Abenaki nation plans to file lawsuit claiming western Maine as its own

MONTPELIER, Vt. — Abenaki nation chief Homer St. Francis on Friday said the tribe intends to file a lawsuit claiming all of Vermont and much of New England, including western Maine, as its rightful territory.

“We want land for our people. It’s our aboriginal right,” St. Francis said from the Abenaki tribal headquarters in Swanton. “We don’t have a crumb left.”

St. Francis said he has been meeting with a lawyer, but he would not name him. He would only say that the lawyer has worked for the Cherokee nation in both North and South Carolina.

“The way I look at it is, everybody’s got a homeland but us,” said St. Francis. “When we have it we’ll post the Abenaki flag and start taxing them and abusing them just like they’ve done to us.”

The area the Abenakis would claim in the lawsuit includes all of Vermont, all of New Hampshire, parts of northern Massachusetts, western Maine, upstate New York and southern Quebec, St. Francis said.

During the 1970s, Maine’s Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Indians laid claim to more than 60 percent of the state’s land. After years of litigation in the federal courts, the tribes agreed to extinguish their claims in return for a federally funded settlement totaling $81.5 million.

Chittenden, Addison, Franklin and Grand Isle counties in Vermont are the most important properties, St. Francis said. He said they also want land where the Abenaki graveyards and spiritual healing springs once were.

“They have swimming pools and septic tanks on our graveyards,” St. Francis said.

Vermont Attorney General Jeffrey Amestoy said although there have been successful land claims by Native Americans in different parts of the country, those cases are distinguishable from the Abenakis’ claims that a court would address in Vermont.

Amestoy said he did not want to elaborate on the case before it was filed. “(St. Francis) has indicated that they will be making land claims and we will respond to those claims when they are made,” he said.

St. Francis said if the land were granted to the Abenakis, he might take in the United States’ homeless and poor. “We’re not all bad,” he said. “I’ve never seen anybody who’s not useful, whether they’re crippled or sick or stupid.”

An August 1989 court decision establishing the Abenakis’ right to fish in their homeland without state licenses was upheld last week by the Vermont Supreme Court.

St. Francis would not say whether the ruling has influenced his pursuit of the land. “We’ve been planning this for years,” he said, but added the case was a test of the Indians’ territorial claims.

In the 1989 case, Vermont District Court Judge Joseph Wolchik defined “aboriginal title” to mean “the Native Americans’ right of possession, use and occupancy of land which they have inhabited from time immemorial.”

Most tribal members live near Lake Champlain in the northeast corner of the state. St. Francis said his people are “scattered all over the place, some in private homes, some in cars, tents, you name it.”

St. Francis refused to say how many people comprise the nation, saying, “The Mohawks made that mistake. We’re not going to be surrounded.”