Reclaiming the ancestors : decolonizing a taken prehistory of the far Northeast

Frederick Matthew Wiseman's The Voice of the Dawn carefully balanced western and Native American expectations and methodologies to tell the story of the Abenaki Nation; the New England Quarterly hailed it as inspiring. Wiseman brings that same respect and expertise to a new history of all of Wobanakik, whose Land of the Dawn stretches from Vermont and Quebec to Maine, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. In this first volume, he focuses on the prehistory of the Wabanaki tribes: Abenaki, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Malecite, and Micmac, arguing that the ancient Wabanakis were cultural and technological innovators. An Abenaki by birth and an archaeologist by training, Wiseman is the designated Mikwobaid, or Rememberer, for his own tribe. He is well-suited to making informed but culturally sensitive use of archaeological and paleoecological data to tell the story of some 11,000 years of Wabanaki prehistory, up to the time of European contact. Combining the viewpoints of a Native American with that of a scientist, Wiseman offers a new and unique account of the Northeast's First Nations.… (more)