Proposed Finding Against Federal Acknowledgment of the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of Abenakis of Vermont, 69776-69780 [05-22756]

Agencies

• DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
• Bureau of Indian Affairs
• Indian Affairs Bureau

[Federal Register Volume 70, Number 221 (Thursday, November 17, 2005)]
[Notices]
[Pages 69776-69780]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 05-22756]


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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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