[Federal Register: November 17, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 221)]
[Notices]
[Page 69776-69780]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr17no05-83]
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DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Bureau of Indian Affairs
Proposed Finding Against Federal Acknowledgment of the St.
Francis/Sokoki Band of Abenakis of Vermont
AGENCY: Bureau of Indian Affairs, Interior.
ACTION: Notice.
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SUMMARY: Pursuant to 25 CFR 83.10(h), notice is hereby given that the
Assistant Secretary--Indian Affairs (AS-IA), proposes to determine that
the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of Abenakis of Vermont, P.O. Box 276,
Swanton, Vermont, c/o Ms. April Merrill, is not an
[[Page 69777]]
Indian tribe within the meaning of Federal law. This notice is based on
a determination that the petitioner does not satisfy criteria 83.7(a),
83.7(b), 83.7(c) and 83.7(e), and thus, does not meet the requirements
for a government-to-government relationship with the United States.
DATES: Publication of the AS-IA's notice of the proposed finding in the
Federal Register initiates a 180-day comment period during which the
petitioner, interested and informed parties, and the public may submit
arguments and evidence to support or rebut the evidence relied upon in
the proposed finding. Interested or informed parties must provide a
copy of their comments to the petitioner. The regulations, 25 CFR
83.10(k), provide petitioners a minimum of 60 days to respond to any
submissions on the proposed findings received from interested and
informed parties during the comment period.
ADDRESSES: Comments on the proposed finding or requests for a copy of
the summary evaluation of the evidence should be addressed to the
Office of the Assistant Secretary--Indian Affairs, 1951 Constitution
Avenue, NW., Washington, DC 20240, Attention of the Office of Federal
Acknowledgment, Mail Stop 34B-SIB.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: R. Lee Fleming, Director, Office of
Federal Acknowledgment, (202) 513-7650.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: This notice is published in the exercise of
authority delegated by the Secretary of the Interior to the Associate
Deputy Secretary by Secretarial Order 3259, of February 8, 2005, as
amended on August 11, 2005.
The acknowledgment process is based on the regulations at 25 CFR
part 83, first issued in 1978 and revised in 1994. Under these
regulations, the petitioner has the burden to present evidence that it
meets the seven mandatory criteria in section 83.7.
Pursuant to section 83.6(c), ``the documented petition must include
thorough explanations and supporting documentation in response to all
of the criteria.'' Furthermore, section 83.6(d) provides that a
petition will be turned down for a lack of evidence. This notice of
proposed finding is based on a determination that the St. Francis/
Sokoki Band of Abenkis of Vermont (SSA), Petitioner 68, does
not satisfy all seven of the mandatory criteria for acknowledgment as
an Indian tribe described in 25 CFR 83.7.
The SSA submitted a letter of intent to petition for Federal
acknowledgment on March 28, 1980. The AS-IA placed the petitioner on
active consideration on February 4, 2005.
The SSA petitioner claims to have descended as a group mainly from
the Missisquoi, a historical Western Abenaki Indian tribe. During the
colonial period (approximately 1600-1800), the Missiquoi occupied the
Lake Champlain region near the present-day town of Swanton in Franklin
County in northwestern Vermont. The available evidence in the
historical record indicates that by 1800 the disruption caused by
colonial wars and non-Indian settlement had forced almost all the
Western Abenakis in northern New England (including Vermont) to
relocate to the Saint Francis River area of Quebec, Canada, and become
part of the St. Francis [Odanak] village of Canadian Indians. The
petitioner, however, contends that its ancestors remained behind in
northwestern Vermont after 1800, or moved to Canada until it was
``safe'' to return. The petitioner also maintains that its ancestors
lived ``underground,'' hiding their Native American identity to avoid
drawing the attention of their non-Indian neighbors, until the 1970's.
The details of this claimed process of living ``underground,'' however,
are not explained by the petitioner. Some of the available
documentation indicates that some of the group's ancestors moved from
various locations in Quebec, Canada, to the United States over the
course of the 19th century, but the available evidence does not
demonstrate that the petitioner or its claimed ancestors descended from
the St. Francis Indians of Quebec, another Indian group in Canada, a
Missisquoi Abenaki entity in Vermont, or any other Western Abenaki
group or Indian entity from New England in existence before or after
1800. The available evidence indicates that no external observers from
1800 to 1975 described the petitioner or its claimed ancestors, or any
group of Indians, as an Indian entity or a distinct Indian community in
northwestern Vermont.
The SSA petitioner does not meet criterion 83.7(a), which requires
that it has been identified as an American Indian entity on a
substantially continuous basis since 1900. The available evidence
demonstrates that no external observers identified the SSA petitioner
or a group of its ancestors as an Indian entity from 1900 to 1975.
External sources, including Federal authorities, State agencies, local
governments, scholars, newspapers, periodicals, and Indian
organizations, have identified SSA as some form of Indian entity only
on a regular basis since 1976. Based on the available evidence,
therefore, the SSA has not been identified on a substantially
continuous basis since 1900, and does not meet criterion 83.7(a). The
SSA petitioner is encouraged to submit documentation demonstrating that
it has been identified as an Indian entity from 1900 to 1975. The
current record suggests that it formed only recently in the middle
1970's.
The SSA does not meet criterion 83.7(b), which requires that a
predominant portion of the petitioning group comprises a distinct
community and has existed as a community from historical times until
the present. The available evidence does not demonstrate a predominant
portion of the SSA petitioning group's members or its claimed ancestors
have maintained consistent interaction and significant social
relationships throughout history. Instead, the evidence demonstrates
that the SSA petitioner is a collection of individuals of claimed (but
not demonstrated) Indian ancestry with little or no social or
historical connection with each other before the early 1970's. The
available evidence also establishes that the petitioner's claimed
ancestors and current members have not maintained at least a minimal
distinction from other populations in the northwestern Vermont area and
Lake Champlain region from historical times to the present.
The available evidence does not demonstrate the SSA petitioner has
a historical or social connection to any Western Abenaki entity in
existence before 1800. The petitioner has not provided sufficient
evidence to establish that a predominant portion of its claimed
ancestors were interacting as a group before 1800. Indeed, it is not
known from the available evidence what these claimed ancestors were
doing before they moved to Vermont over the course of the 19th century.
Thus, the petitioner does not meet the requirements of criterion
83.7(b) before 1800.
A major problem with the evidence SSA submitted to demonstrate
community for its claimed 19th century ancestors is the use of family-
name variations to construct its ancestral family lines. The petitioner
developed these names from family names found mainly on 19th century
lists of St. Francis Indians at Odanak in Quebec, a historical group
from which only a very small number of SSA's current members actually
claim descent. It appears that the SSA petitioner took the family names
of current members and searched for variations of those names on lists
of Saint Francis Indians. The SSA petitioner also searched for further
[[Page 69778]]
variations of those family names in local church, town, land, school,
and census records from the 19th century in the Franklin County area of
Vermont, or from the ``oral traditions'' of its members. Once the
petitioner perceived what it believed were similarities between the
name of a present-day family and names on these historical records, it
designated the family as part of an ``Abenaki'' community in the
Franklin County area during the 19th century.
The use of such a methodology to demonstrate consistent
interactions and significant social relationships for SSA's claimed
ancestral families is unpersuasive. Using this process means that the
families were identified as part of a claimed ancestral community based
on the presumption that individuals with perceived similar names had
shared social interactions, and not because the record actually
demonstrated consistent interactions and social relationships among
them.
In addition, the SSA petitioner has not submitted the documentation
it used to create the lists of claimed ancestral families. Instead, the
petitioner described the contents of various town, church, and census
records, and submitted abstracted lists of various family names of
claimed ancestors. Copies of the actual primary documents from which
the petitioner claimed to have extracted this information were not
submitted. Further, the SSA petitioner did not provide most of the
interviews, field notes, or genealogical materials referenced in its
narratives. The petitioner is encouraged to submit copies of these
documents for verification and analysis.
Moreover, the petitioner has not provided sufficient evidence to
explain how the claimed ancestral families which shared these family
name or surname variations were consistently interacting in a way that
would meet the requirements of criterion 83.7(b). For example, the
petitioner has submitted little or no primary documentation from the
19th century to show these claimed ancestral families had significant
marriage rates within the group, significant social relationships
(formal or informal) connecting individual ancestors, important
cooperative labor or other economic activities among claimed ancestors,
or noteworthy sacred or secular behavior involving most of the group.
It is also unclear if most of the claimed ancestral families from the
19th century actually have descendants in SSA's current membership.
The petitioner has also described or provided abstracted lists of
family names from four categories of evidence: local historical
accounts, church and town records, Federal census data, and
genealogical research on Abenaki family names, which it claims
demonstrates the existence of its ancestral community in northwestern
Vermont during the 19th century. It has not submitted copies of the
documents referenced in the four groups of evidence and is encouraged
to do so. Despite the lack of primary documentation, an evaluation of
the limited available evidence does not indicate the four categories of
evidence demonstrate that a predominant portion of the group's claimed
ancestors comprised a distinct community during the 19th century.
Rather, the evaluation reveals that many of the petitioner's claimed
ancestral families began migrating to Vermont as individual families,
beginning slowly in a disconnected fashion in the early 19th century,
and continuing in a very gradual manner until well into the 20th
century. Many came from unknown places in Quebec or separate locations
throughout the Canadian province. Others came from Massachusetts, New
York, Connecticut, or Rhode Island. There is no available evidence
showing these families interacted with each other as part of a
community in Canada or elsewhere in the United States. There is also no
evidence to demonstrate that the claimed ancestors migrated to Vermont
as a group or acted as part of a community distinct in some way from
the wider society after they arrived in Vermont. Thus, the petitioner
does not meet the requirements of criterion 83.7(b) from 1800 to 1900.
The information presented by the petitioner does not indicate the
presence of a group or a community of the petitioner's claimed
ancestors from 1900 to the early 1970's; rather, it indicates only that
some of the current petitioner's claimed ancestors lived in Franklin
County, Vermont (particularly in the Town of Swanton) during the 20th
century. The petitioner submitted very few copies of primary documents
such as birth certificates, land records, or census enumerations,
choosing instead to submit abstracts of this information. These
abstracts, however, are inadequate for the purposes of the Department's
verification research and evaluation, which require copies of original
documents. Furthermore, on several occasions when original documents
were located by the Department or submitted by the State of Vermont,
they did not contain the information the petitioner claimed.
Information provided by the petitioner and located by the
Department does not demonstrate that the ancestors claimed by the
petitioner formed an ``enclave'' in the Town of Swanton, Vermont. Some
claimed ancestors lived on the streets defined as making up an area of
the town referred to as ``Back Bay,'' but others lived elsewhere in the
town, and nonmember families also appear to have lived on these
streets. The petitioner has not demonstrated the existence of a
distinct community within Swanton, Vermont, consisting of the
petitioner's ancestors, or that those ancestors constituted a
``community-within-a-community'' among the French-Canadian or Roman
Catholic families in the town. The petitioner also has not demonstrated
that assorted references to ``Abenaki'' Indians refer to their
ancestors, rather than to Abenaki from New England and Canada who
traveled to the area to hunt, fish, or sell crafts.
The group maintains that it did not keep membership lists before
the 1970's and the initial organization of the SSA. However, the
petition lacks the type of evidence which, in the absence of formal
lists, would help to define the makeup of a community, such as lists of
attendees at meetings or other gatherings, letters detailing
interaction among people in religious or social organizations, or
journals describing the participation by people in rituals such as
baptisms, marriages, and funerals. Without this information, it is not
possible to determine who was supposed to have been a member of this
``group'' before the 1970's. Membership standards since the 1970's
indicate a very fluid group, with few clearly-defined, consistent
standards for membership.
After the formal organization of the SSA in the early 1970's, the
group became a more organized body, with an emphasis on providing
services such as after-school programs and vocational training through
the Abenaki Self-Help Association, Incorporated (ASHAI), the group's
social-welfare organization. The group has also introduced some
elements of Western Abenaki and pan-Indian culture into their
gatherings, and has actively sought to establish relations with other
non-federally recognized groups and recognized Indian tribes (both in
Canada and the United States). These developments notwithstanding, the
group has not displayed a level of community that would meet criterion
83.7(b) from 1975 to the present. The social and cultural elements are
of recent introduction, and there is not enough information to indicate
that these events are of more than symbolic value to the group as a
whole, rather than to a few involved members. Although the SAA group
has organized
[[Page 69779]]
events that allow its members to meet and socialize, the petitioner has
not demonstrated that a significant portion of its membership regularly
associate with each other. The lack of documentation also makes it
difficult to determine who among the membership has participated in the
group's various activities.
The SSA petitioner has not demonstrated that a distinct community
of the petitioner's ancestors existed in Franklin County, Vermont,
during the 19th century, and has not satisfied the requirements for
criterion 83.7(b) at any time before 1975. Further, the group has not
provided sufficient evidence of community to establish that it meets
criterion 83.7(b) since 1975. Therefore, the petitioner has not met the
requirements of criterion 83.7(b).
The SSA petitioner does not meet criterion 83.7(c), which requires
that it has maintained political influence or authority over its
members as an autonomous entity from historical times until the
present. The SSA petitioner claims it expressed political influence
mainly through ``family bands'' before the formation of its council in
the middle of the 1970's. The available evidence from potential
antecedent entities, however, indicates that the historical Western
Abenaki actually had a well-developed political organization during the
colonial period consisting of a ``civil chief'' and a ``war chief''.
The ``civil chief'' presided over a ``great council'' composed of the
``war chief'' and the ``elders'' of the families. At the Saint Francis
(Odanak) village in Quebec during the 1700's, the ``council'' contained
a ``grand chief'' and several other ``chiefs''. The names and political
activities of most of these leaders are not well known. However,
historical records reveal two well-documented political figures among
the Western Abenaki before 1800--Chiefs Grey Lock and Joseph-Louis
Gill. Grey Lock gained prominence in the first half of the 18th
century, and Joseph-Louis Gill in the latter half. Yet, as described
previously under criterion 83.7(b), the available evidence does not
demonstrate the current petitioner or its claimed ancestral families
descended as a group from any Western Abenaki tribe either in Quebec
and/or Vermont. Thus, evidence of political activity for Western
Abenaki chiefs like Grey Lock and Joseph-Louis Gill (or an unnamed
Abenaki ``chief'' identified in a 1765 lease as the late husband of a
widow named ``Charlotte'') during the colonial period does not
demonstrate political influence among the SSA's claimed ancestors. The
petitioner has also not provided other evidence of what its specific
claimed ancestors might have been doing as a group to exercise
political influence before 1800.
The evidence presented for the 19th century is also inadequate. The
petitioner has not submitted evidence to demonstrate what its claimed
ancestors were doing between 1800 and 1875 to exercise political
influence or authority across the group, particularly as many of the
people identified as the ancestors of the petitioner were living in
various towns across Quebec, Canada, during this time. For 1875 to
1900, the petitioner claimed that individuals such as Nazaire St.
Francis, Sr., and Cordelia (Freemore) Brow served as informal leaders
of a group of their claimed ancestors in the ``Back Bay'' area of the
Town of Swanton, Vermont; however, the petitioner has not demonstrated
that any of these individuals exercised authority over a group of the
petitioner's claimed ancestors. For the first 75 years of the 20th
century, the petitioner has presented little evidence demonstrating
informal leadership among any portion of the petitioner's claimed
ancestors. Information describing Nazaire St. Francis, Jr., Gene Cote,
and Cordelia (Freemore) Brow as informal leaders must be supplemented
with additional information if the petitioner wishes to substantiate
its claims. The petitioner has not demonstrated informal or formal
political authority among a group of its claimed ancestors at any time
before 1975, and therefore, does not satisfy the requirements for
criterion 83.7(c) for this time period.
During the 1970's, SSA appears to have become politically active
after its formal organization. In addition to ASHAI, the group also
formed a ``tribal council.'' Under the leadership of ``chiefs'' Homer
St. Francis and Leonard Lampman, the group began their petition for
Federal acknowledgment, instituted some social and cultural programs,
and engaged the state of Vermont in a number of legal battles. However,
the petition lacks evidence to demonstrate that participation in the
group's political processes was widespread across the membership of the
group. The lack of sign-in sheets from meetings is problematic because
it is difficult to demonstrate who exactly was involved in the group's
various meetings. Further, the lack of 17 years of minutes from ASHAI
and the lack of 11 years of ``tribal council'' meeting minutes (as well
as redacted ASHAI and council minutes spanning 8 and 9 years
respectively) makes it difficult to understand what issues were
important to the group and who was participating in the group's
political organization. The petitioner has not demonstrated that the
organization formed after 1975 has a bilateral relationship between the
membership and the elected (or appointed) governing body, in which the
leadership acknowledges and responds to the concerns of the membership.
Rather, the evidence indicates that political influence is limited to
the actions of a small number of members pursuing an agenda with a
minimal amount of input from the membership. Therefore, the petitioner
has not satisfied the requirements of criterion 83.7(c) since 1975.
The SSA petitioner meets criterion 83.7(d), which requires the
petitioner to submit its governing document, including its membership
criteria. The petitioner submitted a copy of its constitution, which
defines its procedures by which it governs its affairs and its members,
and which requires members to document descent from (1) an Abenaki
family listed on the 1765 James Robertson lease; or (2) Abenaki
ancestors as determined by the petitioner's governing body.
The SSA petitioner does not meet criterion 83.7(e), which requires
that the petitioner's members descend from a historical Indian tribe or
from tribes that combined and functioned as a single autonomous
political entity. Eight current members (less than 1 percent of the
group) have documented descent from a historical individual identified
in the 19th century as a member of the St. Francis Abenaki tribe at
Odanak, Quebec, Canada, but have not documented descent from historic
individuals identified as members of the Missisquoi Abenaki. None of
the petitioner's remaining 1,163 members have documented descent from
any of the presumed Abenaki persons listed on the 1765 James Robertson
lease or from any persons identified on any other list, census, or
primary or reliable secondary document as members of a historical
Missisquoi Abenaki or historical Western Abenaki Indian tribe, or any
other historical tribal entity. Therefore, the petitioner does not
satisfy the requirements of criterion 83.7(e).
Criterion 83.7(e) also requires that the petitioner submit an
official membership list of all known current members, and that the
petitioner's governing body provide a separate certification of that
membership list. The petitioner's official membership list of August 9,
2005, which needs to be separately certified by the petitioner's
governing body, contained 2,506 entries, but only 1,171 individuals on
that list were members who had submitted signed application forms and
provided documentation required by the petitioner.
[[Page 69780]]
The SSA petitioner meets criterion 83.7(f), which requires that a
petitioning group be comprised principally of persons who are not
members of any acknowledged North American Indian tribe. The petitioner
has indicated that a number of current members are not listed on the
group's current membership list. Thus, this conclusion for criterion
83.7(f) does not apply to those individuals whose names were not
submitted.
The SSA petitioner meets criterion 83.7(g) because there is no
evidence in the record that the petitioner or its members have been
explicitly terminated or forbidden a Federal relationship by an act of
Congress.
Based on this preliminary factual determination, the Department
proposes not to extend Federal Acknowledgment as an Indian Tribe under
25 CFR Part 83 to the petitioner known as the St. Francis/Sokoki Band
of Abenakis of Vermont.
As provided by 25 CFR 83.1(h) of the regulations, a report
summarizing the evidence, reasoning, and analyses that are the basis
for the proposed decision will be provided to the petitioner and
interested parties, and is available to other parties upon written
request.
Comments on the proposed finding and/or requests for a copy of the
report of evidence should be addressed to the Office of the Assistant
Secretary--Indian Affairs, 1951 Constitution Avenue, NW., Washington,
DC 20240, Attention: Office of Federal Acknowledgment, Mail Stop 34B-
SIB.
Comments on the proposed finding should be submitted within 180
calendar days from the date of publication of this notice. The period
for comment on a proposed finding may be extended for up to an
additional 180 days at the AS-IA's discretion upon a finding of good
cause (83.10(i)). Comments by interested and informed parties must be
provided to the petitioner as well as to the Federal government
(83.10(h)). After the close of the 180-day comment period, and any
extensions, the petitioner has 60 calendar days to respond to third-
party comments (83.10(k)). This period may be extended at the AS-IA's
discretion, if warranted by the extent and nature of the comments.
After the expiration of the comment and response periods described
above, the Department will consult with the petitioner concerning
establishment of a schedule for preparation of the final determination.
The AS-IA will publish the final determination of the petitioner's
status in the Federal Register as provided in 25 CFR 83.10(1), at a
time that is consistent with that schedule.
Dated: November 9, 2005.
James E. Cason,
Associate Deputy Secretary.
[FR Doc. 05-22756 Filed 11-16-05; 8:45 am]
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