the VErmont Eugenics Project

[sadie_sabot]

via delux_vivens I found this
discussion of a book that references the Vermont Eugenics Project

I grew up in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, and I come from an old yankee vermont family (although I now live on the other coast) and I had, up until about an hour ago, never heard of the Vermont Eugenics Program. Growing up, I was barely aware even of the

Comments

[slipbluenight]

the eugenics project was still active into the early part of the last century, so if you think about it, yeah, the people directly effected were still alive when you were growing up, it was still way too immediate for them to risk speaking publicly about. and it wasn't only sterilization, it was also imprisonment, adoption, anything and everything to end bloodlines and break up Abenaki families. multiple layers of trauma upon trauma.

there are/were a huge number of families who referred to themselves "French Canadian". some of their grandchildren and great grandchildren are now ID'ing as Abenaki. i certainly know a number of people who do.

the Missisquoi band (franklin county) is active and vocal, though still without land or tribal status.

[sadie_sabot]

I'm looking forward to talking with my mom aobut this, either because she'll have heard of it and stuff, or because she won't have, and should. I know she spends time sometimes with some of the Abenaki in Evansville, though I am utterly ignorant of their name.

I keep wondering if there's lots of Abenaki living as french candian in Brownington.

[sadie_sabot]

well there's really no excuse for ignorance anymore in the age of google, is there!

this is the group I was referencing:
http://clanofthehawkinc.org/default.aspx