The Reinvention of the Alleged Vermont and New Hampshire Abenakis: 08/25/25

Marge Bruchac in January 1994, photographed Rick O'Bomsawin and Paul O'Bomsawin at Silver Fox Recording Studio.

"It's ALWAYS about Proximity and Associations"

Marge Bruchac Opinion Piece

Dated May 12, 1995

"It was dangerous to reveal ancestry"

Daily Hampshire Gazette Newspaper

Jesse B. Bruchac (Abenaki), the son of Joseph E. Bruchac and founder of Bowman Web Design, toured with the Odanak Drum, Awasos Sigwan, in Belgium in 1995.

The DawnLand Singers released “Alnobak,” a CD of songs in Abénaki and English, in 1994. The title is Abénaki for “human beings.” The CD included drumming by Awassos Sigan, the Spring Bear Drummers from Odanak, which is the Abénaki Reserve in Canada "where Joe Bruchac’s grandfather Jesse Bowman was born."

Margaret (Marge) Bruchac wrote a single-sheet narrative paper in June of 1996 entitled “Jesse’s Powder Horn”. He (Jesse Elmer Bowman) had an old powder horn. In fact, he had (she had written) two of them, one large and plain and worn-out looking, and the other, a small decorated one with little cross-hatch carvings of a goose, a basket, a beaver, and some patterns that ran around the rim of it.

Margaret Bowman went on to write that her maternal grandpa Jesse Elmer Bowman had told them (quoting her writing), “my great-grandfather went down there to that big battle by the river in old Saratoga, and had carried this powder horn.”

How could Jesse Bowman, have known who his father’s father was? When his father Louis was in fact born in July of 1844 and then baptized in June of 1845, as illegitimate, and no parents were given on that baptismal record?

Of course we know who Louis’ mother was, from the Civil War Pension records that Marge herself had obtained, which has been validated by the DNA testing post-January 2016 of Robert Howard Bowman, son of Howard Leroy Bowman, the latter being the grandson of Louis (1844-1918) Bowman.

Margaret Bruchac wrote of Vermont’s "Abenakis" having done the tactic “hiding-in-plain-sight” and began perpetuating that myth to her audiences in July of 1996 at the Littleton, New Hampshire Powwow that had orchestrated by the late Nancy Lee (Millette) Cruger. Many accepted this appropriated concept, for lack their lack of having documentarily-objective evidence of Abénaki / Abenaki descent genealogically; including some Bowman descendants related to the Bruchac’s.

Joseph Bruchac III stated that he’d begun to make music out of myth, to sing his stories. Joseph stated:

“My grandfather, Jesse Bowman, was one of those people who looked visibly Indian,” said Joseph Bruchac, “But he always claimed he was French-Canadian. My grandfather being an Abénaki was our family secret, something everybody knew but nobody wanted to talk about.

Jesse Bowman fled from school in the fourth grade to escape prejudice, and then hid his heritage ever after.

“There was such racism and violence that hiding Indian identity was common practice,” said Joseph Bruchac sadly.

“But as he raised me, he taught me some things I later learned are very characteristic of Native Americans: great tolerance, patience and gentleness toward children, and a love for and connection to the natural world.”

“As an older teenager I sought out Native people, trying to reconnect to other Abénaki,” he said. “They were called Adirondacks by the Iroquois, and that means ‘porcupines or eaters of bark.’”

“When he (Jesse E. Bowman) died on January 28, 1970, I began to meet other Indians who acknowledged their Native ancestry,” said Joseph Bruchac.

“When I started meeting Native elders, I found their demeanor, their appearance and way of speaking was like that of my grandfather; it was like coming home for me.”

In March of 1996, in yet one of numerous articles regarding the author Joseph Bruchac, Joe stated:

“My grandfather didn’t want to talk about his heritage. It’s something I didn’t hear a lot about.”

It was also during that time (early 1970’s) that Joseph Bruchac began to search out his Native American roots, combining the stories he picked up through research with his natural knack for storytelling.

…“Bomazeen: The name comes from Obum-sawin. It means “Keepers of the Ceremonial Fire.” It is a name which has been spelled many ways by Abénaki people, some of whom still carry variations of that name. Joseph Obowmaswine was a veteran of the War of 1812, fighting on the Canadian side.

Today at Odanak (the Abénaki reserve on the Saint Francis River in Quebec Province), the Obomsawin family still lives. And the name Cowin, which was that of a family of Indians in Vermont in the late 1880’s, probably came from Obomsawin. Names are changed frequently from father to son among the Abénakis.

Sometimes … [Page 186] … an Abénaki name has been Gallicized, then re-Abénaki-ized, and then Anglicized.

Sabbatist > Saint Jean-Baptiste > Sabbatist

St. Pierre > Sa Bial > Sabael

Obum-sawin > Bomazeen > Bowman

The name of my mother’s father – Jesse E. Bowman

Jumping ahead two years, in October of 1998, in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Newspaper news article, it was stated that "Joseph Bruchac had taken the source of a shameful childhood secret and re-imagined it as the stuff of literature, laying the foundation for a family (history/genealogy) industry along the way".

In his memoir, “Bowman’s Store: A Journey to Myself” (Dial Books, 1997, $16.77), Joseph Bruchac revealed his family’s unspoken pact never to prod his grandfather about his dark skin or to discuss what ‘Sonny’ (Joseph Bruchac III) much later learned was his Grandpa’s hidden Abénaki blood.

Joseph Bruchac, 55 years of age, began to ponder his family’s troubled past in his poetry and prose as he explored his Abénaki roots.

The author revealed his upbringing, and admixture of childhood longing, questioning, and fears, not only of his parents, but also the possibility of losing his grandparents, the latter of whom he lived with into adulthood. From the very first chapter page (3) of this book, the author implies that it was his mother, Marion Flora (Bowman) Bruchac was of American Indian ancestry – real Americans, and that she was part of the 1/3rd population of the area, that were hiding-in-plain sight, who would not admit that they were American Indians openly. And then Joseph Bruchac jumps right into his narrative that “Jesse Bowman, his grandfather, was a dark skinned man who tried to hide his Abénaki Indian ancestry.”

Immediately, to support this belief and perception, the author, points out phenotypes and behaviors, that non-native people stereotypically think of as attributes belonging solely to Native people. Dark skin complexion, high forehead, straight teeth, high cheekbones, dark black hair and/or eyes, never spanked their child or children, etc regarding his maternal grandfather Jesse.

And yet, the author stated that Jesse Bowman always referred to himself as simply French. Bruchac’s repeatedly, not only in this book Bowman’s Store, but in many others that have been published, has stated that not only the author and his sisters, but their mother Marion, her father Jesse, and his father Louis, were all Abénaki, by way of some elusively unidentified paternal Obomsawin Abénaki progenitor, great-great-grandfather "from St. Francis / Odanak".

In this first chapter on page (8) of Bowman’s Store, Bruchac, the author, states “Obomsawin appears to have been the name of my great-grandfather’s family, before it was “Americanized” to Bowman; Obomsawin, which means “Keeper of the Fire.”

Margaret “Marge” Bruchac herself began to perform in persona as “Molly Ockett” a late 18th-century Pequawket Indian doctress. Margaret Bruchac being a storyteller/ historical interpreter, of Missisquoi and Abenaki ancestry (per newspaper articles) told stories and songs.

In the middle of February 1999, Joseph and his two sister’s mother, Marion Flora (Bowman) Bruchac passed away.

Marge Bruchac promoted herself as a playwright and director, who portrayed in persona “Molly Ockett”, and that Marge herself, was of Missisquoi Abenaki descent. Margaret Bruchac was an interpretive consultant for Old Sturbridge Village museum, and a Smith College Sophia Smith Scholar who had been pursuing independent study in theater and history.

In an October 06, 1999 telephone interview by Eliza T. Dressang with Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki), for the discussion of Native American literature for children and teenagers, on CCBC-Net, he (in part) had this to say:

“I belong to the Abenaki Nation which is a non-recognized nation in the United States. My great-grandfather (Louis Bowman) came from the little village of Odanak in Canada. I do not have a card from a federally recognized Native American nation.”

“I try to be absolutely straightforward about who I am, where I've been and where I hope to go. I don't want people to conclude that I'm trying to fool them.”

Yet that is EXACTLY what Joseph Bruchac has been doing!

One can clearly see and review the above entries into Bruchac’s book that the author repeatedly attempted in both newspaper and his numerous book publications to implying into “fact” that his great-grandfather Louis (1844-1918) Bowman descended from the Obomsawin family.

And indeed Rick Obomsawin, a member of the Awassos Sigan, the Spring Bear Drummers from Odanak, perhaps believed the same about the Bowman’s deriving out of the direct-male-surname Obomsawin, in having Joe Bruchac’s son Jesse up to Odanak, and traveling to Belgium as a member of the Awassos Sigan, the Spring Bear Drummers.

While Joseph Bruchac the storyteller was being honored for juvenile literature he didn’t hesitate to imply or 'let-be-claimed-by-others' that he was of Abénaki of Odanak Indian descent (while both he and his sons, and sister Marge merely had Homer Cards of membership in Swanton, Vermont), some English and 50% Slovak ancestry had drawn on his infinitesimal American Indian heritage for his storytelling and writing.

Joseph Bruchac’s younger sister, Margaret Bruchac, repeatedly in multiple publications claimed to be (quote) “an Missisquoi Abenaki woman”. She was also dipping her toes into Academia, as “a woman-of-color” under her self-identification as an “Abenaki”. To obtain Grant$ in Academia?

Margaret (Marge) Bruchac had traveled to the Netherlands. She then took up residence in the town of Haulerwijk, Freisland, in a little cottage surrounded by fresh herbs and flowers. Her kind hosts, folk musicians Marian Nesse and Marita Kruswijk, along with their neighbors, embraced her as ‘their resident Indian’.

Unable to “hide in plain sight,” Margaret (Bruchac) Kennick quickly became a minor celebrity, as local newspapers, television reporters, and radio stations clamored to interview the exotic Indian anthropologist.

Margaret (Bruchac) Kennick conducted field research in the northern Netherlands for the project, “Mounded Earth and Ancient Memory: Interpreting the Past in the Northern Netherlands.” She was awarded $3,500.00 dollars. This was in addition to her many performances in the Netherlands and Germany, garnering monies along her way.

In May of 2000, Marge Bruchac, feeling a bit solidified in her academic persona of being an Abenaki scholar, criticized the author Jeff Benedict’s book, "Without Reservation: The Making of America's Most Powerful Indian Tribe and Foxwoods, the World's Largest Casino," in her self-righteousness indignation.

The next year (January of 2001) Marge ("mbruchac") Bruchac-Kennick was inquiring on an Ancestry message board if anyone had encountered her great-grandfather Louis “Bowman” and his mother, Sophié Sénécal dite Laframboise and a mysteriously elusive “Charles Bowman” in East Farnham, Canada in the early 19th century.

NOTICE THE USERNAME "mbruchac" in January 05, 2001

NOW notice the username change as of September 18, 2018

Talk about “hiding in plain sight"

In late March 2001, according to the Rotenburger – Rundschau Newspaper, Marge Bruchac and her husband Justin Kennick were in Visselhövede performing their Native American dances, songs and stories.

Suddenly, in December 2001, in a Genform.com reply to an inquiry about Lewis Bowman in the Civil War, by Ella Maud Ward of Saratoga, NY …

A reply dated March 07, 2002 on Genforum by Henry John “Jack” Lynch, brother-in-law to Joe and Marge Bruchac, and husband of their sister Mary Ann Bruchac was detected online per the website:

“There presently is a family group from this line that is circulating unfounded genealogical information for their personal economic benefit, so be careful.”

Now why would Joe and Marge’s brother-in-law Jack Lynch put that posted statement out there into the public, if there wasn’t some merit to that accusatory statement?

Pay close attention to Page 163: “For many years I thought of writing about the events of Roger’s Raid. It was, in part, a personal thing. My own great-grandfather Louis Bowman was born in St. Francis.”

In August of 2002, James (Jim) Edward Bruchac, 34 years of age, and the first-born son of Joe Bruchac III, who created the Wilderness Project was the subject of a “National Geographic Today” television show on National Geographic cable channel that fall.

The film crew was scheduled to arrive at the nearly 100-acre Marion Bowman-Bruchac Memorial Nature Preserve off Middle Grove Road in Greenfield Center. The Bruchac family members were now being promoted by National Geographic, wherein the Bruchac could promote themselves as Abenakis. The Ndakinna Wilderness Project, had an annual budget of more than $100,000.00 dollars, plans to expand the facilities to include a re-creation of a full Abenaki village.

Throughout 2003, Jim Bruchac’s aunt, Margaret Bruchac repeatedly identified herself as a Missisquoi Abenaki woman.

Gilles O'Bomsawin also sent a letter of inquiry to the Professor of Johnson State College and member of Homer's group in Swanton, Vt., Frederick Matthew Wiseman, PhD., who sought 'approval' as an Abenakis, by way of Wiseman's paternal grandmother (who was 100% French-Canadian).

In October (2003), along with Marge Bruchac, were Judy (Fortin) Dow, Rick Pouliot, Tom Cady, were presenting themselves as Abenakis; with Jeanne (Deforge) Brink and Lynn (Holland) Murphy, at the McCarthy Arts Center.

(Jeanne descended from the Obomsawin’s of Odanak and Thompson’s Point, Vermont; Lynn descended from the Odanak family of Sadoques that had relocated to Keene, NH).

Apparently, using the Vermont Folklife Center’s publication and VHS film entitled, “The Abenaki of Vermont: A Living Culture” that was produced (ca. 2002) over a 4-year-period with the cooperation of a number of alleged "Abenaki" families (those persons and or some of their relatives who claim to be "Abenakis" now living within VT and or NH) around the state and also the guidance of volunteer Native American Advisory Panel members (that were evolved into the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs) such as Jeffrey Benay, Frederick Matthew Wiseman (etc) who had been involved with the Advisory Panel to the VT Governors over the years.

Margaret (Bruchac) Kennick, along with other self-declared “Abenakis” in Vermont and New Hampshire also received such letter-of-inquiry from the Odanak chief, Gillis Obomsawin, pretty much all around the same timeframe.

The inquiry letter to Marge Bruchac went like this:

Dear Ms. Bruchac,

Although we did not get a chance to speak with each other when you were here in Odanak for our July Gathering, I have heard that you may be related to me. I have heard from people in Maine that your BOWMAN name is said to be tied to my O’Bomsawin family.

Please send your genealogy at your earliest convenience to me, so that our Registrar may review it to see if there is an Abenaki tie.

Yours truly,

Gilles O’Bomsawin

Ten days later after this presentation, the then-chief-of-Odanak, Gillis Obomsawin sent at letter to Joseph Bruchac III inquiring politely to the author, that he had (quote) seen a document on the website Nedoba.org that Bruchac’s family name of Bowman might be related to the Obomsawin family.

The Odanak leader kindly requested that Joseph Bruchac send his genealogical ancestry to him, so that the Odanak registrar might review it, to see if there really was an Abenaki connection between Obomsawin and Bowman. The late Gillis Obomsawin also sent his inquiry letter to the State of NY Historical Society, St. Lawrence College, the state of Vermont and the University of Vermont.

Gilles O'Bomsawin also sent a letter of inquiry to Judy (Fortin) Dow of Essex Jct., Vermont

Gilles O'Bomsawin also sent a letter of inquiry to the late Charlie True Jr. of Whitefield, N.H., husband of Rhonda Lou (Besaw) Grimes - True

Gilles O'Bomsawin also sent a letter of inquiry to the Rick Pouliot, husband of Lisa T. (Brooks) Pouliot of Woodstock, Vermont

Odanak chief Gillis Obomsawin was not being malicious, callous, disrespectful, or denigrating in his inquiries whatsoever. He was either met with silence (no reply) or got a snarky, condescending, disrespectful response from those who received such inquiries.

In August 2004, per a website page “Talking Portraits: A Series of Oral Histories about Northampton” in Massachusetts, where Margaret (Bruchac) and her husband Justin Kennick were residing, Marge Bruchac spoke with Revan Schendler. Marge was 50 years of age, and had been living in Northampton for 17 years.

Again, Marge claimed her mother’s family (Bowman) was Abénaki Indian and (the Dunham’s) were Mayflower English. Her father’s side, the Bruchac’s, were Czechoslovak.

“bruchak” in Czech could mean “one who growls like a bear,” which is interesting, because my Indian side is Bear Clan. My mother's people, the Bowman’s, were Abénaki basket-makers who came down from Canada and upper Vermont to sell baskets.

The Dunham’s, the English side of my family, hired Indians to teach young women from Saratoga how to make the baskets and started manufacturing them in the place that came to be called 'Splinterville'. My father, Joe Bruchac II, was a hunter, trapper, fisherman and taxidermist so he started forming friendships with Native people who were guides. The man who taught him taxidermy, Leon Pray, was an Ottawa Indian who worked for the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History. I'm certain that my father married my mother, Flora Marion Bowman, in part because of her Native ancestry, thinking that would be an opening.”

During the interview, she went on to say, “My grandmother, Marion Dunham, a member Daughters of the American Revolution, came from wealth and had thrown much of it away when she married an Indian. My grandfather, Jesse Bowman, was a logger, teamster and laborer building Route 9N through Splinterville Hill when they met. Bowman's store is now the Native Authors Book Distribution Project. I now own part of the farm I grew up on, just down the road. It's now the Ndakinna Education Center, run by my nephew, Jim Bruchac, and the forest is now the Marion F. Bowman Bruchac Nature Preserve. I often wondered as a child why I knew so little about my mother's family. It was this deep, dark secret that we were Indian. Between about 1910 and 1950, a whole generation of northern Native American communities just started to vanish. Two of my great aunts were sent to the institution at Utica and sterilized. One of my great uncles [Warren Charles (1896-aft. 1926) Bowman] was murdered. Many Native people can't document on paper that they are Indians.” “I don't want anyone to ever say that I've reconstructed a lost tribe out of nothing,” said Marge Bruchac.

Yet that is EXACTLY what she has been doing!

Isn’t that exactly what the Bruchac's were doing with her own Bowman ancestors?

Isn’t that why Jack Lynch was trying to alert the public to this very dynamic of his Bruchac in-laws in their ‘inventing’ and appropriation of persona, of Abenaki culture, and linguistics, for profit, authority, and status?

Or was it simply due to a culmination of internal Bruchac-Lynch angst and hostilities between the three Bruchac siblings over the estate of their late mother Marion and what they got and did with, that Jack Lynch posted what he did about Joe and Marge’s ‘genealogical manipulations’ regarding their Bowman grandfather Jesse, great-grandfather Louis, and great-great-grandmother’s Sophie's implied Abénaki indigeneity?

Pay close attention to Pages 31 to 44; and 134 of the Author’s Notes. “Sophie” wife to “Uncle Louis” in the book was in reference to Sophie Sénécal; and “Uncle Louis” was in reference to Louis Bowman (Sophie nee: Sénécal’s son).

Throughout 2005, Margaret (Bruchac) Kennick identified as a “Missisquoi Abenaki” while attending to her academic education and career, inserting herself into Indigenous dynamics inside academic institutions as well as commenting on contemporary Native events throughout New England.

She was becoming a Native ‘authority’, while she tracked a disturbing trend in New England of increasing political interference and biased popular discourse that was drawing on a host of dusty stereotypes, not the least of which was the "vanishing Indian" trope so popular in New England's town histories.

e.g., the 'DIRTY' INDIAN, Jesse Elmer Bowman in the 4th Grade, according to her brother Joe!

Political leaders, including state governors and legislators, had tried to sway public opinion against pending state and federal recognition decisions, having used stereotypes combined with biased assessments of racial identity to make contemporary Native communities disappear, while evoking fears of symbolic "Indian uprisings" with modern-day warnings about casinos and land claims, real and imagined. She was advocating for the group that was petitioning for Federal Recognition, led by the late Homer Walter St. Francis Sr. and later still, by his daughter April (St. Francis) Merrill – Rushlow, that Marge, Joe, and his two sons James and Jesse Bruchac, had membership cards from.

The Peterborough N.H. Transcript Newspaper published an article in 2006 about an Abenaki Indian Program that happened in September of that year. Presenters were Marge Bruchac, Abenaki Indian, teacher, historical consultant, and performer, with Lynn Keating (Holland) Murphy, Abenaki Indian, master educator, and granddaughter of Elizabeth Sadoques of Keene, N.H., who was bringing some light on this supposed “dark age” in New Hampshire’s history at the Historical Society of Cheshire County’s membership meeting. Their talk revealed how, and why, Abenaki people could allegedly literally “hide in plain sight.” The event was free to the public, having been co-sponsored by the Keene State College Diversity Commission and Commission on the Status of Women.

Now let’s go back to those sent ‘Letters-of-Inquiry’ by the late chief of Odanak, Gillis Obomsawin in 2003 as afore mentioned.

On December 26, 2006 Joseph Edward Bruchac III, wrote to the Odanak chief a reply. Apparently now that Bruchac author had surmised he had enough “proof”/ “evidence” that his great-grandfather Louis Bowman (1844-1918) was an Abénaki Indian "from St. Francis / Odanak".

Bruchac Letters to Odanak in 2006

Dear Friends,

Thank you for your letter of December 14th.

I do, indeed, often state that I am of Abenaki descent.

But I do not claim to be a member of the Odanak Band. I have no documented proof for such membership and I have never claimed tribal enrollment. (In fact, I freely acknowledge that I am a person of mixed white and Indian ancestry).

However, I have often made mention of the fact that my great-grandfather, Lewis (or Louis) Bowman recorded on such documents as his marriage certificate and his military enlistment in the Union Army indicate that he came from “St. Francis.”

PROVIDE the documents!

PUT the MARRIAGE Record of 1870 into the PUBLIC RECORD.

PUT the Katherine (Gray) Bowman Letter of the early 1980s into the PUBLIC RECORD.

Why hasn't Joe or Marge, or his son's ever done so?

He settled in Greenfield Center, New York where he and his wife, Anna Van Antwerp (or Van Antwert) had thirteen children, among them my grandfather, Jesse Bowman.

My great-grandfather’s mother, Sophie Sénécal, remained in Canada was a resident of East Farnum according to documents in the United States War Department. My great-grandfather never returned to Quebec, but remained in Greenfield Center where there was a sizable community of others of Native descent, primarily Abénaki, Mohawk and Mohican.

I am a lifelong resident of Greenfield Center, New York where I live in the same house where I was raised by my grandfather, Jesse Bowman.

It was and remains well-known and widely accepted in our part of upstate New York that the Bowman family – like many other local families—were American Indian and that their tribal background was Abénaki. My grandfather was constantly referred to as a “dirty Indian.” There was no privilege attached to being Indian in our part of New York State during those years and his Abénaki ancestry often caused my grandfather hardships. Because of his own brown skin he was said by some to be “black as an Abénaki.” To be honest, it caused some members of my family great concern due to the prejudice they had experienced when I began as a young man to speak publicly about my Native ancestry over forty years ago.

While I am not a member of your community, I have often visited Odanak. I have enjoyed friendships with several of your elders and other tribal members. I am very grateful for all that I have learned from my friends at Odanak. My son Jesse, was received with warmth and great courtesy during the extensive periods he spent in your community trying to learn the Abenaki language. Other members of my family and I have been invited on several occasions to perform during your community celebrations. I’ve also given, without charge or hesitation, whatever help I can whenever I’ve been asked by the Musée d’ Abénaki for assistance.

As a scholar, with a background in university teaching and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, I have done a great deal of research for not only Abénaki history and culture but also for many other Native peoples. I have tried as best I can to project the image and history of the Abénaki and other Native peoples in an honest, dignified, and positive ways in my scholarship, my creative writing and my storytelling for over four decades. I am one of the founders of the Native Writer’s Circle of the Americas and the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers, internationally known organizations that have worked to recognize, encourage, and support Native writers and storytellers throughout the Americas. I have spoken out and acted for Native rights and Native sovereignty throughout the world.

I have a very long and well-documented history of giving back to Native communities – both financially and in terms of work I have done and continue to do.

I sincerely believe that nothing I have done has either been fraudulent or tarnished the image of the Abénaki or any other Native nations. I am proud of my ancestry.

I wish you all the best in the holiday season and in all the seasons to come.

Peace,

Dr. Joseph Bruchac

On December 30, 2006, Joe’s sister, Margaret Bruchac, also typed a reply and sent the her letter to Abénakis Odanak Chief Gillis Obomsawin:

Greetings,

This letter comes to you in response to your letter of December 14, 2006. Please allow me to clarify some of the confusion, and address your concern.

I have never represented myself as a member of the Odanak Band. I do not claim to belong to the Odanak Band. I do not wish to become a member of the Odanak Band. These so-called claims that you speak of appear to be due to some misunderstanding. The reports that you are receiving about me from members of your First Nation residing in the United States do not accurately represent anything I have said. I am surprised to hear that you have received requests to verify something that is not true to begin with.

This letter comes to you in response to your letter of December 14, 2006. Please allow me to clarify some of the confusion, and address your concern.

I have Abenaki ancestry through my mother, Marion Flora Bowman Bruchac (1921 – 1999). Her father, Jesse Elmer Bowman (1887 – 1970), was the son of Lewis H. Bowman (1844 – 1918) (his first name was also spelled as Louis), an Abenaki Indian born in Canada, and Alice van Antwerp (1855 – 1909), an Indian from New York state whose family was apparently mixed-blood, with Abénaki, Mohawk, Mohican, Dutch, and/or other ancestry. Family tradition suggests that “Bowman” could be a variant of the family name OBomsawin. Although some of Lewis Bowman’s Civil War service records and other documents identify him as a “Saint Francis” Indian, we do not know if he was ever listed as a member of the Odanak Band. We do know that he lived in various places from the 1840’s – 1880’s, including Durham and Farnum (also spelled Farnham) in Quebec, St. Albans in Vermont, and also in Troy and Saratoga Springs, before buying farmland in Porters Corners in the town of Greenfield, in New York state.

Louis Bowman Civil War Pension File

[click on the above to get the FULL Pension File in PDF]

My mother’s parents, my mother, my siblings, and I were all born in New York State, and we are all American citizens. I identify myself as an American Abenaki Indian with mixed white ancestry. My siblings, my parents, and my grandparents did not ask to be members of the Odanak Band due to our Abenaki ancestry, and I am not asking for membership now. There is thus no cause for you to be concerned about the potential of my making any fraudulent claims that might “tarnish your image,” as suggested in your letter. I do not claim to belong to your band. Anyone who says otherwise is mistaken.

On the many occasions that I have been invited to Odanak, to perform at the July homecoming events, consult with curators at the Musée de Abénakis, or just to visit with friends, I have been warmly received as an Abenaki singer, storyteller, and historian. I am unclear, therefore, about the cause of your concern, since my friendship with members of your band does not give me any special privileges or rights in your country. It is possible that we may share some ancestors, since so many Abenaki people have moved back and forth for so many generations across the territory that is now divided by the United States-Canadian border. I do not, however, receive any special privileges from the United States or Canada by virtue of being Abenaki. I do not receive any of the health care, housing support, trust funds, food assistance, educational grants, casino profits, or other monetary payments that are typically given out to Canadian First Nations and to U. S. Federally-recognized tribes.

I am led to wonder if there is some historical explanation for this apparent confusion between us? There are many Abenaki Indian families still living in Abenaki territory in the northeastern United States that are not members of the Odanak Band. As you know, during the French War Indian Wars (1670’s to 1760’s), a large number of Western Abenaki people from such tribal bands as Sokoki, Missisquoi, Pennacook, Pequawket, Cowass, etc. passed through Saint Francis/ Odanak, when it offered refuge for New England Indians fleeing from English settlers. Some families from those bands chose to stay at Odanak permanently. Others stayed for a few generations before returning to New England. Others never left their original homelands in New England or New York. When I invited Chief Obomsawin to come to Deerfield in 2004 to witness commemorative events that dealt with this history, he spoke quite eloquently, in the First Church of Deerfield, about historical Abenaki relationships. Perhaps this complex history contributes to the confusion, since there are so many Abenaki people living in the United States who do not identify themselves as members of your band.

Since your letter raises the question of financial interest, please let me clarify that I have never asked for, nor do I intend to ask for, any special benefits or money from band. I do greatly appreciate your past generosities in reimbursing my travel expenses and feeding me when I have been invited to perform at Odanak. If that is the cause for concern, I am more than happy to pay for all of my own expenses when visiting in the future.

Although my Abenaki ancestry is a source of pride and inspiration, it does not, on its own, offer me any special rights or income. Please be reassured when I tell you that I pay for my own health care, my own housing, my own transportation, and my own education. For twelve years, my college education has been funded, not by any grants dedicated to Abenaki Indians, but by more than $45,000.00 in student loans borrowed from the United States government, and by 8 years of my hard work as a teaching assistant and visiting professor. My income derives from the teaching, consulting, research, and performance work I do for New England colleges and museums, based on my own hard-earned and carefully developed skills as a teacher, archival researcher, writer, colonial historian, musician, and performer, my professional expertise as a museum consultant, and my advanced Master’s and Doctoral degrees as an ethno-historian and anthropologist. With homes that this sharing of information helps to offer some clarity between us, I wish you well.

Sincerely, in peace and friendship,

Margaret Bruchac

In retrospect, Odanak Chief Gillis Obomsawin, in late 2002, was not soliciting the Bruchac’s (or anyone else for that matter) to seek membership into the Odanak Abénaki community (adjacent to the French community of Pierreville). Chief Gilles had been kindly & respectfully inquiring of the merits and seeking the objective genealogical evidence from those claiming to be Abénaki relatives, whom were in the Vermont Folklife VHS video and Teacher’s Guide booklet, “The Abenaki of Vermont: A Living Culture” and elsewhere in the publications, proclaiming they were descended from the Abénakis; from the Obomsawin lineage, et al.

Some Bowman descendants, posting on Ancestry.com, in March 2007 believed that they too were Abénaki, from the Bowman surname, allegedly derived from Obomsawin, because their Bruchac relatives Joe and Marge said so.

One Louis Bowman descendant wrote that she was trying to continue her Abénaki Bowman lineage and had hit a brick wall. She was looking for her Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather Lewis/Louis Bowman. Census records stated that he was born in Canada. The alleged Abénaki Bowman line she believed was Obomsawin and other variations. This descendant went on to post on the Ancestry message board:

“My Bowman family were Abénakis and their Indian surname was Obomsawin. I have relatives, actually cousins who are Native American Authors whom I will be setting up a get-together with as they have traced our Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather's descendants back to Odanak/Trois-Rivières, Canada, proof that my descendants ancestors were truly Abénaki.”

By May 2007, this particular Bowman descendant was beginning to believe that the Bowman’s she descended from were only French, and/or perhaps German. She was not finding any Native American ancestors. She concluded that likely there was no factual proof to back up the narrative that Bowman’s were descendants of the Abénakis.

In an interview on July 22, 2008, with Matt Raymond at the Library of Congress, Joseph Bruchac stated:

“Well, my family on my mother's side is American Indian. We have Abénaki ancestry. But as a child, although I was aware of that ancestry, no one would talk about it. It was one of those times in history when, unfortunately, people in a certain minority, felt threatened by being classified as different so my grandparents' line was always, you know, we don't talk about that. Or my grandfather would say, “I'm French,” because, of course, French Canada is where the two different contemporary reserves of Abénaki people where my great-grandparents came from are located. So that created a great curiosity in my mind, and I think that I was more interested in finding out about that Native heritage because I was denied it as a child, and had I been immersed in it and, again, followed the path in that direction.

I also found myself fascinated by various Native people I knew as a child growing up, friends of the family, people I would meet who were elders and storytellers often working at tourist attractions in the Adirondack Mountains region. So in a way, the path was being laid out for me, though I didn't realize it was a path until I started following it.”

Pay close attention to Page 293:

“My great-grandfather was Canadian, but a Canadian of Native descent whose ancestral roots were in what became the United States. Records list his birth place as St. Francis, the name then used for the Abenaki Indian reserve of Odanak, a mission village made up largely of refugee Indians from New England who fled north to escape the English during the eighteenth century.” … “Like numerous other young Canadian Indian men, my great-grandfather came south to find work because little was available around the reserve. And, 1864, it was in the United States that a recruiter for the Irish Brigade found him.”

Aside from the Ancestry.com message board posts, over at youtube.com in 2008… ARTSEDGE: The Kennedy Center had an article about author and storyteller Joseph Bruchac, who explained the origin and significance of the flute and the drum to Native American culture. In the commentary section of this,

Bnsaints: “The biggest phony Indian in the world; what are you Joe, about 1/100th Indian? I remember your son from school, who was a blond haired – blue eyed football player, who now wears a neck choker and tells “Indian Stories” … you are phonies!!”

Bnsaints commented further: “I don’t know anything about his success in war, but I do know from living on an Indian reservation and counting some of the most prominent people in the Native American community as my friends, I can tell you without reservation, that his books are popular because it is the new chic thing for white people, and people who try to pass themselves off as cultured academics, to get “Native American stuff” and books.

Mr. Bruchac is at BEST 1/10th to 1.25th Native American by his own admission. The bullsh** he tries to pass off, for example, that he’s some sachem as if he was standing there with Russell Means at Alcatraz or something, is pathetic. His sons are phonies as well. I’m sure James Bruchac knows his stuff in tracking and outdoor craft but he and his brother Jesse are phony Indians and it is actually insulting the shtick they try to pass off as a family.

Margaret Bruchac wrote to Vermont Senator Vincent Illuzzi and Judy (Fortin) Dow (Judy was appointed by the Vermont Governor to the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs) in which she discussed Traditional Abenaki Family Band Structure.

“There is no question whatsoever in my mind, or in the Vermont documentation, that the St. Francis Sokoki Band of Missisquoi Abenaki constitutes a tribe. If the original legislation we drafted in 2005-2006 had passed, as written, and not been altered by the governor at the last minute, this question would already have been put to rest, since one of the explicit intents of that legislation was to acknowledge Missisquoi as the longest-standing, best-documented, Abenaki group in the state of Vermont.

The Nulhegan and Koasek bands represent Native families with deep roots in Vermont, but they have not been actively engaged with the Vermont government in seeking State Recognition for as long as Missisquoi has.

El-nu included a number of individuals who, until quite recently, identified themselves as Woodland Indian re-enactors rather than as Abenakis, but it is not my place to judge their ancestry.

Second, no one individual, Abenaki or not, has sufficient information or knowledge to presume to be in a position to judge the ancestry of what are (somewhat unfortunately) described as “scattered unorganized families.

My conclusion is this: Any individual who presumes to judge the legitimacy of these various families and bands may only, inadvertently, cause further stress and division. To my mind, as I stated earlier, I believe that the Missisquoi bands should be recognized without delay, as they should have been years ago.”

Primary Scholars of Wabanaki history have had long observed (e.g. Frank Speck, Irving Hallowell, Colin Calloway, Frederick Matthew Wiseman, John Scott Moody, James Petersen, David Steward-Smith, etc.), "working relationships with "Abenaki" Pretendian$ ... as anthropologists, ethnologists, and archaeologists.

Within academia they all have had a vested interest, both personally, and professionally, including Margaret Bruchac herself, in convincing the naïve public and politicians alike, assuming that the Bowman’s as well as Lampman’s were "Abenakis", without any objective evidence whatsoever, let alone genealogical or historical evidence.

They believed they had “the evidence” but it was all quite subjective. Even the Bureau of Indian Affairs Federal Acknowledgement realized this, and clarified their objective findings in their November 2005 Preliminary Report of the St. Francis – Sokoki organization, of which Marge Bruchac, along with her brother and nephews were card-holding members of. Her opinion about what constitutes a band or tribe, was merely subjective, and her reimagining’s.

Going back to the descendants of the Bowman family, related to Bruchac’s, another descendant in mid-2009 under the username of “Keeper-of-the-fire” stated:

“he had been told that back in the 1700’s there was a bounty put on Indian people, basically to eradicate them. My family (Obomsawin’s from the Lake George, NY region) fled to Canada where they lived for many years. After things cooled off, they resettled their original homeland. In doing so, they took the name Bowman, and told people they were French, so as to alleviate any discrimination they certainly would've faced. The Bowman’s name is actually Baughman, of German descent. Some very credible people have followed this line. Look up my cousin Joseph Bruchac. He is a well-known writer of several books on Native live (Abenaki). He also wrote a book called Bowman’s Store.”

In response, Jesse B. Bruchac, under the subscriber name of “migakawinno” wrote the following:

“A great deal of faith and courage went into my father's decision to embrace his Native heritage. He took a leap. As for the Bowman family, the Indian blood is there. The full extent will likely never be known. Most of the family hid their Native ancestry in order to find work and live normal lives in their homelands without threat of removal or racism. Others likely forgot, or did not care enough to remember they had Native ancestry at all.

“The suggested Bowman/Obomsawin connection has been made by many, but directly to us by an Odanak elder Maurice Denis who proposed to my aunt and father in the 1970s that it was a name change.

“Maurice Denis was my father’s mentor at the time and I spent many days as a young child in his kitchen hearing the Abenaki language as he taught my dad the tradition stories of long ago. Maurice Denis lived not far from us and ran an Indian village in Old Forge, NY, where we spent many summers.”

“Anyway, he believed we were Obomsawin’s, but this has not and likely cannot be proven.

In addition, as suggested in this thread it may not be the case at all. However, even without a name change, Bowman itself is a very old Eastern Algonquin family name.”

Jesse B. Bruchac proceeded to point at any historically mentioned Bowman ever recorded in association with Native peoples, both in Canada and in the United States, under the subjective belief, that they could possibly be related to his ancestor Louis Bowman (1844-1918). Even in the midst of discussion, Joseph Bruchac’s son Jesse began to try and imply ‘attachment’ and 'proximity' to the Eastern Algonquin, Natick, Nipmuck, Stockbridge-Munsee, Mohicans and Wampanoag families that had ever mentioned the surname Bowman in the historical past.

He even went so far as to imply through suggestion, that “the Sénical (Seneca, Sénécal) line (Lewis Bowman's mother Sophie Sénical) was equally interesting. The Sénécal family had a documented history with Odanak, Yamaska and surrounding communities. Intermarrying with the Gill's in the 1840’s and prior to the making of some failed business deals together, even so far as selling off some of the reserve, with help of the then Odanak chief Gill. The famous artist, Charles Gill had a Sénécal grandfather,” Jesse Bruchac exclaimed in his post on Ancestry.com’ message board ... but quickly stated that “it was not clear if this family was Louis’ mother, Sophie's family.”

Yet he stated, “But … Sénécal’s landed in Trois-Rivières, Quebec in ca. 1640 from France, some 40 years before the Abénaki community of Odanak was even established, of which is still there today.” And … “Out of Vermont, the Bedel's on my mom's side, and through the Dunham line (my grandma’s mom), the Mann's and Spear's all drop off fast and may have Abenaki links.”

On can literally feel the desperation of ‘attachment’ dynamics, like a leach to blood, in reading Jesse Bruchac’s post, aching for any connection to the Abenaki or Indians, to ‘fit’ the Bruchac’s Obomsawin = Bowman narrative, in any way possible, truth be damned and objective evidence need-not-apply.

In 2009, the Haudenosaunee Standing Committee on Burial Rules and Regulations requested Marge Bruchac - Kennick's assistance in tracing the provenance of two wampum belts advertised for sale at Sotheby’s.

Later that month, Margaret Bruchac, then being the coordinator of Native American studies at the University of Connecticut’s Avery Point campus in Groton, wrote about two Wampum belts, being put up for auction. Now solidified as an Abenaki “woman-of-color” Academic Scholar whose words were held in high regard, Margaret Bruchac began to position herself as an indispensable Abénaki authority in the Northeast.

“The 21st century choice to send these two items to auction … raises serious questions, given the common understanding in the present day among scholars, curators and indigenous leaders (also encoded in federal law) that wampum belts are considered sacred, ceremonial, communal and inalienable items of cultural patrimony,” Dr. Margaret Bruchac, Coordinator of Native American Studies at the University of Connecticut, wrote to Sotheby’s.

Throughout the spring and summer of 2009, the members of the HSC, in tandem with their legal and historical consultants, collected documentation and oral testimony from the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi– St. Francis/Sokoki Band, the Abénaki Nation of Odanak, the Mohawk Nation of Kanehsatà:ke, the Onondaga Nation, and the Tadodaho of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, among others.

In August, Sotheby’s agents agreed to meet with a delegation of tribal leaders and consultants at the New York office, where the two wampum belts were laid out for viewing, and words were spoken over them.

15 attendees were at this consultation included: Onondaga Chiefs Sid Hill and Oren Lyons; Mohawk Chiefs Curtis Nelson and Charlie Patton; Tonawanda Seneca representatives Stuart Jamieson, Janine Huff, and LuAnn Jamieson; Elnu Abenaki artisans Roger Sheehan, Vera Sheehan, and Jim Taylor; and lawyers Joseph Heath and Shannon Keller O’Loughlin, among others.

REMEMBER: In 2004, retrospectively, it was Marge Bruchac PhD. who had stated, “I don't want anyone to ever say that I've reconstructed a lost tribe out of nothing.” Yet, she helped involve and bring in those three of the Elnu group, of whom had NO LEGAL STANDING whatsoever to be there. Thus Marge Bruchac sought to provide them “legitimacy” by association and proximity to those sacred two wampum belts.

They shouldn't have been in the building, the room, or around those sacred items!

According to Frederick M. Wiseman PhD. of the Missisquoi group in Swanton, Vt. he had (and I quote) stated:

“The Elnu tribe provided the delegates representing the VT Indigenous Alliance in negotiations with Sotheby's and the Six Nations Haudenosaunee in New York City last year. Also, Elnu's Chief has accompanied me to the Mohawk reserve of Kahnawake to begin a process of alliance with the Haudenosaunee.”

Then on July 10-to-12th, of 2009, Margaret M. Bruchac and her husband Justin Kennick performed "Hand in Hand" at the Champlain Quadricentennial Celebration in Burlington, Vermont.

Thereafter she traveled east into the state of Maine, where from the 19th to the 24th of July she was a Writer-In-Residence for the Wabanaki Youth Writers’ Camp, which was sponsored by the Maine Writers’ Guild and the Penobscot Nation, near Old Town, Maine.

On the 27th of July 2009 Margaret (Bruchac) Kennick traveled to the Netherlands, Amsterdam, Holland, and perhaps Belgium to do their lectures/ presentations/ songs. While in residence, she got on a computer of a Dutch friend, Jans Pietersz, and sent to www.nosorigins.qc.ca (a genealogical website in New Brunswick) data that IMPLIED as ‘fact’ that Lewis (Louis) Bowman (1844-1918) (who had married Alice Van Antwerp in July 1870) was allegedly the son of an Abénaki couple, François-Louis O’Bomsawin (1801-1886) and his wife Agnes-Anne Olinass (ca. 1807-1853), of Odanak.

https://www.nosorigines.qc.ca/GenealogieQuebec.aspx?genealogie=Francois-Louis_O%27Bomsawin&pid=433195&lng=fr&partID=433198#google_vignette

Like her nephew Jesse B. Bruchac, Marge was apparently so desperate to ‘connect’ the Bruchac’s “Bowman = Obomsawin narrative” of which her brother Joe had ‘groomed’ his own kith and kin (right along with many others in the public and family) to believe and depend on, that Marge, through her friend Jans Pietersz, apparently attempted to ‘attach’ her great-grandfather Louis (1844-1918) to a known documented Obomsawin family of Odanak, by way of that friend’s laptop computer, on nosorigins.qc.ca genealogical database. (This friend, by occupation, was helping foreigners to master the Dutch language).

In mid-August 2009, Marge Bruchac was stating that “she was an Abénaki a traditional singer and storyteller as well as an historical consultant and scholar.”

Justin Kennick and his wife Marge Bruchac performed traditional and contemporary Abenaki songs and stories as their performance "Hand in Hand," and they had just released a new album the year before called “Zahkiwi Lintowoganal / Voices in the Woods.”

Jesse B. Bruchac was also a ‘St. Francis-Sokoki Band of the Abenaki’ Homer card-holding member, as was his brother, father, and aunt. Marge Bruchac said she identified most with Native cultures that art “deeply-rooted” in what she called “Algonkian logic,” that reflected the ways that Abénaki and other Algonkian people always adapted to the changing world around them.

In January 2010, yet another Bowman descendant claimed to be "from the Bowman Clan of the Lake George region and that the original surname was Obomsawin; the family had changed the surname and called themselves French to ward off discrimination". All of this narrative was according this Bowman descendant’s younger cousin Joe Bruchac. This cousin of Joe Bruchac’s thought he was French into his mid-20’s … but he always “felt a connection” to …

Joseph E. Bruchac III’s wife of 48 years, Carol (Worthen) Bruchac had passed away from cancer and in the newspaper obituary, those who wished to make some gesture in remembrance of all she had given to others, were suggested to do so, by making a charitable contribution to the Ndakinna Education Center, P.O. Box 308, Greenfield Center, New York 12833.

In an Epoch Times online news article, Joseph Bruchac was identified as an uncommon Native American. The newspaper reporter stated that Bruchac’s maternal grandfather, Jesse Bowman, was of Abénaki descent. Also stated was that being Native American today was (quote) big business.

For sure it has been for the Bruchac’s!

Grandfather Jesse had never spoken of his (alleged) Abénaki heritage. Never spoke about being Native American. When asked why his skin was dark, Jesse had replied, “We French is dark.”

Later in the newspaper article it was printed, “For Joseph Bruchac today, having a Native American heritage is both a business and a passion. Both his sons have immersed themselves in Abénaki folklore and teachings. His son Jesse has studied the Abénaki language with elders in Canada and is a fluent Abénaki speaker. This is no easy task. Even Joseph, who pronounces words in Abénaki, admits he is not fluent in the language of his maternal grandfather Jesse Bowman’s ancestors.”

on Page 68, Margaret Bruchac claimed (yet again) “During the late 19th century, my Abénaki great-grandparents, Louis and Alice (VanAntwerp) Bowman, had frequented the Saratoga Springs Indian Camp, where they peddled ash-splint baskets to tourists.”

Then on June 13, 2012 per the Ancestry.com Message Board was a post from the user ‘jacklynch2833’ (John Jack Henry Lynch), husband of Mary Ann (Bruchac) Lynch and brother-in-law to Joseph and Margaret Bruchac:

“Louis Bowman was born in East Farnham, Quebec, to Charles and Sophie Bowman. At this level there is no sure connection with Abenaki lineage. If it exists, it is further back. After Charles death in the 1840’s, Sophie married a man with the last name Sénécal. This link has caused some native ancestry suggestions to be raised, but it does not go to the Bowman line.

Neither Louis’s father nor Louis ever lived in Vermont.”

As a child, Louis lived in East Farnham, Brome-Missisquoi County, Quebec and after his mother remarried, in West Shefford, Shefford County, Quebec, Canada, at the age of 20 years he volunteered for Civil War duty, was wounded and after discharge he then moved to Saratoga County. He subsequently married Alice Van Antwerp of neighboring Wilton, N.Y. and the rest you all know.

It was this point in time, that Douglas Buchholz’ evaluation began in the summer and fall of 2012 of the varied books, newspapers and magazines articles, along with the audio-interviews regarding Joseph E. Bruchac III, and Margaret Bruchac, etc, over the retrospective years (since the early 1970’s that the Bruchac's were laying claims, extracting and appropriating) was undertaken and chronologically mapped.

A Civil War Pension Record file for his great-grandfather Louis was petitioned for by Douglas Buchholz and obtained in July 2012, and carefully analyzed for genealogical ‘footprint’ of Louis Bowman’s self-stated history. Nowhere was St. Francis nor Odanak ever mentioned in the Civil War Pension File as claimed by Joseph E. Bruchac III, to Odanak Chief Gilles O'Bomsawin, in that 2006 reply letter.

Margaret (Bruchac) Kennick identified herself as Professor Margaret Bruchac, a Wôbanaki and scholar in July 2012.

The following year March 5th to 7th per the ISU College of Education - Spring 2013 Newsletter in the News from the Idaho State University College of Education on Page 11, at the Idaho State University as a Visiting Author, in a visit, Dr. Joseph Bruchac, identified himself as an Abenaki Indian who was the award-winning author of more than 120 books for children and adults, and he was highlighted in the 26th annual Idaho State University Bellon Visiting Author Series. In this periodical (yet again) it was stated that the author Joseph E. Bruchac drew on his Abenaki ancestry for much of his writing.

In mid-July of 2013 questions were again vocalized in commentary in Indian Country Today’s Media network on the internet. No one seemed to have the objective evidence that the Bowman family derived from Obomsawin’s as Bruchac’s had been repeating as implied “fact.”

By October 2014, it was announced that Joseph Bruchac would be receiving the Tulsa Library Trust’s “Festival of Words Writers Award” the following March at Hardesty Regional Library’s Connor’s Cove, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Bruchac reiterated, “The only time he even mentioned the word ‘Indian’ was when he told me, more than once, how he left school in the fourth grade, jumping out the window and never coming back because they kept calling him a ‘dirty Indian,’” recalled Bruchac. “I had to go outside my own immediate family to hear those stories, which for some reason I was always eager to hear. Because of his dark skin and very Indian appearance, he dealt with prejudice often during his life and that made him reticent to speak directly about being Indian.”

Retrospectively, remember earlier in this chapter that it was on September 26, 1986 in the Schenectady Gazette Newspaper on page 11, the article “Indian Stories Program will be held Sunday” regarding a program of American Indian storytelling at the First Congregational Church of Christ, wherein it was stated, “Joseph Bruchac, a poet of Abenaki Indian ancestry from Greenfield Center whose stories were told to him by his grandfather, Jesse Bowman.”

Quite the contradictions!

On a Ancestry.com message board introducing himself as another descendant of the Bowman’s through Louis (1844-1918)’s son John “Jack” Bowman and Catherine (Gray), through their son Earl Kenneth Bowman, Michael Levet made mention of having done a fair amount of digging into the Bowman genealogy, albeit building out the family tree (descendants from Louis, 1844-1918), rather than tracing back.

This is where Douglas Buchholz, reviewing the Ancestry message board communications of the various Bowman’s, asked this particular Bowman descendant if they might be willing and able to work with him, to discern the paternal lineage of Louis Bowman (1844-1918) who was the great-grandfather of Joseph Bruchac, the author of many children’s books. This endeavor would either validate or negate the oral history perpetuated by Joseph Bruchac III and his sister Margaret Bruchac.

Buchholz sought a direct-male-Bowman descendant to initiate the Bowman Y-DNA study.

At the same time, Buchholz confirmed the July 2009 entry into nosorigins.qc.ca, through that website’s administrator, Hans Waldispuhl of Shediac Bridge, New Brunswick, Canada, that indeed it was through a laptop of John Peters in Amsterdam, that ‘someone’ had attempted to ‘attach’ the Bruchac’s great-grandfather Louis to that particular Obomsawin family. What would possess this Jans Pietersz (John Peters to go on the website, nosorigins.qc.ca and enter in such a genealogical manipulation, “attaching” Louis Bowman (1844-1918) who had married Alice Van Atwerpt to becoming (on that site) to be allegedly the son of Odanak Abenakis, Francois-Louis Obomsawin and his wife Agnes Anne Olinass? It didn’t make sense, and thus when detected, Buchholz had contacted the site’s administrator for objective evidence to support what was on the now on the website.

Without that objective, the administrator quickly took down the input of implied genealogical ‘attachment’ of Louis Bowman to the Obomsawin’s. Was it Margaret Bruchac, while in Amsterdam, Holland, attempting (while on her friend’s laptop) to “create” falsified “facts” as to the Bruchac narrative of ‘Obomsawin=Bowman’ and connect themselves and their ancestor Louis “Obomsawin” Bowman to the Abenaki community of St. Francis / Odanak? It would seem so.

In June of 2015, one evening, while doing research, Douglas Buchholz received an anonymous telephone call by a female person, who simply inquired if Mr. Buchholz knew of the Joseph Bruchac and Alexander Haley judicial dynamic in the mid-1970’s (both authors leaned on their dubious ancestral backgrounds ‘to further their professional writing’ careers). Asking to identify herself, Mr. Buchholz was told to “look it up” and the caller promptly hung up. Intriguing as it was, other research directions had to be followed through first, before entertaining the endeavor of researching the merits of the Bowman-Bruchac narrative, to the Obomsawin lineage, etc.

At this point Douglas Buchholz sought out direct email and telephone communication with Jesse B. Bruchac, inquiring about the Bruchac’s family narrative and the evidence thereof and the possibility of his father Joe and him doing a Family Tree DNA autosomal “Family Finder” test to figure out Louis Bowman (1844-1918)’s paternal ancestry.

I am approaching you Jesse in the hopes that you might be willing and able to help me discern the lineage of Lewis/Louis Bowman who married to Alice Van Antwerp, great-great Grandfather of Joseph Bruchac the author of many books. Here is my proposal:

Find a Direct-Male-Bowman Descendant. Do a Y-DNA through FTDNA.

Find a Direct-Male-Obomsawin Descendant. Do a Y-DNA through FTDNA.

See if the Haplogroup and Y-DNA STR Markers match.

In this way, it will either validate or negate the oral history perpetuated by Joseph Bruchac and his sister Margaret.

I have done the Y-DNA Study with my own father Fisher / Buchholz vs. Smith male testers, as well as Phillips vs. Metallic lineages.

I am thinking that since the paper trail going back to Lewis Bowman's ancestry is so uncertain, this MIGHT be a way to solve the mystery.

What do you think? Do you know of a direct-male-descendant from the Bowman lineage that might be willing to do this testing? It is a two minute check swab.

There was no reply to Buchholz’ inquiry of Jesse B. Bruchac but on September 07, 2015, Jesse B. Bruchac, after getting some clues from the Smithsonian Research Team in Africa (where he was working the film Saints and Strangers a National Geographic film), he decided to try and compile all that he’d collected up to that point, on the Native associated Bowman surname in the Northeast, which he placed onto a created website westernabenaki.com/Bowman. Joseph Bruchac’s son Jesse began (yet again, as he had done years earlier on the Ancestry.com message board) pointin at any historically mentioned

Bowman that was ever recorded in association with Native peoples, both in Canada and the United States, under the subjective belief, inferring that those Bowman’s could possibly be related to his ancestor Louis Bowman (1844-1918). On that constructed website, Joseph Bruchac’s second son began to try and imply ‘attachment’ to the Eastern Algonquin, Natick, Nipmuck, Stockbridge-Munsee, Mohicans and Wampanoag families that had ever mentioned the surname Bowman in their historical past, whether those Bowman’s were actual Indians or not didn’t matter. It was all very subjective as usual.

Douglas Buchholz asked Jesse Bruchac if there was a “Mr. Bowman” still alive who was definitely a descendant of Louis (1844-1918)? Buchholz inquired of Jesse B. Bruchac if he (Jesse) could ask a male Bowman descendant to do a Y-DNA with FTDNA. And Buchholz mentioned that even non-direct-male-descendants could do Family Finder testing at FTDNA and come up with some genetic genealogical connections to relatives in the past unknown to the family. The dynamic was clarified with Jesse B. Bowman that the Bowman ancestral reality could be far different than what the Bruchac’s had led everyone to believe.

After the two-part, four-hour movie ‘Saints and Strangers’ aired on the National Geographic Channel on November 22, 2015, two of the Wampanoag linguistic speakers were upset with the movie, and seemingly in particular with the Bruchac’s.

Per the article “How ‘Saints and Strangers’ Got It Wrong: A Wampanoag Primer” by Alysa Landry, four Wampanoag tribal communities sited “cultural, historical and linguistic inaccuracies” in the film. That the film was a completely irresponsible telling of history,” according to Linda Combs, director of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Cultural Center. She stated that “one of the most-well-documented parts of history was distorted in the film for the purposes of sensationalism.”

Descendants of the Wampanoag began poking holes in the film, criticizing it from the regalia mistakes to historical and cultural inaccuracies.

Retrospectively, Linda Coombs had read the first two hours of the script and had agreed to act as a consultant for National Geographic, in conjunction with the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project, a program that began in 1993 whose purpose was to bring back the Wampanoag language which had been dormant for more than a century. She was appalled at what she was reading of the script for the movie, concluding that some of the material that was in the storyline, “they were just making up as they went along”.

National Geographic also courted Jessie Little Doe Baird, who was a cofounder of the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project and vice chair of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. Baird, a 2010 MacArthur Genius Fellow, also had voiced concern about a script that she called “culturally incompetent, really stereotypical and prejudiced; that it was one of the worst scripts she’d ever see, that it was terrible, and that it didn’t need to be.”

Both Linda Coombs and Jessie Little Doe Baird poised to offer translations, dialogue coaching and cultural expertise for the production of Saints and Strangers. Citing their legitimate concerns, both Baird and Coombs never got the chance to correct the script.

National Geographic had terminated the contract when the Wampanoag had asked for the authority to review the script prior to filming to ensure it was historically and culturally accurate and that any offensive material had been removed. When National Geographic refused to forfeit authority, subsequently the Wampanoag declined to participate.

After having severed its relationship with the Wampanoag, National Geographic found a different consultant and language coach in hiring Jesse B. Bruchac, who had translated the script into Western Abénaki, of course with the help of Joseph Elie Joubert, the adopted son of the late Cécile (Wawanolett) Joubert (1908-2006).

Could it be that National Geographic felt that they could work with the Bruchac’s on a more even-keel, rather than with ‘hostile’ Wampanoag linguists Combs and Baird, because James E. Bruchac (Jesse’s older brother)’s wife was from Africa herself, and that she herself taught there?

Connections ... The film was using Lakota Indian Actors, having been filmed in Africa, and using the Abénaki language in bits and pieces, thereby implied historical Wampanoag historical reality.

Additionally Wôpanâak language teachers, students, and linguists urged the Abénaki people and speakers to sternly address their translator Jesse B. Bruchac who had, in exchange for financial remuneration, misrepresented his own language as a substitute for Wôpanâak, in order to promote National Geographic’s inaccurate and harmful portrayal of Wampanoag history.

After the film aired three days earlier and the article was printed in Indian Country Today Media on November 25, 2015, that very evening Mr. Buchholz decidedly wrote an email to Linda Coombs of the Wampanoag people.

The content of his email was that Joseph Elie Joubert would not sternly address Jesse B. Bruchac at all.

Elie was helping Bruchac’s with learning and speaking the Western Abénaki language, spiteful as he was, of Odanak and his adopted mother, the late Cécile Wawanolett, and because Odanak had not appointed him as Spiritual Elder years before.

Douglas Buchholz attached the documented-Bowman-Bruchac Time Line (consisting of chronologically transcribed public newspaper articles) regarding Bruchac’s in an email to the Wampanoag.

Buchholz stated:

“To say the least, the Bruchac's seem to have been appropriating an Abenaki identity for themselves. Elie Joubert is helping the Bruchac’s "put on the “airs” of “being Abenaki” even more so, through the language.

One has to question when Jesse Bruchac himself claims per this National Geographic film ‘mockumentary’, that he stupidly claims that his ancestor Jesse Bowman himself “didn't want to speak Abenaki" as if to imply that Jesse Bowman could speak Abenaki, when in FACTUALITY (and it is documented throughout) from Jesse B. Bruchac's own father Joseph Bruchac himself, that his grandfather who raised him, NEVER said the word Abenaki, or “I-am-an-Abenaki” at all, let alone knew anything, nor shared any indication that he (Jesse Bowman) was Abenaki before his death in the early 1970's; nor did any of his relatives.

The identity of being allegedly Abenaki came about ONLY after Jesse Bowman had died, AFTER Alex Haley's Court involvement, and AFTER Wounded Knee.

And ever since then ... post 1975 ... the Bruchac's have been emotionally and heavily financially invested in asserting and claiming their ancestor Lewis Bowman was an Abenaki ...

But they honestly DO NOT have any objective evidence to prove this claim about Lewis Bowman, or anyone else in their ancestry.

Suffice it to say that whether it was this communication and attached Bowman-Bruchac Time Line with Coombs and Baird, or the young Bowman descendant going back to Jesse and or Joseph Bruchac, Joe and his son Jesse subsequently declined to not work with such genetic testing in late December 2015 with Douglas Buchholz, because, by Buchholz having contacted the other Bowman relative’s, such research activity (quote) “spooked” Joseph E. Bruchac. Joe felt that Buchholz had an agenda, trying to disprove his native ancestry and had warned his son Jesse B. Bruchac “not to trust and to stay away from Mr. Buchholz.” Jesse B. Bruchac told Buchholz that proof was/is hard to find as he’d said in his first song on the Dawnland Singers CD “Aln8bak”.

The Bruchac’s were stonewalling, and attempting to sabotage, in that if they didn’t point Mr. Buchholz in the direction of a known living direct-male-Bowman descendant, that Douglas Buchholz would not be able ascertain the merits and or the truthfulness of the “Obomsawin > Bowman > Bruchac narrative” that Joe himself had seemingly concocted, allegedly by way of inference, based on faulty belief and perception that Joe claimed that narrative originated from an Abénaki couple at Old Forge, NY, the late Jules Louis Maurice Paul dit Denis (1908-1987) since Maurice' mother had been Marie Cléophée (O'Bomsawin dite Robert) (1887-1934) Paul dit Denis.

Not taking too seriously the Bruchac rejection of working with Buchholz, genetically-speaking, to ascertain Louis Bowman (1844-1918)’s origins, Buchholz subsequently began to search Ancestry.com for male Bowman descendants himself, searching for the elusive objective evidence of Bruchac’s narrative about their grandfather Jesse Elmer Bowman’s paternal ancestry.

A direct-male-descendant, Robert H. Bowman, was found in Queensbury, New York through his close cousin Mark D. Sherlock and his son in early January 2016.

Robert being the son of Howard and thereby grandson of John Bowman and Catherine (Gray), his Y-DNA would be inherited and passed down from his grandfather John Bowman, whose Y-DNA would the same as his late father Louis Bowman (1844-1918) and that of John’s other male siblings (such as Jesse E. Bowman).

Y-DNA tests the Y chromosome passed from father to son in every generation, unmixed with any DNA of the female/mother and female ancestry.

Mitochondrial DNA tests the mitochondria passed from mothers to all of their children, but is only passed on by the females, unmixed with the DNA of the male/father.

Autosomal DNA inherited from some of their respective ancestry is passed from both parents to their children. Each child inherits nearly +/- half of each parent’s autosomal DNA.

After some discussion of the Y-DNA testing dynamics at Family Tree DNA and the endeavor to sort out fact-from-fiction, over the telephone, Bob Bowman agreed to help two days later, by doing a Y-DNA test on Buchholz’ behalf, as well as giving permission for Family Finder (autosomal testing).

Dear Michael Levet,

“My name is Douglas Buchholz of Lancaster, NH, and having studied the Bowman family dynamic for some years now, going back through newspaper articles etc regarding Joseph Bruchac and his sons James and Jesse, and sister Margaret Bruchac - Kennick, last summer I began to seek out a direct lineage Mr. Bowman for Y-DNA testing.

Last weekend, I was told of one Mr. Bowman by a Bowman descendant from Lewis Bowman and Alice Van Antwerp. I had him on the phone within ten minutes and the following day I sent him a FTDNA testing kit. By this weekend, he's mailed it back to me for testing.

I am also testing using Family Finder testing as well through FTDNA, which is testing the autosomal part of the DNA, which looks for matches from BOTH parents ancestors.

Would you be interested in participating, at no cost to yourself? Of course, you would have custody and control of your own genetic testing samples and the subsequent results.

Myself I am looking for Lewis Bowman's ancestors, aside from relying just on Joe Bruchac's say-so. I am seeking definitive’s and proof paper trail as to Lewis' ancestral lineage.”

One of the Bowman’s younger descendant’s, Michael Levet having been inquired of, by Douglas Buchholz, immediately concluded thereafter, taking an alarmist viewpoint that using the phrase ‘say-so’ concluded that Buchholz was ‘out to destroy the Bruchac family’ and topple their deck of cards; then informed Joseph Bruchac of Buchholz’s email inquiry.

The term ‘say-so’ means a statement that is not supported by any proof. One's unsupported assertion or assurance. Mr. Buchholz conclude that using this term was appropriate and accurate, regarding the Bruchac’s narrative regarding their Bowman ancestor being Abénaki.

There was no objectively supported proof that Jesse Bowman nor his father were from the Obomsawin Abénaki lineage, nor even that they were Indians. Other than the subjective narratives, increasingly embellished since the mid-1970s by the Bruchac siblings, Joe and Marge.

The Y-DNA37 test of Robert Bowman was batched on the 27th of January 2016 at FTDNA. It was completed on February 24, 2016. Later, the Family Finder results came in on March 09, 2016. Buchholz saw that ‘mbruchac’ matched to Robert within FTDNA per his (autosomal) atDNA results.

On March 24, 2016 from an unidentified Massachusetts Scholar:

“Marge Bruchac, whom I've known for years, since the time she first 'started' to be Indian; she used to identify herself as Hungarian-Abénaki. She convinced Neil Salisbury of her Abenaki pedigree which was how she got admitted to a special program at Smith for ‘women-of-color’ … and the rest has been like the Elizabeth Warren story.”

Why would looking for the truth ‘spook’ or concern anyone, least of all, that of the author of Bowman’s Store? Unless nothing had really been previously substantiated, objectively-speaking, and everything up to that point being said, inferred and or published about their ancestor Louis (1844-1918), was merely subjective, by the author Joseph E. Bruchac III and his sister Margaret (Marge).

At the same time of beginning the DNA testing of a direct-male-descendant of the Bowman’s in question, Buchholz also contacted indirectly two direct-male-descendant 2nd cousins of the Obomsawin lineage, in order to test their Y-DNA, in comparative to the Bowman’s Y-DNA result.

The Abénaki Obomsawin Y-DNA results were exactly the same to one another:

Predicted: Q-M3

Confirmed Haplogroup: Q1a3a1.

In genetic comparative the paternal Y-DNA result for Robert Bowman:

Predicted: Rlb-M269

Confirmed Haplogroup: Rlb-Z2109.

Doing an R1b-M343 Backbone SNP Pack in FTDNA the Bowman Haplogroup further explored became a confirmed R1b-KM67.

R-BY39280 > R-KMS67 > R-Z2109 > R-Z2106 > R-M12149 > R-Z2103 > R-L23 > R-M269

R-FT94529 > R-BY39280 > R-KMS67 > R-Z2109 > R-Z2106 > R-M12149 > R-Z2103 > R-L23 > R-M269

And with the Big Y-700 testing the Haplogroup terminal SNP is a confirmed R1b-FT94529, which is definitively originating in Europe which is predicted by YFull.com as having formed 4,800 years-before-present, TMRCA (time to most recent common ancestor) about 372 years-before-present (ca. 1648). In Y-Full the “Bowman terminal SNP is identified as R-Y128034. Both are in the same sub-clade on the phylogenetic Y-Tree.

Bruchac’s narrative about surname Bowman being a corruption of Abénaki surname of Obomsawin was based on Bruchac’s repeated subjective storytelling, which he has stated started with a possibility made mentioned by Maurice Dennis, an Abénaki man whose mother was an Obomsawin. Thus began the genetic hunt for who was in fact Louis “Bowman” born in 1844, in the spring of 2015.

The question arose as to who was in fact Louis’ genetic parents’ and their ancestors were. Bruchac’s were not interested in digging too deep or searching too wide, because the answers and truth very likely would not ‘fit’ their narrative story about their grandfather Jesse, and great grandfather Louis, and great-great-grandmother Sophie whom they claimed were Abénakis. Those answers wouldn’t be good, for their business, of themselves becoming “Abenakis” beginning in the mid-1970s.

Margaret (nee: Bruchac) Kennick had done a FTDNA atDNA (autosomal) testing prior to 2016. She submitted a genealogical tree not with herself, but that started with her younger sister Mary Ann (Bruchac) Lynch, interestingly enough, to make it deceptively appear that Marge’s younger sister had done the DNA test. Detected upon testing Robert H. Bowman in AncestryDNA in mid-September 2016 was ‘mbruchac’ or Margaret Bruchac (again ‘cloaked’ as her younger sister Mary genealogically per the Gedcom that was submitted) per the DNA testing.

Margaret Bruchac ('mbruchac' or 'malimaligeet') matched to Robert H. Bowman at 224 cM (centimorgans) shared across 10 DNA segments, with a predicted relationship between the two testers, as being Second Cousins. At first the ‘mbruchac’ username in comparative to the genealogical tree ‘home person’ distorted (at first) who had done the DNA testing, and it was surmised that Mary Ann (Bruchac) Lynch had done the testing. Quickly remembering the genealogical inquiry that had been posted under the username ‘mbruchac’ quickly unmasked the true identity of the actual DNA tester: Margaret M. (Bruchac) Kennick.

Since Marge had created the Ancestry.com account using the username ‘mbruchac’ her younger sister would have been unable to use her older sister’s already-claimed username, had Mary (Bruchac) Lynch registered an AncestryDNA kit herself.

In conclusion, it was discerned that it was not Mary Ann (Bruchac) Lynch who had tested in both FTDNA and AncestryDNA, but rather, it was Marge who had done both genetic tests, cloaking herself using her sister as the ‘home person’ in the genealogical Gedcom submitted tree uploaded to each companies per the tester’s account. She logged into AncestryDNA in September 2016.

Douglas Buchholz wrote to ‘mbruchac’ an inquiry through Ancestry’s messaging system in mid month of September 2016. Buchholz prematurely thought at-the-time that the genetic tester was Mary (Bruchac) Lynch and gave his apologies if it wasn’t. Buchholz thought perhaps it might be Margaret (Bruchac) Kennick that had actually done the AncestryDNA test out of curiosity; yet Buchholz wasn’t sure, until later, upon re-evaluation.

He stated that he had been attempting to sort through the Joseph and his sister Marge Bruchac’s data, to discern the objective facts of their ancestors through the Bowman ancestry, having secured the Lewis Bowman (1844-1918) Pension record file in regards to his Civil War Pension from National Archives.

Buchholz was then quite puzzled by Louis Bowman’s "facts" within such records as to the accuracy genealogically-speaking of what had been stated therein. Buchholz was delighted that ‘mbruchac’ had decided to take a DNA test, proving with Robert Bowman’s testing results and match to her, by such, there was no non-paternity-event (NPE) in the lines of these Bowman descendant DNA testers.

Up to this point the Y-DNA Haplogroup was R-M269 to R-Z2109, which had been confirmed to be of European origin. It was not a known Abénaki Y-DNA, nor any indigenous Haplogroup known to the North American continent.

In October 2016, there had been no genetic Y-DNA matches to Robert Bowman’s own testing in FTDNA. Thinking this was Mary Ann (Bruchac) Lynch who had tested, Buchholz surmised he was thanking the youngest sister and her husband Jack Lynch for posting on Genforum.com, because it was what had initiated his research regarding the Bruchac’s “Bowman=Obomsawin” narrative, and also began his research into many other dynamics here in the Northeast about the “Abénaki and Abenaki.”

It was about May 30, 2018, that I detected a Sénécal dit(e) Laframboise descendant within Ancestry, wherein I had also tested Robert Bowman (et al). This woman, Rita was born in 1950 Lewiston, Maine matched to Robert Bowman at 59 centimorgans (cM), but she also matched to “mbruchac” (Marge), and many other Bowman descendants as “Close Family” as well as “Extended Family” within AncestryDNA.

Shortly thereafter, ‘mbruchac’ (Marge) quickly removed her DNA match results and was not accepting messages. Apparently, Buchholz working with Robert Bowman (genetically and genealogically) had not only ‘spooked’ Joe but now had done the same also regarding Joe’s younger sister Marge in September 2016. She had also removed the FTDNA match results from showing up in Robert’s match list on Family Tree DNA.

In the website, Dawnland Voices dated March 25, 2018 … Fiction, Issue 5, Poetry regarding Joseph Bruchac – Featured Writer, stated:

“You could say that my sons turned me into a children’s author at a time when my main objective was writing and publishing poetry. First of all, the traditional Abenaki and Iroquois stories I told them as bedtime stories (stories I’d learned not in my own childhood from family but from a wide range of Native elders in my adult years) ended up being my first book publications for young readers.”

“Cegwalika: That is how we’d say it in the Abénaki Indian language of my ancestors. “Many frogs” is what that word means.”

On June 19, 2018 in the Facebook Group WABANAKI=Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Mi’kmaq, Abenaki, a descendant of the Penobscot Indians, responding to a posted comment, had provided the website URL link to Buchholz’ blog entitled “Reinvention of the Alleged Vermont and New Hampshire Abenakis”.

Former Penobscot chief Barry Dana, replied “from what it appears, tribal enrollment within Vermont groups, falls upon an applicants’ claiming a family tie to a once known Abénaki (?) … contrary to the findings of the Vermont Attorney General’s Report of 2003 and the Federal BIA Acknowledgement Reports of November 2005 and July 2007, in conclusion, that was no such connections to the Abénaki that were proven by the petitioning group in Swanton” that the Bruchac’s had belonged to.

The Penobscot Indian woman further replied “there are fake lineages and that Buchholz had been doing DNA testing with some of the Bowman family members who are related to those making false claims (a male lineage specifically can determine the haplogroup. Some are only Native American haplogroups. And of course those [Bruchac’s are] making false claims (i.e. the Bruchac’s as one example) are Europeans.”

Margaret (Bruchac) Kennick immediately within a short period of time posted the URL of the blog neboset.wordpress.com regarding Douglas Buchholz, whereupon he (Buchholz) informed her to (quote) “stick to the genealogy, facts and review the documentation”.

Marge Bruchac retorted that these created tribes/bands were formally recognized by the State of Vermont in 2011 and 2012 for her own “legitimization” as an Abenaki academic / authority.

She further stated in yet another reply, “His (Douglas Buchholz) DNA testing (of the Bowman’s) is in itself fake. He claims to have data on people who have never given him their DNA samples.”

If the DNA testing was in itself ‘fake’ (as Margaret (Bruchac) Kennick implied to Barry Dana and the other Penobscot descendant in the FB group), then how did Mr. Buchholz screen-capture the cM (centimorgans) amounts etc to that of Marge’s own test results from both those two DNA websites, when Robert Bowman and Mark Sherlock’s DNA results came in, both of whom are in FTDNA and AncestryDNA?! And Robert Bowman also gave his DNA for 23andMe testing in 2020!

She herself did not bother to disclose on Facebook per that thread of conversation that she too had done DNA testing prior to the Louis Bowman male descendant’s having done so!

Margaret M. Bruchac writes from the perspective of both an anthropologist and (allegedly) as a Native person who self-identifies as an Abenaki “woman-of-color” as she crafts her own “Abenaki” persona, while insightfully studying the relationships that anthropologists had created with American Indians. It indeed should make us question this whole process of collecting and retelling stories that are not their stories to tell.

The Folklife Center at the Crandall Public Library on December 04, 2019, had a series of mini-documentaries telling the stories of people, places and traditions of the Lake George watershed, therein Joseph Edward Bruchac III was interviewed, because he claimed to have ancestral ties to Lake George.

Joseph Bruchac, (being interviewed) stated:

“My family is Abenaki on my mother’s side. I am now a member of the Nulhegan-Coos band of the Abenaki nation. The Europeans found themselves trying to control that Lake when Fort William Henry was besieged by the French they were basically backed up and most of the troops were what they called Canadian Indians they were my people the Abénaki so the destruction of Fort William Henry is something that ties into his family and the story the last of the Mohegan's he found especially interesting. The 'Last of the Mohicans' had not yet been born. There's always been a community of Abénaki people in and around Lake George. I usually don't tell people this, I'm not sure why I'm saying this right now, but I can feel a connection with something very ancient while I'm there and sometimes I think I hear the canoe paddles going up and down the lake.”

Apparently for the Bruchac family, their former Missisquoi / St. Francis-Sokoki Membership cards, obtained in 1978, and thereafter, were now longer beneficial to the “legitimacy” they were seeking, for benefits and authenticity, as “Abenakis”.

The Bruchac's had ‘jumped ship’ from the Missisquoi “Abenaki” group in Swanton, Franklin County, Vermont and ‘swam’ over to the 2004-created “Nulhegan” “Abenaki” group (led by Luke Andrew Willard and others from the Clan of the Hawk group, the latter of which was formed in April 1993, by Howard Franklin Knight Jr, and that of Ralph Skinner Swett in Evansville, Vermont. Donald Warren Stevens Jr.) and many others such as Margaret (Bruchac) Kennick, who had touted being members of the Swanton group, became Nulhegan members post-2006-2010 seeking better benefit$ and “legitimacy”.

The Nulhegan group was merely formed in the summer of 2004, by those formerly of the 1993-1994 Ralph Skinner Swett-led group "Clan of the Hawk" members. The Clan of the Hawk group was initially created by that White Guy, the late Howard Franklin Knight Jr. who claimed his Black Ancestors were "Abenakis" (because he was of the Vermont "Abenaki" Pretendian$ beginning in the early 1980s down in the Thetford, Vermont area). This newspaper article was published on September 21, 2004. None of these groups were "Nations" or actual Tribes. And most 99% of the members are not Abenakis either, then or nowadays.

On January 02, 2020 the Abenaki troubadours Joe (father) and Jesse Bruchac (son) played their native and conventional instruments, sang and told tales of times past — seen in both a long view and with modern insights at Caffe Lena (47 Phila Street, in Saratoga Springs). 8:00 p.m. $16 members, $18 door for adults, $9 students and children.

The reason Jesse Elmer Bowman never claimed to be Abenaki was because he wasn’t. The reason he didn’t speak Abénaki was because he couldn’t, as he’d never been interactive with other Abénakis.

Just because someone can speak Abénaki does not make that person an Abénaki; just as someone who can speak German, may not be a German person. Just because someone can speak a word, a sentence or even a paragraph, perhaps they are even conversationally fluent in a language, does not necessarily mean that the speaker descends genealogically or historically from that particular ethnicity, and or citizenry.

Even Ireland does not allow citizenry by descent to those Irish descendants past their Great-Grandparent. The same threshold exists for Germany citizenship by descent.

Yet many in Vermont have attempted to use and speak the Western Abénaki language learned from Odanak Abénaki speakers, and thereafter such as the Bruchac’s through Joseph Elie Joubert and his late adoptive mother, Cécile (Wawanolett) Joubert .... in order for the Bruchac's to continue to imply that they are actually Abénaki genealogically-speaking, when in fact they are not.

Post-1970, after his grandfather Jesse E. Bowman had died, was in a sense, Joseph Bruchac’s soothing, comforting, non-violent parenting (of other people’s children), (that he had never received from his own parents) through his storytelling. And like “Iron Eyes Cody” (who was a full-blood Italian by the name of Espera Oscar de Corti, an actor whose Indian-ist persona and regalia fooled so many people), Joseph Bruchac III cannot stop identifying as an Abénaki, because he’s told the story so many times since the 1970’s that he’s believed the story himself.

But like all circles, the truth always comes back around. Louis (1844-1918) claimed he could not find his birth record in East Farnham, Quebec, Canada. Joseph and Margaret Bruchac didn’t find their great-grandfather’s Baptismal record. They didn’t go looking for it elsewhere either.

On December 05, 2020, while on the genealogical website Ancestry.com, Douglas Buchholz, for whatever reason(s) during an evening research foray on the internet, had typed into the search box, “Illegitimate” for the first name, and “Louis” for the last name and clicked the “enter” button to search the genealogical website that late evening. In the Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968 results, appeared “Ellagitoun Louis” (Baptism 1844-1846 Granby, Québec, Canada).

Louis Bowman's June 11, 1845 Baptismal Record

Notre Dame de Granby Parish in Lower Canada

Looking at the particular Parish Baptismal record in the lower left of the two pages in the digital viewer, the script was blurry and thereby unreadable. Buchholz quickly went to familysearch.org and cross-referenced the un-indexed Catholic Parish Record entries therein, page-by-page, for 1845 and found the entry for “Illegitimate Louis” B. 314 and subsequently translated it. Indeed it was Louis “Bowman” born July 20, 1844 leaving no doubt it was Jesse Elmer Bowman’s father Louis.

Buchholz having researched the varied Sénécal dit Laframboise lineages, immediately detected that this baptismal record, finally found, and proved who “Sophie” Sénécal dit Laframboise’ parents were, even though neither her name nor that of the father of Louis, her son, had been documented therein this particular baptismal record for Louis Bowman Sr.

This baptismal record was not known to Louis (1844-1918) Bowman Sr., or perhaps if it were, he likely never had spoken of it to his children; and most certainly it was not known to Joseph E. Bruchac III or his two sisters Mary and Margaret.

The question remained as to who Louis’ paternal ancestors were.

Genetic DNA testing is helping to detect the answers to that very elusive question, without the help of the Bruchac’s input or contribution to the Vaudry-Beaudry-Bowman DNA Study.

On February 21, 2020 the genetic test in Family Tree DNA called the Big Y-700 was completed for Robert Howard Bowman, grandson of John Jack Bowman and Catherine (Gray).

As with the Y-37 and subsequent Y-67 testing in FTDNA, matching the STR markers of the Y-DNA of Louis (1844-1918) Bowman’s direct-male-descendants to the Vaudry/Veaudry and LeBoeuf direct-male-descendants, the only Y-67 and Big Y-700 tester was P.W.S. Vaudry, descendant of Jacques (ca. 1636-1687) Vaudry and Jeanne (1642-1714) Renault/Renaud.

LaBeff matched in July 2017; P.W.S. Vaudry matched in September 2017; another LaBeff matched in August 2018; E. Veaudry and G. Veaudry (cousins to each other) matched in November 2018; and a LeBoeuf also showed as a Y-DNA match to Robert Bowman in July 2019.

Michael Vaudry married to Marie Françoise LeBoeuf in 1718; the theory is that a female married to a LeBoeuf male, yet had 'relations' with a Vaudry male, and the married LeBoeuf had married to that woman, who later became pregnant with another man’s child, then gave birth to a genetic Vaudry male child, who subsequently passed down the Vaudry Y-DNA, while carrying the LeBoeuf / LaBeff surname.

Where and why this happened is a matter of question ... suffice it to say was that the LaBeff' in Texas and very likely derived from the Ouachita area of Louisiana, and territory which is now within the state of Arkansas, are NPE (non-paternity-event) Vaudry genetic Y-DNA descendants.

The P.W.S. Vaudry genetic tester has been confirmed Haplogroup/ Terminal SNP: Rlb-BY39280, as has been confirmed to be Louis Bowman (1844-1918)’s paternal descendants Haplogroup/ Terminal SNP as well.

Douglas Buchholz posted in a social media (Facebook) post dated January 17, 2021, that the Bruchac's of Greenfield, New York, were deceptive and not transparently honest with the public about their ancestry and were not descendants of the Abénakis of Odanak First Nation whatsoever, as the Bruchac’s had repeatedly stated “as fact” in their assumptions, in their publications, and or presentations.

This in turn caused a social media response from Joseph Bruchac’s younger sister, Marge.

On January 24, 2021, in a social media (Facebook) post, Marge (Bruchac) Kennick, PhD. (of Penn State University), wrote:

“Some basic questions are on my mind today, in response to some questionable ethical “research” being conducted on New England’s Native people (of whom she considers herself an irrevocably indispensable part of of).

How do certain people (Native or non-Native) claim the authority to tacitly approve or condemn individual Native people?

Why are oral traditions and kinship networks considered valid sources of evidence when asserted by some Native families?

Does any citizen of any Native nation have the right to dictate who is who in any other Native nation?

Do both stalkers and scholars have an inherent right to conduct invasive sociological and genealogical research on living individuals without their consent, and to then publicize their opinions as supposed facts?

Do privacy laws no longer matter?

Do ethics no longer matter?

Is it not an obvious violation of ethics (and a stated violation of federal law) when researchers use the internet to publicly harass, torment, lie about, and discredit their subjects/victims?

How could a cyber-stalker with no academic or professional credentials whatsoever be granted so much authority as a supposedly trustworthy source?

Does professional credibility no longer matter? Asking for a friend.”

REMEMBER: I am not working with the Bruchac's. I am working with the Bowman's and Vaudry's descendants. I do not need the Bruchac's DNA samples. Never did.

Margaret (Bruchac) Kennick was obviously speaking of Buchholz’ Vaudry/Beaudry/Bowman DNA Study, and his posts on social media about the Bruchac’s and those in Vermont (including New Hampshire) and elsewhere, who have usurped an “Abénaki” identity persona without objective Abenaki descent nor ancestral connections to historical Abénaki community.

The Bruchac’s are very public persons, and Mr. Buchholz has been doing very public research, posting his results on public social media since 2009.

Were Joseph Bruchac and his sister Marge Bruchac becoming ‘concerned’ about being exposed as Pretendians/ non-descendant Abenakis of the Nulhegan “tribe” of Vermont members?

Suffice it to say that in conclusion, Bruchac’s narratives about Jesse, about Jesse’s father Louis, and about Louis’ mother “Sophie”, were all based on meritless, subjective, storytelling narratives by Joseph E. Bruchac III, that has had no basis in truth or the reality of those ancestors, of Jesse Elmer Bowman.

It’s all seemingly been made up by the Bruchac's themselves since the late 1960s or early 1970s about their grandfather.

[Robert H. Bowman is indicated by the Canadian Maple Leaf]

As of January 06, 2022, R-Y128325 (Vaudry) with additional Y-700 testing at Family Tree DNA has been calculated as being 320 yrs. and R-FT94529 (Bowman and LeBoeuf) has been calculated at 400 years ago to the MCRA (most common recent ancestor).

The two FTDNA kits under R-FT94529 (Bowman and LeBoeuf) share a common ancestor about 400 years ago (5 x 80)

The two FTDNA DNA kits under Y128325 (Vaudry) share a common ancestor about 320 years ago. (4 x 80)

The actual mutual common ancestor to these two Vaudry descendants was Joseph Vaudry born 1707. (315 years ago)

The testers below also test positive to FT94529. But further testing placed the two Vaudry’s in a new younger SNP. (Y128325)

SNP’s change, on average, every 80 years. Could Josephs father been FT94529 or maybe Joseph’s father (Francois) been FT94529 (?) i.e., a mutation occurred between 1667 and 1707? The answer genetically appears to yes.

Note LeBoeuf and Bowman have tested negative to the Vaudry Y128325.

The Vaudry’s have 4 private variants and LeBoeuf and Bowman have 5 private variants. One variant distance is approximately within 80 years.

The present thinking is that Jacques Vaudry, who first came to Canada in 1660-1661, that all his sons could have been FT94529, yet as generations went along, STR marker mutations had naturally occurred.

Jacque’s sons, who had male children are - Francois, Joseph, Jacques.

Douglas Buchholz also considered if the surname BOWMAN could have been anglicized from “Beau-” … such as Beaumont, Beauchamp, Beauchesne, Beaudry, Beaugrand, Beauchemin or Beauman(n), or even Bouman, et al.

In April 2023, following the AncestryDNA autosomal matches of the Bowman descendants, it was discerned that Jean Pierre Beaudry of Montréal, Qc., matched to multiple Louis (1844 1918) Bowman descendants: at 23cM across 3 segments to Mark D. Sherlock, [son of Edith (Bowman) Sherlock], 19 cM across 2 segments to Robert H. Bowman, [son of Howard L. Bowman], at 14cM across 1 segments.

Jean-Pierre Beaudry also matches in AncestryDNA to: Paul Swartz, Rosemary Gibson, Theresa Pietrofeso, Brenda (nee: Hitchcock) Ordway [Forrest F. Bowman>Berlin Seneca Bowman>Philip Eugene Hitchcock>Brenda], elki1949, 1 dwightsmom, Katrina Terry, David Terry, William Terry, and Deborah Woodworth [Lozella Stone - Terry Desc.’s], and charmterrv77 … All of whom are Bowman descendants from Louis (1844-1918) Bowman.

Jean Pierre Beaudry also matches to Michael Lauzon, descendant of François Xavier Beaudry (1851-1921) the latter of whom was one of the son’s Charles Vaudry (1820-1896).

[Not to be confused with François Xavier Beaudry born in Sept. 1842 whom died in Oct. 1848, in Marieville, Qc., the son of Léandre (Léon) Vaudry / Vaudri (1810-1875), half-brother to Charles Vaudry/Beaudry]

Following are charts, as the one above, created to illustrate the genetic matches of the Louis Bowman (1844-1918) descendant DNA testers to the Charles Vaudry/Beaudry (1820-1896) descendants within AncestryDNA and 23andMe.

In conclusion of Beaugrand’s own evaluation based on the genetic and genealogical data (presented to him by Buchholz), Jacques sent email on June 18, 2023 to Douglas Lloyd Buchholz, the following:

According to the sharing of segments and the Thrulines generated by AncestryDNA, Simon VAUDRY is the most recent common ancestor of the contemporaries who were tested by this company.

The "Simon VAUDRY" effect passes obligatorily in people tested through Simon's children. Namely, (1) Brianna Rae SCHMELZER (through her mother Donna Lee WASHBURN) her VOUDRY DNA via Léandre VAUDRY (1810-1875), a son of Simon's first marriage to Catherine BOYER. (2) Michael LAUZON and Jean Pierre BEAUDRY received theirs via Charles VAUDRY, Simon's son from his second marriage Catherine CHAGNON.

Based on the total of autosomal DNA segments shared between Brianna Rae SCHMELZER (through her mother Donna Lee WASHBURN) or Michael LAUZON or Jean-Pierre BEAUDRY and the BOWMANs, it appears that the BOWMANs are also descendants of Charles VAUDRY. In other words, the presence of autosomal DNA from Simon VAUDRY in the Louis BOWMAN (1844-1918) lineage can only be explained by the fact that Louis BOWMAN's father was one of Simon VAUDRY's sons. The fact that the autosomal DNA of Michael LAUZON, Jean-Pierre BEAUDRY and the BOWMANs all converge onto son Louis Pierre “Charles” VAUDRY (1820-1896) strongly supports that Charles VAUDRY was also the genetic-contributing father of Louis BOWMAN (1844-1918).

The equation must take into account the fact that the BOWMAN men have the Y chromosome (yDNA) of the VAUDRY men who descend from Jacques VAUDRY (1636-1688) m. 1661 Jeanne RENAUD (1642-1714), which line includes descendants of Simon VAUDRY. This signature has been triangulated at https://bit.ly/46c7Uwr

Please note that the yDNA signature of the BOWMAN descendants of Louis BOWMAN (whose mother was Marie Élisabeth (Sophié) SÉNÉCAL dite LAFRAMBOISE and whose father was Charles VAUDRY) differs from those of the English-speaking BOWMANs of Great Britain and the British colonies https://bit.ly/43LiMjg. It differs as well from that of some French-Canadian BEAUDRYs (the yDNA signature of Toussaint BEAUDRY m 1670 Barbe BARBIER, can be found at https://bit.ly/3JdxY0A).

The yDNA signature of this VAUDRY/BOWMAN line of men has a clear European origins, and absolutely no pre-Columbian Amerindian ones.

In conclusion, the documentary information compiled by Douglas Lloyd Buchholz, as well as the results of the multiple DNA tests carried out by relatives of the VAUDRYs and the BOWMANs, clearly demonstrate that one of Simon VAUDRY's sons -- most likely Charles -- was the biological father of Louis/Lewis BOWMAN (1844-1918), from whom descend the BOWMANs tested in the present study.

Jacques P. BEAUGRAND, Ph.D.

retired professor and researcher at UQAM,

Founder of the French Heritage DNA project and DNA consultant

CP 204, Dunham, Québec, Canada J0E1M0

E-mail: Beaugrand.jacques@uqam.ca

Throughout the Vaudry/Beaudry/Voudry and Bowman DNA Study, transparency and evaluation was necessary. Nothing is infallible or set-in-stone or absolutes, yet the genetic results do not lie. Only human perceptions distort the results to fit-one’s-agenda(s), politically, or otherwise.

A 63/67 or 64/67 match between two men who share the same surname (or a variant) means that they are likely to share a common ancestor within the genealogical time frame. The common ancestor is probably not extremely recent but is likely within the range of most well-established surname lineages in Western Europe. It is most likely that they matched 24/25, 36/37, or 37/37 on previous Y-DNA tests, and mismatches are within DYS458, DYS459, DYS449, DYS464, DYS576, DYS570, and CDY.

Further Bowman and Vaudry/Voudry/Beaudry Y-DNA testing would (of course) strengthen and confirm the Bowman’s descent from Charles Vaudry (1820-1896) and that of his father Simon Vaudry as well.

In late May of 2023, on social media, Mr. Buchholz posted the details and mappings of which were herein this report, for both the public, the Vaudry’s, the Bowman’s and indeed, even the Bruchac’s to evaluate, confirm or deny, for themselves, as they saw fit.

As a result, Joseph Bruchac’s younger sister Margaret (Bruchac) Kennick, before hastily retiring with full benefit$ from Penn State, sought to disparage, denigrate, malign to chargeable offence, the following:

“The identity attacks on my family, over three decades, have been driven in large part by the work of a cyber-stalker and amateur internet researcher who goes by the aliases "Salmon Raven Deer" and Mark Leckie, but his given name is Douglas Lloyd Buchholz. He used to falsely identify himself as Abenaki, and he began this slander campaign after he was ousted from the Missisquoi Abenaki community in the 1990s for being ~~a convicted pedophile and stalker~~.

He has no academic, genealogical, tribal, or other credentials whatsoever. His website - called "The Reinvention of the Alleged Vermont and New Hampshire Abenaki" - and his Facebook pages mix true and false genealogical data with innuendo and slander, much of it intensely focused on my family, illustrated by photos and cherry-picked documents, twisted genealogical chains, distorted conclusions, and outright lies.

Then there is the fraught "research" conducted by Dr. Darryl Leroux, Associate Professor of Social Justice at St. Mary's University, whose book "Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity" (University of Manitoba Press 2019) focused on investigations of the newly sprung "Algonquin" groups in Canada made up of white people (many of them white supremacists) who have self-identified as "Metis" to claim First Nations lands and rights. This was a very necessary critique, but it had unexpected ripple effects when Leroux expanded his theoretical grouping into the United States.

Relying on a number of fraught, racially biased, non-scholarly sources - including Buchholz's website - Leroux collectively, and inaccurately, identified all of the Vermont and New Hampshire Abenaki nations as "Eastern Metis Organizations."

His argument was constructed, in part, around an unauthorized anti-Vermont-Abenaki "Council Resolution" that did not actually come from the Tribal Council at Odanak First Nation. It was released by Odanak citizen Jacques Thériault Watso, without the approval or sanction of Odanak Chief Rick O’Bomsawin.”

Marge (Bruchac) Kennick perpetuated what she herself condemns. Douglas Buchholz has never been convicted of any criminal charge anywhere in the United States, as she implies (as have numerous others of the “Abenaki” groups in Vermont, such as Carollee Reynolds, Melody (Walker) Brook – Mackin, or James C. Taylor of the “Elnu” group, or Penobscot author Sherri Mitchell) since Buchholz began his research, have insinuated “as fact”.

It is indeed detected, the very bias in Mrs. (Bruchac) Kennick’ diatribe against the individuals she’s mentioned therein the above.

The TRUTH will prevail regardless of her own biased opinions. If anyone has been ‘grooming’ children into believing the Bruchac’s were Abénakis, it has been the Bruchac’s themselves, and their allies, et al. If anyone has been stalking the Abénakis, it has also been the Bruchac’s, et al. since the 1970s!

Since 2015, Joseph Bruchac, the brother of Marge, has continued to perpetuate the narrative that their great-grandfather Jesse Bowman, was an Abénaki Indian, for their own benefit$, to the naïve public; especially to school children across the United States and Canada, as well as many countries in Europe, regardless and in contrast to the results of Mr. Buchholz’ genetic and genealogical research of Jesse Bowman’s father’s ancestry.

Alice (Van Antwerp) and her widowed sister Mary did not have any Abénaki Indian ancestry, with the exception of possible 1600s ancestress Ots-Toch, through her daughter Elizabeth Van Slyke. She was born in or about 1600 near Canajoharie, New York, who had married Dutch settler Cornelise Antonnisen Van Slyke and founded the Van Slyke family in New Netherland. Ots-Toch and Cornelise had at least 3 children who survived to adulthood and served as interpreters between the Mohawk nation and the Dutch, including Jacques Cornelius Van Slyck (Itsychosaquachka), Marten Maurice van Slyck, and Hillitie.

There seems to be a Montauk 1600s ancestress as well, in the ancestry of the two Antwerp sisters who married Louis Bowman (1844-1918), but nonetheless, neither ancestress was an Abénaki Indian nor did neither make their descendants the Bruchac’s actually Indigenous post-1970, even if the Bruchac wear Gustoweh’s after Buchholz shared with Jesse Bruchac regarding Ots-Toch on a Ancestry Message board.

Mohawks? Or Abenaki? Pretendians?

Does Appropriated Culture negate Genealogical Descent?

Historical Ancestral Abénakis Community Connections?

On October 01, 2023 in The Times Union Newspaper by Chris Churchill (columnist) wrote,

“Is Joseph Bruchac truly Abenaki?” Joseph Bruchac himself stated that he always conceded that he was not fully Abenaki, and that his heritage came to him via a maternal grandfather [Jesse E. Bowman (1872-1970), son of Louis Bowman (1844-1918)] who the author believed had Native heritage. Bruchac clarified that it was his opinion that Odanak First Nation were acting “as gatekeepers of Abenaki identity, and that Odanak First Nation should not be attempting to define who is and isn’t Native.”

Joseph Bruchac went on to imply that Native heritage was not only about blood and ancestry, but rather, he suggested, was ‘cultural membership’, learned and earned with hard work and sincere attention, comparable to earning belt rank in martial arts.

So, becoming an Abenaki is somehow being an Abenaki … is like putting on the clothing/ regalia of the Abenakis, learning the Odanak Abénaki language, etc. and that makes someone an Abenaki of Vermont?

In addition, it would seem a bit hypocritical for Bruchac to speak of Odanak being gatekeepers to a gate that doesn’t exist. Whose been ‘gatekeeping’ all these years?

If anyone has been doing that, it’s been Pretendians, the Bruchac’s.

Mr. Joseph Bruchac himself in the literary Children’s Book Writing throughout literally every Elementary-Middle School. Much like Marge (Bruchac) Kennick ‘gate-keeps’ Wampum belts (the Mohawks aren’t good enough to KNOW their own Wampum belts?!).

And what about Deerfield, MA. Or Jesse Bruchac ‘gatekeeping’ the Abénaki language from Odanak (charging $3,000 for a semester of learning it, at Middlebury College in Vermont, teaching it to his fellow Pretendian$)

Odanak First Nation Chief, Rick O’Bomsawin stated that he himself, in his complaint, was merely with Vermont officials and not in particular with the Bruchacs or other members of the Vermont-created “tribes”.

Why is Odanak Chief Rick Obomsawin ‘minimizing’ the doings of Pretendians in Vermont and New Hampshire and in particular the Bruchac’s Abenaki identity & cultural theft? Perhaps a couple of photographs do speak a thousand words …

Marge (Bruchac) Kennick and Rick O’Bomsawin

“At Odanak … Marge remembering happier times with old friends: Nicole O’Bomsawin, Chief Rick O’Bomsawin, and Patrick Côté”

Or was it because in 2015-2016 Jesse Bruchac was in a relationship with Rick O’Bomsawin’ daughter?

But how I digress, back to that Times Union article … Bruchac writes that his grandfather seemed to have the appearance and demeanor of a Native person, but that his Grandpa Jesse had always referred to himself as 'French'.

‘Seemed to have” … is subjective and is much like an Italian actor or singer Playing Indian, both of who have pretended to be Cree. Or Cherokee.

When we spoke, Bruchac said other people told him his grandfather was Abenaki, leading me to ask if he’d been able to verify that.

Remember: “One day (according to Joseph Bruchac) his father Joe Sr., told his then-16-19-year-old son, “Jesse E. Bowman was an Abenaki Indian,” while getting into the car to go pheasant hunting in the nearby cornfields.” Per the book Bowman’s Store.

This is ONLY Joe Bruchac’s subjective narrative.

“We assumed it to be true based on things that we’ve known about his genealogy,” Bruchac said, before bristling at follow-up questions.

Remember: How could Joe or Marge Bruchac factually/objectively know anything about their grandfather Jesse Bowman’s father Louis’ ancestral genealogy, when neither of them knew anything objectively about Louis’ parentage, and neither Charles nor Sophie’s ancestries? All Joe and Marge (and Jesse Bruchac too) have been doing is taking what they could appropriate and insinuate.

For example, in September 2015 into December 2016, Jesse B. Bruchac (in his trickster talk) was IMPLYING on his created website http://westernabenaki.com that his Bowman great-grandfather Jesse was somehow (yet again subjectively) tied to some Bowman in the Wampanoag, Nipmuc, Lenape, Mohican, Abenaki, Mohawk, and many other communities. Bruchac’s wanted naïve people to BELIEVE they were of Abénaki descent; but if that didn’t pan out, then any Bowman in any Indigenous documentation would do.

Claiming that his father’s friend and informant “Maurice Denis, an elder and tradition bearer of the Odanak Reservation, who ran the Indian Village at the Enchanted Forest in Old Forge, New York believed that the Bowman family and Obomsawin family were the same. There is no way to prove this, however, it is clear that, based on the available documentation, the BOMAN/BOWMAN as an Eastern Algonquian Family name, can actually be traced back farther in time than OBOMSAWIN.

Jesse Bruchac even went so far as to imply on September 13, 2017, that he or any of the Bruchac’s were active in the Bowman DNA Study, that the “ongoing search for the origins of my Bowman family, DNA has most recently entered the equation. This is an extremely complicated and speculative field with most of the information especially concerning Native Americans not yet in. Based on what is known, my great grandfather Jesse Bowman’s Y line is R-M269 (R1b). While this is common in Europe and elsewhere around the globe, it is also the second most common Native American haplogroup, and among Northeastern Native peoples, it is by far the most common, found among overwhelming 79% of Great Lakes/ Algonquian-speakers.”

Taking as he and his fellow Bruchac kin have done, from whatever source(s) seems to “fit” their agenda and narrative:

Where was Jesse Bruchac getting this information from?

From Wikipedia …

It is now the most common haplogroup after the various Q-M242, especially in North America, highest worldwide R1 rates among Great Lakes/ Algonquian-speakers, in Ojibwe people at 79%, Chipewyan 62%, Seminole 50%, Cherokee 47%, Dogrib 40% and Papago 38%. 97% of R1 had the M269 SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism), which defines haplogroup R1b1b.

R1b reaches high frequencies in the Americas there is an ongoing debate regarding the origins of R1b subclades found at significant levels among some indigenous peoples of the Americas, such as speakers of Algic languages in central Canada.

Jesse Bruchac went on to write:

“This information leaves us with more questions than answers, as DNA testing seems to always do. Indeed, there is R1b in many parts of the world, however none in Siberia. Multiple migrations to the Americas are something many are now researching, and this evidence may be more reason to believe this was the case. Also, opening the door a little wider on the Solutrean theories. However, it’s important to note that the R1b among Native Americans doesn’t differ from European DNA. While the amount of R1b among some Native American groups can be explained by recent intermarriages, the amount that seems to be there in many other Native tribes is way out of proportion to evidence for admixture and all out of proportion to other “European” Y haplotypes. This all points to much earlier introductions of R1b to Native American peoples, some experts in the field pushing R1b’s origins in the Americas back 9,500 years.”

NOTICE: How Joseph Bruchac’s son Jesse, selectively removed the fact that R1b1b (M269) (quote) “came from the settlement of the Americas by Europeans” in quoting Wikipedia.

With alleged ancestral roots in the Nulhegan Abenaki Nation, that had formed in the summer of 2004, derived of former members of the Clan of the Hawk group led by the late Ralph Skinner Swett in Brownington/Evansville, Orleans County, Vermont, that received fraudulent Vermont state legislative recognition in 2011, Bruchac had over his career, written over 180 books regarding his deep connections to Indigenous identity, culture, and history.

Joseph Bruchac, meanwhile, noted it is only Native people who are asked to explain their heritage and that it is too often non-Native people (and their governments) who end up casting themselves as the judges of authenticity.

Joseph Bruchac embellished and lied about his own maternal grandfather, and Jesse Bowman’s own father Louis (1844-1918)’s ancestry, for 50+ years. Or was it all done just on belief and skin tone?

Where’s the ethics and the appropriateness of that?!

Bruchac claimed he was an Abénaki, an O’Bomsawin, from Ste. Francis/ Odanak for 50+ years, right along with his sister Marge, without any objective evidence to support their narrative storytelling.

In essence, the Bruchac’s have dug up their great-grandfather Louis and his son Jesse Bowman, since 1970, shoving an Indian feather in each skull, and proclaiming their ancestors were now Abénakis. Who does that to their own grandfather and ancestors?

The Bruchac's continue to put a full bonnet of Indian Feathers onto Grandpa Jesse Bowman.

Joseph Bruchac told Times Union reporter Chris Churchill that he has often turned down fellowships and other opportunities specifically created for Native people. He doesn’t consider himself a Native spokesperson, he added, and said he has used his privileges and skills for good.

For all the privileges and skills for good, it was all predicated and gained by ethnic identity fraud, and Abénaki Identity Theft, much like Stolen Valor.

“I am what I am. I do what I do,” he said. “I don’t think anything that I’ve done has been injurious to Native communities.”

Of course not. Like most predatory persons, they lack empathy and compassion towards their victims who have been preyed upon.

Perhaps paradoxically, the author framed the concerns raised by the Odanak First Nation as tantamount to longstanding efforts to erase Native people and deny their continuing existence.

This is very much projection and gaslighting on the part of Joseph Bruchac’s egotistical arrogance and snark. Apparently, according to 80-year-old Joseph Bruchac, the Odanak First Nation are not qualified to KNOW and DEFINE who their people are, and or to protest against the Vermont & New Hampshire Pretendians pilfering of their Odanak Abénaki language, culture, traditional territories of Nd’akinna and their very identity , by the likes of Bruchac’s themselves; and seemingly Bruchac’s wish that Odanak First Nations should simply shut up about the predatory nature of Pretendians in Vermont?

“They’re not going to shut me up,” Joseph Edward Bruchac III, the author and poet said.

Of course not. Because the arrogant EGOs hiding behind the smiles directs the Bruchac’s lust for POWER and CONTROL and Odanak Abénaki Culture … for their own Profit$, as always.

James, Joseph, Marge, and Jesse Bruchac

Margaret (Marge) Bruchac, has not been silent in her protestations, across social media and through a University Listserv:

This entire campaign (against Buffy Sainte-Marie born Beverley Jean Santamaria) is driven by a toxic combination of jealousy, lateral violence, invasive and unethical human subjects research, amateur genealogy, biased news reporting, etc., all of which is being amplified by a cadre of cyber-stalkers and rogue journalists. It is creating a great deal of chaos and confusion among the general public, and horrific pain for those in the crosshairs. It is also a direct violation of tribal sovereignty.

The basic truth – which these reporters are missing – is that nothing in any federal, provincial, or state law in the United States or Canada, and nothing in any traditional Indigenous practice of governance, gives ANY Native individual or Native Nation the legal right to adjudicate the identity of ANY Other Native individual or Native Nation. Tribal Nations can only speak for their own citizens. Even if they may share some history across state or international borders, Tribal Nations are not permitted to exert any legal authority whatsoever over citizens of any other Tribal Nation, in any other state or country, anywhere in the US or Canada.

NO journalist, NO genealogist, NO scholar, NO blogger, and NO Native American or First Nations individual holds the inherent right to determine who is or is not legally an “Indian” in the United States or Canada. Such legal determinations can ONLY be made by and within a sovereign Tribal Nation, following the statues that govern state recognition and federal recognition, and the kinship protocols of that particular Nation. The general public is confused, in part because so many reporters have unethically and inappropriately utilized sources who have minimal understanding of the complexities of Indigenous identity and history, and no legal authority on this issue.

Margaret M. Bruchac

Alice [Nash], thanks for including some useful resources and questions on this contentious topic. But, in line with Kathleen Brown-Perez’s clear-headed caution, please do not encourage identity attacks on individuals with this “community of friends.” For myself and others, this is not just, as you suggest “an uncomfortable topic” because it affects family. We are being victimized by an intense slander and disinformation campaign that has caused serious damage and has real-world consequences.

Here is what I would recommend, as an appropriate way to introduce students to the subject:

Start with the simple fact that indigenous identity emerges, not from external public opinion, genealogical investigation, colonial records, or scholarly research, but from ancestry and kinship. Sovereign Tribal Nations have the right to determine their own protocols for citizenship and kinship. Federal or state recognition is not the origin point of anyone’s indigenous identity; it is merely a formal recognition of that particular Tribal Nation’s present-day political relations. If anyone needs more information on the legal processes of Native American federal and state recognition, and the list of current Tribal Nations, refer to the National Conference of State Legislatures [see: http://www.ncsl.org/quad-caucus/state-recogniton-of-American-Indian-tribes].

Most people are not aware of the fact that citizens of all state-recognized and federally-recognized Tribal Nations are protected from discrimination under both state law and federal law in the United States. If a Tribal Nation is state-recognized, they have specific rights acknowledged by that state. Under United States federal law, as codified in the Indian Arts and Crafts Act (IACA) of 1990, they also have the legally protected right to identify themselves and their work as “Native American.” That law states, unequivocally: Under the IACA, an Indian is defined as a member of any federally or officially State recognized tribe of the United States” [see: https://www.doi.gov/iacb/act]. Nothing in any social media or public media article, nothing in any scholar’s unethical research, and nothing in any blogger’s personal opinion, changes their legally protected right to identify as Native American. That being said, it is no wonder that the general public is confused, since reporters are unethically and inappropriately utilized sources who have no legal authority on this issue.

By highlighting the personal opinions and biases of a few outspoken individuals and bloggers, journalists are encouraging the spreading of outright lies and slander – creating troubling and confusing conservations among Native people and the general public. This is not because any tribal identities or histories have changed, but because journalists have given voice to a few individuals who – although they do not represent the collective will of their Tribal Nations and have no legal right to dictate the identity of others – are exerting outsized influence in public media to push their personal agendas. Students also need to know that everyone has a right to free speech, but not if they are using that speech as a weapon for harassment.

In consulting with US attorneys who specialize in cyber-stalking, it is clear that genealogical research on any living individual, when conducted without informed consent and explicit permission, violates the ethics of human subjects research and may constitute a hate crime when it violates rights to privacy. It is also clear that academic dialogue (arguing about different research approaches and findings) crosses the line when it veers into slander. When written attacks become personal – more than merely giving an opinion, but actively denigrating an individual and encouraging others to join in the attack – that is also a federal crime [see: https://privacyrights.org/consumer-guides/online-harassment-cyberstalking].

So, going forward, I would advise everyone to proceed with far more sensitivity, and with far more respect for tribal sovereignty, in their communications and interactions with and about Native American individuals and Tribal Nations, to avoid spreading gossip and causing unnecessary harm and confusion.

Marge

In response to "Chord and Discord: Odanak Musician Mali Obomsawin Talks Music, Community and Vermont's 'Pretendian Problem,'" dated September 27, 2023, Marge Bruchac wrote an Op-ed piece entitled “Incendian Problem” … dated December 13, 2023 on SevenDaysVt.com:

Vermont does not have a "pretendian problem" — it has an "incendian problem." By highlighting the incendiary opinions of a few outspoken individuals — who have no legal authority whatsoever to adjudicate anyone's Indigenous identity — journalists are contributing to a firestorm of slander, provoking troubling conversations among Native people and the general public.

As a simple point of fact, no individual holds the inherent right to determine who is or is not legally "Indian" in the United States or Canada. Nothing in any federal, provincial or state law, and nothing in any traditional Indigenous practice of governance, gives any Native American or First Nations person or tribe the legal right to judge the identity of any other Native American or First Nations person or tribe. Such determinations can only be made by and within a sovereign tribal nation, over its own citizens.

Under Vermont Statute Title One, Chapter 23, the Abenaki nations in Vermont are legally recognized and identified as "Native American Indian People." Under the United States Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990, they are legally recognized as Native American artists, "defined as a member of any federally or officially State recognized tribe of the United States."

Although many Abenaki people are being slandered as a direct result of this biased reporting, they have nonetheless received personal reassurances from many respected citizens of American and Canadian tribal nations who are appalled by the recent media coverage that is causing an enormous amount of unnecessary chaos and confusion.

Margaret Bruchac

NORTHAMPTON, MA

Aside from the “legalistic” defensiveness conjured up in the diatribe of Marge Bruchac and bristling responses of her brother, pontificating that (quote) "In any case, we are currently pursuing legal action against these stalkers and attackers," according to what she is stating on Wikipedia, on October 26, 2023, the genetic-genealogical research on her ancestor Louis (1844-1918) does in fact, continue.

Jacques Vaudry (1532 - ) Rouen, Normandie, France

Joseph Vaudry (1558 - ) & Marie Vougluer Rouen, Normandie, France

Adrién Vaudry (1594-1660) & Marthe Hubault dite Deschamps Rouen, Normandie, France

Jacques Vaudry (1635-1688) & Jeanne Rénaud dite Rénault Rouen > Lamberville > Trois-Rivières, Qc.

Jacques Vaudry (1670-1743) & Marie Françoise Joly Montréal, Québec, Canada

Jean Baptiste Vaudry (1701-1765) & Geneviève Bussière dite Messier (Most Recent Common Ancestor)

Jean Baptiste Vaudry (1726-1804) & Rose Villeneuve Ste. Henri de Mascouche, Qc.

Jean Baptiste (Joseph) Vaudry (1773 - ) & Marie Anne Chênevert dite Demarbre Ste. Henri de Mascouche, Qc.

Joseph Vaudry (1801 - ) & Josephte Forget dite Depaty Ste. Henri de Mascouche, Qc.

Charles Eugène Vaudry (1842 - ) & Alphonsine Élisabeth (Eliza) Françoise Ste. Henri de Mascouche, Qc.

Paul Eugène Vaudry (1874-1928) & May Élisabeth Mary Kernan Montréal, Québec, Canada

Ernest Vaudry (1908-1988) & Marie Yvonne Jeannette Bibiane Roy Montréal, Québec, Canada

Joseph Ernest Vaudry (1953 - ) Montréal, Québec, Canada > Italy

Jacques Vaudry (1532 - ) Rouen, Normandie, France

Joseph Vaudry (1558 - ) & Marie Vougluer Rouen, Normandie, France

Adrién Vaudry (1594-1660) & Marthe Hubault dite Deschamps Rouen, Normandie, France

Jacques Vaudry (1635-1688) & Jeanne Rénaud dite Rénault Rouen > Lamberville > Trois-Rivières, Qc.

Jacques Vaudry (1670-1743) & Marie Françoise Joly Montréal, Québec, Canada

Jean Baptiste Vaudry (1701-1765) & Geneviève Bussière dite Messier (Most Recent Common Ancestor)

Charles (Bapt. Louis Pierre) Vaudry (1820-1896) & Joséphine (Josephte) Soucisse Montréal, Québec, Canada

Louis Vaudry (1854-1890) & Marie Julie Caroline Lafond Montréal, Québec, Canada

Charles Jules Beaudry (1880-ca. 1960) & Marie Nélida Landry Montréal, Québec, Canada

Joseph Édouard Alfred Charles ("Roger") Beaudry (1921-2000) & Anna Desrochers Montréal, Québec, Canada

Jean Pierre Beaudry Montréal, Québec, Canada

Charles (Bapt. Louis Pierre) Vaudry (1820-1896) & Marie Élisabeth (Sophié) Sénécal dite Laframboise

Louis Bowman Sr. (1844-1918) & Alice Van Antwerp Granby, Qc. > Greenfield Center, Saratoga Co., NY

John Jack Bowman (1893-1973) & Katherine Gray Queensbury, Warren Co., NY

Howard Leroy Bowman (1917-1997) & Charlotte Jane Dewey Queensbury, Warren Co., NY

Robert Howard Bowman (1946 - ) Queensbury, Warren Co., NY

Charles (Bapt. Louis Pierre) Vaudry (1820-1896) & Marie Élisabeth (Sophié) Sénécal dite Laframboise

Louis Bowman Sr. (1844-1918) & Alice Van Antwerp Granby, Qc. > Greenfield Center, Saratoga Co., NY

John Jack Bowman (1893-1973) & Katherine Gray Queensbury, Warren Co., NY

Earl Kenneth Bowman (1916-1983) & Alegra Holloran Queensbury, Warren Co., NY

Earl John Bowman Sr. (1936-2025) Queensbury, Warren Co., NY

SOURCES:

“Illegitimate Louis” Baptismal Record, B. 314 Quebec, Catholic Parish Registers, 1621-1979, Granby Notre-Dame-de-Granby, Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1844-1876. Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

“Louis Sénécal” Burial Record, S. 19 Quebec, Catholic Parish Registers, 1621-1979, Granby Notre-Dame-de-Granby, Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1844-1876. Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/baudrand_fleury_8E.html

“Sophie Raymond” 1901 (March 31) Census of Canada, Magog (Town/Ville), Stanstead, Quebec, Family No. 251

“Marie Élisabeth Sénécal” Baptismal Record B. 246 Quebec, Catholic Parish Registers, 1621-1979 Saint-Hyacinthe Notre-Dame-du-Rosaire, Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1815-1821. Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

“Louis Sénécal” Baptismal Record B. 245 Quebec, Catholic Parish Registers, 1621-1979 Saint-Hyacinthe Notre-Dame-du-Rosaire, Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1815-1821, Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

“Louis Sénécal and Marie Jared dite Borgard” Marriage Record M. 8 Quebec, Catholic Parish Registers, 1621-1979 Saint-Hyacinthe Notre-Dame-du-Rosaire, Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1821-1828. Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

“Angéle Rhémond” Baptismal Record B. 69, Quebec, Catholic Parish Registers, 1621-1979, Granby Notre-Dame-de-Granby Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1844-1876. Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

“Marie Délina Raymond” Baptismal Record B. 69, Quebec, Catholic Parish Registers, 1621-1979, Granby Notre-Dame-de-Granby Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1844-1876. Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

Lewis Bowman Civil War Pension File Records petitioned for May 2012 and received by Douglas Lloyd Buchholz that same year. Soldier's Certificate # 208738 Lewis or Louis Bowman Recruited by Capt., Forsythe at East Troy, NY ... was a PVT, Co. E., 69th NY Inf. Commander was peter W. Sweeney and Louis or Lewis Bowman rec'd a Medical Discharge on Aug. 14, 1865 at Stanton General.

Family Bible Record in the possession of Robert Howard Bowman. Marriage by Elder Combs also mentioned by Louis Bowman in his Civil War Pension Record on May 04, 1898 and April 16, 1915.

1870 (June 28) United States Federal Census, Plainfield, Windham Co., CT, Page 83, Family Dwelling No. 545 – Family No. 653. Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

“Jean Baptiste Castonguay and Adélina Raymond” Marriage Record M. 3, Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, St-François-Xavier-de-West-Shefford Parish. Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

“Israel Edouard Castonguay” Birth Record B. 32, Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968 St-François-Xavier-de-West-Shefford Parish. Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

Ancestry.com Messaging System dated May 30, 2018 to two Castonguay descendants: Rita in Maine, and Denis in Rhoda Island.

“John Castonguay” 1861 Census of Canada, Shefford Twp., Line 43

Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

“Louis Brodeur and Marie Sénécal” Marriage Record M. 8, Quebec, Catholic Parish Registers, 1621-1979, Granby Notre-Dame-de-Granby Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1844-1876, Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

“Georges Raymond” Death Record S. 16 Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, Ste. François Xavier de West Shefford (Bromont), Shefford, Québec, Canada. Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

“Elisabeth Laframboise” Burial Record D. 66 Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, Saint-Patrice Parish, Magog, Stanstead Co., Quebec. Pg 77. Ancestry.com

“Angéle (nee: Raymond) McWilliams” Burial Record S. 55 Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, St-Romuald (Farnham, Québec), Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

“Adélina (nee: Raymond) Castonguay” Burial Record S. 2, Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, Ste. François Xavier de West Shefford (Bromont), Shefford, Québec, Canada. Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

New York, County Marriage Records, 1847-1849, 1907-1936. Ancestry.com

Massachusetts, Marriage Index, 1901-1955 and 1966-1970, Massachusetts, and Marriage Records, 1840-1915. Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

Massachusetts, Marriage Records, 1840-1915. Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

New York, County Marriage Records, 1847-1849, 1907-1936. Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org

New York, State Census, 1915, House Number: RD1, Line No. 6, Pg 13.

Robert H. Bowman matched to Kenneth E. Sénécal of Barre, VT in April/May of 2017

The Saratogian Newspaper dated June 16, 1917

The Saratogian Newspaper dated September 10, 11, and 13, 1918

The Saratogian Newspaper dated October 22, 1918, Page 05. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

New York, County Marriage Records, 1847-1849, 1907-1936. Ancestry.com

The Saratogian Newspaper dated June 24, 1920. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007. Ancestry.com

Vermont, Death Records, 1909-2008, Vermont Vital Records Ancestry.com

Vermont, Marriage Records, 1909-2008, Vermont Vital Records Ancestry.com

The Saratogian Newspaper dated November 21, 1922. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

(And articles dated January 08, and 09, 1923 of the same newspaper. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html)

The Saratogian Newspaper dated November 21, 1922. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

The Saratogian Newspaper dated February 09, 1923, Pg 04. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

The Saratogian Newspaper dated February 23, 1923, Pg 10. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html & August 17, 1923, Front Page. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

The Saratogian Newspaper dated June 20, 1924, Pg’s 01 and 02 and The Troy Times, Pg 15. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

The Saratogian Newspaper dated June 20, 1924, Pages 01 and July 03, 1924, Pg 12.

The Saratogian Newspaper dated June 20, 1924, Pg’s 01-02. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

The Saratogian Newspaper dated July 03, 1924, Pg 12. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

The Saratogian Newspaper dated July 14, 1924, Front Pg (01). https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

The Ballston Spa Daily Newspaper dated November 10-14-15, 1924. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

The Saratogian Newspaper dated May 25, 1925, Pg 02. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

The Ballston Spa Daily Newspaper dated June 15, 1925. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

The Saratogian Newspaper dated April 17, 1926. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

New York, County Marriage Records, 1847-1849, 1907-1936 and the New York State, Marriage Index, 1881-1967. Ancestry.com

Familysearch.org and Ancestry.com

“Bowman’s Store: A Journey to Myself”, by Joseph Bruchac ©1997, Pg 38 … and “The Ethnic Moment: The Search for Equality in the American Experience” by Philip L. Fetzer ©1997. Grandpa’s Indian Blood by Joseph Bruchac, Page 202.

The Saratogian Newspaper dated August 14, 1961, Pg. 10. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

“Beating the Odds: A Teen Guide to 75 Superstars Who Overcame Adversity” by Mary Ellen Snodgrass ©2008, Pg. 102; and The Saratogian Newspaper dated April 08, 1964 & June 13, 1964. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

The Post Star Newspaper dated March 07, 1999, Pg. C2. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

The Post Star Newspaper dated January 31, 1999. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

Skidmore College Newspaper, Vol. 46, Num. 10, dated February 25, 1971, Front Page.

Skidmore College News, Vol. 45, No. 12. ‘Malcolm C’ Author Speaks on Black Heritage Tonight.

The Saratogian Newspaper dated January 28, 1970, Pg. 10B. https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

The Post-Star Newspaper dated August 23, 1973. Obituary of John Bowman.

Addendum Email Communication from Peter W. S. Vaudry dated January 06, 2022.

The Reinvention of the Alleged Vermont and New Hampshire Abenakis

Monday, August 25, 2025

Ever NOTICE how the Bruchac's (Joe, Marge, Jesse, and his brother Jim Bruchac) are now changing their "Abenaki" narrative about their "Abenaki" ancestry and themselves? Part 2

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