Humanities Department Stories
Fall 2009
Professor and Senator Bill Doyle participated in a U.S. legislative delegation visit to Prague, Czech Republic, and Berlin,Germany, in late September and early October. The visit, under the auspices of CSG International Programs and led by West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin III, featured a meeting with President Klaus of the Czech Republic. Bill also co-chaired an August conference in
Burlington on "Fiscal Crisis: Navigating the Turbulent Economy." The proceedings drew about 400 leaders from the U.S. and Canada for the Council of State Government's Eastern Regional annual conference.
Bill's video history of Vermont project continues on, as well. "Life in Grand Isle County," the fifth in the Vermont
County video project, premeired at the Grand Isle Lake House in July. The 30-minute documentary — an independent-study project of JSC student Kris Oechslin '09, working with Bill Doyle — played to a standing-room only crowd. Because of the large turnout, in fact, a second showing was scheduled immediately after the 7 p.m. event. And the sixth installment, "Life in Washington VCounty" premiered at JSC on December 8 and in Montpelier on December 10, 2009 to great acclaim.
For the third summer, Cynthia West spent the warm weather months gleaning for Salvation Farms and the Vermont Foodbank. A picture of Cynthia hard at work adorns the cover of the 2008 Vermont Food Bank annual report.
Frederick M. Wiseman has published two books regarding the European discovery of Lake Champlain: A Lake Between, a historical narrative of Samuel Champlain’s voyage from a native perspective; and Champlain Tech, which tells how the arms, armor, transportation and other early 17th century technologies used during Champlain’s voyage in large part determined the
outcome of the battle with the Iroquois, thereby altering the course of history. Fred has finished work on a third book, Baseline 1609, due out in November, dealing with new archaeological and anthropological discoveries surrounding the early 17th century. He will be doing a series of book-signing tours around Vermont and eastern New York to promote the book series. In addition, as coordinator of the Vermont Indigenous Alliance, a coalition of the four main Vermont Abenaki bands representing thousands of enrolled native Vermonters, Professor Wiseman has been working with the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) since May 2009 to demand that Sotheby’s auction house in New York City return
an Abenaki wampum belt and a Kahnesetake (Iroquois) wampum belt to their rightful owners. He has attended meetings in Quebec with Canadian Iroquois and Abenaki bands, and corresponded
both with native advocates and with Sotheby's lawyers in an attempt to have the belts returned without legal action. He also has been working over the last few months with the Narragansett Nation in the protection of indigenous stone ruins in northern New England, one of which – the Calendar II site in Woodstock — is slated to become the second northestern indigenous stone structure on the national Register of Historic Places. At the
request of Sen. Hinda Miller (D-Chittenden), Fred met in early September with a group of Vermont legislators and native advocates to arrive at mutually acceptable language for Vermont state legislation recognizing specific Vermont native bands for
the purposes of fulfilling the requirements of the Native American Arts and Crafts Act.
Professor Wiseman was one of two higher educators who served on the Vermont Lake Champlain Quadricentennial Commission over the late spring and summer. He was one of three coordinators of a national symposium on the native world of 1609, held at St. Michael's College in May; he coordinated
the 1609 Native Encampment and Commemoration at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in June; and he worked with Vera Sheehan to coordinate the five-day Vermont Indigenous Celebration signature event held on the Burlington Waterfront in July. In addition, he participated in 15+ other events through the late spring and summer, including the St. Albans’ French heritage signature event in June and the Appletree Point (north Burlington) Historical Society meeting in September, for which he was the keynote speaker.
