When environmental activists recently gathered at the Statehouse to push for cleaner energy, they began with what has become commonplace at public events in Vermont — a land acknowledgment.

Earl Hatley, a member of the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi, strode to a podium wearing a bear-claw necklace. "Kwai," Hatley said, using the tribe's traditional greeting. "Today we acknowledge that we live on and share and help protect the ancestral lands of the Abenaki Nation, the Alnôbak."

The Abenaki, he said, were the traditional caretakers of Ndakinna, the tribe's name for the territory that, before contact with Europeans, included parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, Québec, Maine and Massachusetts.

"We pay our respect to our ancestors, elders, relations — past, present and emerging — and pledge our hearts to protect this land for future generations," Hatley intoned.

His presence underscored the strong ties that environmental and conservation groups in Vermont have built with the four state-recognized Abenaki tribes over the past decade. The connections range from the largely ceremonial to formal agreements allowing tribal members to hunt, fish and forage on protected lands, such as those owned by the Nature Conservancy and the Vermont Land Trust.

Many of those groups now find themselves caught in the middle of a conflict between the Abenaki tribes recognized by Vermont and tribes based in Québec: the Odanak First Nation and Wôlinak First Nation. Those latter groups, recognized by the Canadian federal government, question the legitimacy of the Vermont bands.

Odanak leaders have branded the Vermont groups "pretendians" and argue that most of their members are white people who have self-identified as Abenaki on scant genealogical evidence.

"They are not honoring our ancestors," Jacques Watso, an elected member of the Odanak tribal council, said at a symposium in Vermont last year. "They are profiting from our culture and heritage."

The Odanak want Vermont to repeal the formal recognition it granted to the state tribes in 2011 and 2012. They invite people who have verified Abenaki ancestry to petition to join their tribe and have called on Vermont organizations that want to support Indigenous groups to work with them instead.

Vermont tribes insist their tribal designations are valid and their more permissive membership rules are appropriate, given the history of Abenaki in Vermont. They express disappointment that their northern neighbors, after decades of support, have turned against them so forcefully.

"We want to work with them if they want to, but we can't when they are trying to destroy us," Don Stevens, chief of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation, told Seven Days.

The long-simmering dispute burst into public view through provocative presentations at the University of Vermont. An event there in April 2022 featured a detailed history of the Abenaki and a summary by Watso and other tribal members from Canada of their concerns about alleged cultural appropriation.

"They are erasing us by replacing us," Watso said at the event.

In April of this year, a separate UVM symposium featured scholars exploring the origins of "race-shifting," the practice of non-Indigenous people identifying as Indigenous, and its harm to Indigenous people.

This fall, Vermont Public aired a three-part series, "Recognized," that laid out the Odanak position through in-depth reporting that was done over two years. Based on interviews with elected officials, tribal members, genealogists, historians and others, "Recognized" questions the history of what Vermont Public called the "self-proclaimed Vermont Abenaki" — and their legitimacy. VTDigger.org published a detailed report, as well.

Behind the scenes, the Odanak have sought to drive a wedge between the state-recognized tribes and the environmental and conservation groups with which those bands have been working for years. In a June 2 letter to 30 Vermont organizations, Odanak First Nation Chief Rick O'Bomsawin and Wôlinak First Nation Chief Michel Bernard recounted how their people were displaced from their ancestral homeland after the American Revolution. The chiefs said the tribe left Vermont for Québec, though the Abenaki "have never ceded" their ancestral territory in New England.

In denouncing the state-recognized groups as illegitimate, the chiefs cited a 2003 report by the Vermont Attorney General's Office on the eligibility of the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of the Abenaki Nation of Vermont — the predecessor of the current state-recognized Missisquoi band — and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs' rejection of that band's petition for federal recognition in 2005.

"These Vermont groups lack Abenaki ancestry as well as any historic link to a North American Indian tribe. They are not Indigenous," the chiefs wrote. They asked the conservation groups to "pause and think about the consequence" of continuing to work with state tribes and asked them to "put a stop to such collaboration."

"We urge you to educate yourselves, and we request a timely opportunity to discuss our concerns that Vermont's conservation organizations are complicit with cultural appropriation and fraud as well as the exclusion of the true Indigenous People of Vermont," they wrote, offering to meet with groups.

That got the attention of the progressive organizations.

"Of course it gave us pause," said Brian Shupe, the executive director of the Vermont Natural Resources Council. "We took it seriously."

VNRC, Vermont River Conservancy and other groups took the Odanak up on their offer to learn more and met virtually with them in October.

Understanding the perspective of the Abenaki and acknowledging their traditional ties to the rivers they fished and traveled on is important to the conservancy, said Kassia Randzio, its development and operations director. The group wants to work more with local Abenaki but now feels stuck.

"It puts each of us in a position of having to choose and say who is right and who is wrong in a really complex scenario, and I'm not sure we're equipped to answer that question," she said.

The letter has prompted a range of responses from the groups.

The Vermont Housing & Conservation Board has long helped the state tribes conserve land, including the 65-acre Nulhegan Abenaki tribal forest in Barton and a farm in Shoreham where the tribe keeps bison. The group told Seven Days that it respects the concerns raised by the Odanak and is "actively learning about these complex issues" so it can work with applicants "with sensitivity and respect."

The Green Mountain Club didn't participate in the October Zoom call with the Odanak but is "committed to learning from Indigenous communities whose historic lands we operate on," the group wrote in a statement.

The Vermont Land Trust said it would not "rush to a position" on such a complex topic but would continue to listen. "As the conversation about Indigenous identity in Vermont unfolds, we are seeking to build relationships with members of the Odanak and to understand their perspectives," the group wrote in response to an inquiry from Seven Days.

Some organizations said they don't work with Indigenous groups; others declined to comment or did not respond. At least two groups said they have agreed to pause their work with Vermont tribes for the time being.

Emily Alger, executive director of the South Hero Land Trust, said the June letter from the Abenaki based in Québec "raises serious concerns" about the state-recognition process that "deserve careful consideration by the Vermont legislature."

"Until that happens, South Hero Land Trust will respect the request from the Odanak and Wôlinak nations to pause any partnerships or collaboration with the VT-recognized tribes," Alger said in a written statement.

The Vermont chapter of the Nature Conservancy said it, too, will take a breather, due partly to its commitment to the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

"We have honored the request of the Odanak Council to pause conservation action with Vermont state-recognized bands as we work to deepen our understanding and carefully listen to all voices," Eve Frankel, the group's state director, told the tribes.

The June letter caught many conservation groups off guard, said Rich Holschuh, chair of the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairsand spokesperson for the Elnu Abenaki tribe. People seem to be "on their heels" and confused about how to move forward, he said.

"I think people are just sort of bewildered," Holschuh said. "Folks are really hesitant to do something that might be seen as the wrong move."

Some educational efforts have been put on the "back burner" because of the controversy, he said. He's reached out to the same organizations the Odanak did and offered to share the state tribes' perspective. He's had no takers yet, he said.

By contrast, the October call with the Odanak drew dozens of participants, said Daniel Nolett, the general manager of the Odanak Council, which provides a range of services to the nearly 500 members who live on the reserve, the Canadian term for reservation. The call combined a history lesson with an overture to collaborate.

The Odanak nation has experts in Abenaki history, riparian ecology, archeology and anthropology who are more qualified to collaborate with conservation groups than tribes with little or no Abenaki heritage, he said.

The Odanak effort to erode support among nonprofits for the state-recognized tribes stems in part from the realization that state lawmakers are unlikely to take on the issue anytime soon.

Gov. Phil Scott initially said he would meet with the tribes but has since indicated he doesn't want to get in the middle of it. And Rep. Tom Stevens (D-Waterbury), who worked on the state-recognition process in 2010, said it's "highly unlikely" that his colleagues would reopen the issue this session. He defended the creation of a state-recognition process that uses less stringent standards than the exhaustive federal process, which some argue is burdensome and inconsistent.

"We agreed with the notion that the state should not be telling people who they are and asking them to prove it," Rep. Stevens said. (He is not related to Chief Don Stevens.)

Vermont recognition criteria only require tribes to show that a "substantial number" of their members "trace their ancestry to a kinship group through genealogy or other methods." Tribes need to show an "enduring community presence" but can document it in many ways, including though "history, folklore, or any other applicable scholarly research and data."

That approach is appropriate given the gaps in historical records and stark differences in how the tribes in Vermont and Québec evolved, Rep. Stevens said. The allegations regarding the state tribes are unfortunate and damaging, he added.

"I've seen and felt the hurt in the voices and in the faces of some of the Indigenous Vermonters that I respect most," he said.

The criticism comes as the Vermont tribes have been making significant progress toward better serving their members, Chief Stevens said. He cited the recent donation of 350 acres of woodland in Wheelock to his tribe as an example.

Chief Stevens said he doesn't understand why the Odanak feel threatened by the progress Vermont tribes are making and suggested that they're trying to position themselves to benefit from the return of lands or future reparations.

"They are trying to eliminate us in order to accomplish their goals of making headway here," he said.

While no conservation groups have explicitly said they would permanently stop working with the state-recognized tribes, many said they were interested in learning more, including by visiting the reserve and its history museum in Québec, Nolett said.

"We are confident that a lot of those organizations will do their due diligence and read the history and come to ... believe that we are the true Abenaki, and they should be working with us," Nolett said.