Winter Center for Indigenous Traditions

Archives, library, & research Center & research projects: work to help native families and communities document family histories, protect sites and burial grounds, preserve and pass on our cultural Traditions, and sustain our Indigenous languages continues. Many research and archiving efforts continue as we care for and expand into our new, fully accessible home. We finally were able to purchase our new home with the help of many community members.

Language project: helping abenaki youth and families to increase the abenaki language daily use in our communities continues including collaborations to preserve our language, creating more teaching materials for families interested in speaking the language, facilitating long term apprenticeships as well as language teaching gatherings. Language resource writing and sharing is increasing as well.

Education project: programs have increased in colleges, universities, local towns, and community organizations. We also continue to advise numerous native and non-native individuals, families, and communities, and local, state, and federal agencies, on a variety of Indigenous historical, cultural, and other topics and issues.

Health project: health work has continued at an elevated pace with the corona virus epidemic with many abenaki and other native elders and families in health crises, long term care, and end-of-life situations. Help also continues for victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence, veterans and their families, and many others suffering from historical traumas, racism, and ptsd. Work continues in local and regional heath care facilities and agencies to improve policies and care. We also encourage the passing on of ancient and continuing health care Traditions of Indigenous families and communities to the next generations. Environmental justice project: the work continues with Indigenous communities and local and regional conservation organizations to protect threatened ecologies, understand and work to eliminate pollution in fish populations and other parts of the environment, and reduce the effects of wind power, hydro electric dams, power line projects, and other developments. Burial protection & repatriation project: repatriation of native remains, grave goods, and sacred items continues as has monitoring of many burial grounds and sacred sites. Repatriation work with institutions continues. We also continue to work with a coalition of elders and communities to protect burial grounds, sacred sites, and ecologically sensitive areas. Site protection project: preservation work for many sites, sacred and unique plant and tree communities, and sacred sites continues including brown ash tree stands, nut tree orchards, and herbal medicine and wild food plant sources is increasing. We also are teaching Indigenous stewardship skills to our youth as well as to public and private institutions and communities to care for sacred and traditional sites, plant, tree, terrestrial and aquatic communities and ecologies. Elders, youth, & families project: we continue to help elders with health issues to survive the pandemic, heal the wounds of major traumas, and to preserve oral Traditions, to document sacred and traditional sites, and to protect our shared environment. We also link our elders and interested youth to preserve and pass on our ancient Traditions as well as to help our young people survive and guide them into lives grounded in our ancient Traditions and languages. Awighiganal publishing project continues to support the archive, library, & research Center book and resource publishing effort. Editing and guiding publication of a number of articles, books, teaching guides, and other resources continues.