Carving canoe with fire, Vermont Abenaki tribes find reflection along Missisquoi

Near where the Missisquoi River meets Lake Champlain sits a large grassland where open fields meld with shallows and long grass peeks out of the water as far as the eye can see. On a Sunday in September, as the grass hissed in the wind, a small group pieced together tarps and tents there for the nights to come.

They moved with the land, taking a moment to sink their fingertips into the water before silently collecting dry wood and sticks. The next day a log from a white pine tree would be engulfed in a torrid blaze — the beginning of a six-day burn to hollow out the wood and, in a common Indigenous tradition, turn it into a canoe.

Day after day, Sept. 23-29, people gathered near Mac’s Bend in Swanton to prep the log, tend the hungry flame beneath it, then, on the final day, launch the canoe into the water. Two or three volunteers remained overnight every step of the process, sometimes more, never less, taking turns sleeping in between fire-tending shifts.

“We pay our honor to the tree and to the water,” said Brenda Gagne, organizer of the burn and chief of the Abenaki Nation at Missisquoi, one of the four state-recognized tribes in Vermont. The Missisquoi tribe collaborated on the weeklong event with one of the other three tribes, the Nulhegan Band of the Abenaki Nation.

Decomposing logs, patches of shrubbery and sandy shores make up the almost 7,000-acre stretch of mostly wetland the two tribes call the Delta. Others refer to it as the Missisquoi Wildlife National Refuge in Swanton. For 12,000 years before European colonization, native people used the land’s nutrient rich soil and vast wildlife.

“It must have been incredibly bountiful with fish spawning up the river, things like salmon and sturgeon, and abundant waterfowl and other bird life, as well as a giant blueberry bog,” said Ken Sturm, manager of the refuge, which is part of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service system. Today the land is the migratory home of an estimated 200 species of birds.

On Monday, Sept. 23, volunteers removed the tree’s bark and chiseled down its surface slightly. Then they ignited the tree, beginning with small pieces of wood to create coals. Slowly, more wood was added and the fire burned — a pace that organizers said was designed to offer reflection on the tradition and respect for nature. “A tree is a living being just like a human is,” Gagne said.

The idea is to burn away enough of the wood so that you can carve out the interior of the vessel — which is why they’re often called dugout canoes. The fire also helps release the sap from the wood, which acts as a natural sealant.

The event marked the first Abenaki log burn in the delta in over 300 years, said Dan Shears, a member of the Nulhegan Abenaki tribe and an expert on the tradition. The six days of the burn were “a time to reflect,” Gagne said. “It is medicine to the people.”

In the weeks before the event, organizers put out calls among members of Vermont’s state-recognized tribes and to the public at large for volunteers to sign up for fire-tending shifts. At least one person was present for all 160 hours of the burn, said David Schein, the administrative coordinator of Alnôbaiwi, a nonprofit focused on Vermont Abenaki culture that helped put on the event.

“The whole time you have to manipulate the fire. You must put it out when it starts to get too close to the log or if any part of the log gets too thin,” Shears said.

As the days waned and the fire burned on, Shears and his cousin Brian Chenevert came out to ensure the most challenging part of the process went smoothly. Throughout the last few hours of the burn, the log needed to rest above the ground on a couple smaller logs so that the fire tenders could feel how evenly it was burning.

Shears said the process was successful, although the fire failed to fully reach one side of the log, leaving it partly too thick. The extra material was chainsawed off before Sunday when the canoe was scheduled to be sent into the water.

On Sunday morning, around 30 people gathered to witness the finished canoe’s launch. Twenty hands carried the canoe to the shore and situated it on six pieces of telephone pole to roll it toward the water.

Gagne led a ceremony for members of the two tribes to bless the water. “We honor Mother Earth every day,” said Gagne later. “The elements are water and fire. Without either one, there is no life.”

With a bout of cheer, volunteers pushed the canoe into the water and watched it glide gently across the surface. Audience members got the opportunity to climb aboard and pack themselves into the pine boat’s interior.

Traditionally the log would be collected from an elm or chestnut tree growing close to the shore and removed from its trunk through a slow burn, Shears said. Since the wildlife refuge is federally owned and protected, that process would be illegal, so the tribe instead chainsawed the log from a white pine on a member’s property a year prior. Plus white pines have more sap, organizers said, providing further natural waterproofing for the boat.

Federal regulations and the area’s status as a safe haven for wildlife makes putting on events like the log burn somewhat rare. Overnight use at a national wildlife refuge is seldom allowed, and organizers had to file for a permit to carry out the burn. Sturm, the Missisquoi refuge director, described the evidence of native history workers have discovered on the site, such as a longhouse.

He said it is important to “honor native heritage, promote their activities and educate folks.”

(Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship.)