 1900's at least; Watso' sold baskets in Burlington, VT etc; and Obomsawin' and other Abenakis had moved back to their traditional ancestral territories throughout the 1900's up to present.
Most certainly, Margaret Sanger had created her 'Negro Project' and pray tell why was Perkins tracking the Phillips family and that of the Phelps family of St. Albans, VT through his Eugenics Survey?
Importantly, what was the Phillips family, in part or in whole, TRYING to "hide" post-1975 if they really weren't "Abenakis"? Was it the fact that the Phillips family in the 1920's and 30's TRIED to "hide" in plain sight, the very FACT that they derived from Antoine and his father Peter Phelps?!
By hiding that dynamic, that Vermont had THOUSANDS of African families and not just from the Underground Railroad, those formerly enslaved, fleeing to the North and into and out of Canada, whose really the racists? Vermonter's want to PC talk the talk about how the state was so liberal and had such an anti-Slavery stance, yet the state of VT allowed slavery in one form or another, legally speaking, talking out one side, and doing another out the other! While the different newspapers speak about, with such interest, about Alexander Twilight and Daisy Turner, et al, and of course, Elsie Guyette and others have written wonderful books on the subject of Black Vermonter's, little had been said or realized about St. Albans, and Franklin County, VT's Black population in Vermont.
Indeed, Dorothy Canfield Fisher was a "quiet" little "do-good'er" and a bit pseudo- 'nazi-fied' racist herself, looking her nose at some, while elevating others, and given the right climate, surely she did "quietly" advocate in her writings, even encouraged (and 'normalized') the discrimination against people of whom she'd thought "beneath" her and other like-minded Vermonter: racism and discriminatory tactics cloaked in the do-good'er tourist-advocate dogma of her day and generation. They probably thought it was "cute" yet "horrified" when reading the Vermont's Burlington Free Press articles about Antoine's grandson Peter! Or about the Blocks up in St. Albans, VT, which eventually burned down.
There were and are literally THOUSANDS like Henry Perkins and Dorothy Canfield Fisher in Vermont then, and today. Vermont was ALL WHITE so the narrative went, while ignoring the enclaves and communities of Black families ... and even some Abenakis as well, which I have afore-mentioned (i.e. Obomsawin's at Thompson's Point, and also over in Orleans County, VT etc).
In simple, I'm just pointing out that obviously if Vermont had simply done more thorough scratch and sniff test genealogically, regarding Homer's group, that Jeff Benay continues to advocate for, Vermont'er's would (then and today) realize they have been and are still being deceived, even in this June 05, 2021 editorial letter by Benay himself and by these "Abenakis" such as Don Stevens Jr., now of the Nulhegan entity in Orleans County, VT.
If the VTDigger folks seriously would kindly open their eyes and ears people would hear the protestations and resistance of Odanak and Wôlinak Abenaki First Nations (and other Wabanaki Communities) against this Vermont "recognition" of these 4-5 groups in VT/NH and the varied VT/NH agencies of the race-shifting support, that Darryl Leroux wrote about in his book Distorted Descent.
Of course, there is always the dynamic of censorship, cognitive dissonance and dissociation by so many to the truth these days, in attempts to remain "blind" and "comfortable" living within the distortions and lies by so many, who don't want to be seen as discriminatory and races against the actual legitimate Abenakis out there in the Northeast. It's a strange world we live in today indeed.
But seriously, ask yourselves why Jeffrey Benay has the highest retirement fund in all of Vermont ,and then ask how that came to be, and why?
Secondly, why does Benay still continue to advocate for a bunch of race shifting "Abenakis" when the truth is literally right in front of him?! Right under everyone's noses, and fingers with a simple google search.
Why doesn't Vermont (and New Hampshire) wake up to this dynamic, instead of promoting it?
Because it's profitable. Because it's easier. Of course, I am sure, this blog post will be deemed "hateful" and a "personal attack" on these poor and struggling "Abenakis" of VT/NH (yet again) by VtDigger et al.
This isn't about hate or my dislike or attempting to 'attack' anyone, least of all Jeff Benay.
He makes a very good point though: WHY is Don Stevens speaking as if he is an Abenaki, who talks for all of the so-called "Abenaki" Alliance today? Is it about POWER EGO and CONTROL?
Suffice it to say, Vermont'er's (and including N.H. people) need to wake up and drink a cup of reality about these so-called self-identifying "Abenakis" ... and their allied sponsors.
In conclusion, Jeff Benay has had a lucrative career working for, advocating for, and now defending the "Abenaki" in Swanton, VT, as well as his wife. He promotes a blatant lie to all Vermonters and defends the propaganda he himself crafted, so that these race shifters could obtain fraudulent State of Vermont Recognition in 2006 and subsequent actions thereafter by the State's Legislatures and Governors. He ought to be ashamed of himself, but he isn't. And that's a problem in and of itself. He's just another self-promoter advocating for race shifters pretending to be "Abenaki" in the group he's worked for, since the early 1980's, just like William Haviland, John Scott Moody (et al) has all these years since 1975.
