Abenaki Art Then and Now
This course provides a broad overview of over 12,000 years of regional Native American culture, including history, arts, cultural perspectives on place, kinship, relationship building, and self-determination through Abenaki voices and artistic expressions. Interactive class discussions will cultivate new understandings about decolonization, identity, gender, blood quantum, cultural appropriation versus appreciation of art, and allyship with the local Abenaki community. Through an Indigenous methodology called “Two-Eyed Seeing” in the Mi’kmaw language, we bring Western and Indigenous Perspectives together by exploring Western views through one eye and Indigenous views through the other. Diverse perspectives of scholars such as Ruth Phillips, Jason Baird Jackson, Lisa Brooks (Abenaki) and Indigenous culture bearers will be brought together to illuminate course themes. No prerequisites.

Vera Sheehan, scholar, educator, activist, and artist is the Executive Director of the Vermont Abenaki Artists Association, Founder of the Abenaki Arts & Education Center, and Board Secretary for the Vermont Humanities. Previously, she worked at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and served on the Act 1 Working Group dedicated to ethnic studies and social equity in schools./