Mocassin Village: Weaving Together a Piece of the Past
A once-vibrant Intervale neighborhood will come to life at UVM talk
By Sally Pollak
March 20, 2007
The summer she was 10, at her family’s camp in South Hero, Judy Fortin learned to make Abenaki baskets. It was a rainy season, and Judy’s mother bought a basket kit to teach her children the craft.
Judy Fortin is now Judy Dow, 53, of Essex; she still has the reed basket she made that rainy summer in South Hero.
Dow has traveled around the country to learn from other basketmakers; she teaches basket-making to children; her work is on display in museums.
Dow, of Abenaki heritage, makes native baskets using four basic techniques: plaiting; coiling; twining and one-piece. The technique is typically determined by the material she’s using: ash for plaiting; sweet grass for coiling; willow or red osier for twining; birch or elm bark for one-piece baskets.
Over the years, she has adapted the native art to reconcile it with a contemporary need: recycling. Dow makes baskets, using traditional techniques, from cereal boxes and panty hose, package strapping and Pepsi cans.
"To me, the techniques were the gifts," Dow said. "For the techniques to live on, you have to adapt to your environment, everything around you. What was accessible and available was recycled materials."
Dow’s interest in her heritage extends beyond basket-making. It has come to include a once-vibrant neighborhood in Burlington, called Mocassin Village.
She and author/historian Nancy Gallagher will talk about this neighborhood, its life and people during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The presentation, at 7:30 p.m. March 27 at the University of Vermont’s Waterman Building, is free and open to the public.
Dow’s father’s family is from Mocassin Village, a part of Burlington that overlooked the Intervale. (She will reveal its precise location at the UVM talk.)
Dow and Gallagher will discuss how the Abenaki adapted to life in the growing city around them. They will talk about the culture of Mocassin Village, where residents had their own customs and influences and priorities.
"It was night and day," Dow said, comparing Moccasin Village to Burlington's Hill section.
Abenaki adapted to changing social and political currents in the city in an effort to keep their culture alive, Dow said. "Sometimes this adaptation didn’t fit into the big picture that white Anglo-Saxons saw for Burlington," she said.
A number of initiatives were put in place — including limits on fishing and hunting — that served to undermine Abenaki culture, Dow said.
Later, in the 1920s and 30s, Burlington would create a eugenics survey in an effort to identify (and control) certain populations.
When Dow was growing up, her family moved to its island camp each year during April vacation http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com |
