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Abenaki Heritage Garden and celebration helps grow understanding |
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Written by Administrator
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Monday, 20 September 2010 |
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Abenaki Heritage Garden and celebration helps grow understanding By Melissa Pasanen Sunday, September 19, 2010 For the second summer this century, the Intervale in Burlington has been home to a traditional Abenaki “three-sisters” garden — referring to the staples of corn, beans and squash — similar to plots the Abenaki would have cultivated annually in the same fertile flood plain 900 years ago. Thursday, local schoolchildren, partners in the garden project and the public have been invited to celebrate the harvest and to honor the agricultural heritage and contemporary culture of the Abenaki with tours, cooking demonstrations and other educational activities followed by a community potluck and barn dance.
The garden and the harvest celebration “are a way for us to share a part of our heritage and our culture — not just the past but the future, too,” said April St. Francis Merrill of Swanton, chief of the St. Francis/Sokoki band of the Abenaki Nation at Missisquoi.
The Abenaki Heritage Garden is an Intervale Center project with a community advisory board made up of representatives from BACG, the St. Francis/Sokoki band of the Abenaki Nation at Missisquoi, Gardener’s Supply Co., USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and the University of Vermont’s Environmental Program — all of which will participate in Thursday’s celebration.
This year, the project also received funding from Will and Lynette Raap and New Chapter, a Brattleboro-based organic dietary supplement company, and is now part of the international Sacred Seeds Network, a program of the William L. Brown Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden.
“We have lots of great team members. We’ve all learned a lot from each other,” Merrill said. “It’s through programs and events like these we can help people understand more about us.” |
