Indigenous Rights Remains a Legislative Priority

My 2026 campaign platform has already addressed corrections reform, public safety, and workers’ rights. Each has an obvious connection to Chittenden-15. Our district feels the effects of Vermont’s criminal justice policies, public-safety decisions, labor laws, housing pressures, and education policies every day.

My next platform installment addresses Indigenous rights and Vermont’s deeply flawed Abenaki recognition process.

I have published a new video examining how Vermont created that process, excluded the sovereign Abenaki First Nations at Odanak and Wôlinak, and allowed applicant organizations to exercise extraordinary influence over decisions concerning their own claims.

Vermont got this wrong

The Vermont Legislature established a process through which a predominantly white state government decided which organizations would be recognized as Abenaki tribes.

The sovereign Abenaki First Nations at Odanak and Wôlinak raised serious objections. Their voices were marginalized. Odanak citizens who had served on the original Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs lost their seats when the commission was dissolved. The replacement commission included people affiliated with organizations seeking state recognition.

Vermont then recognized four applicant organizations between 2011 and 2012. Those decisions continue to shape whom our schools, museums, universities, public agencies, and municipalities treat as representatives of the Abenaki people.

Government decisions acquire authority through repetition. Institutional acceptance is then cited as evidence that the original decision must have been legitimate. The underlying historical and genealogical problems remain unresolved.

Why this belongs in my platform

A legislative platform should tell voters what a candidate intends to prioritize. It should also reveal how that candidate understands the responsibility of holding public office.

Some responsibilities are immediately visible within the boundaries of Chittenden-15. Others arise because the Vermont Legislature caused harm through its own actions. Repairing that harm is part of the job.

The Abenaki First Nations at Odanak and Wôlinak are living, sovereign nations. Their citizens remain present in Vermont and throughout the region. Under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous nations possess the right to determine their own membership and choose their own representatives.

Vermont disregarded that principle. The state substituted its judgment for the authority of the sovereign Abenaki nations themselves.

The work ahead

If I return to the Vermont House, I will continue pressing for legislation that centers direct consultation with Odanak and Wôlinak, brings Vermont policy into alignment with the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and confronts the legitimacy of the state recognition process.

Vermont must examine what happened, acknowledge the harm it caused, and undertake the work required to repair it.

This remains high on my list of legislative priorities.

For a fuller written examination of the recognition process and its continuing consequences, read my Substack essay, “Erasure Through Replacement.”