January 17 - April 28, 2023
Monday - Friday, 9 am - 5 pm
Billings Library Apse
Silver Special Collections
University of Vermont
48 University Place, Burlington, VT
Seeds of Renewal explores Abenaki agricultural history, cuisine, and ceremony. The exhibition was created in partnership between the Vermont Historical Society and Dr. Frederick M. Wiseman, an Abenaki community member and retired professor and department chair of humanities at Johnson State College. Dr. Wiseman developed the Seeds of Renewal Project in 2011 to recover the produce raised and consumed by the Abenaki communities of the Far Northeast, and to reclaim the traditional cuisine of the Abenaki region, along with the systems surrounding seed nurturance such as agricultural technology and engineering, song, dance, and ceremony.
According to Dr. Wiseman, Seeds of Renewal is the first museum exhibition in Northeastern North America that is focused on the ecology of the region's modern Indigenous peoples. It serves as a prototype for future interpretations of the critical ancestral seeds and environmental knowledge still held by Native communities from Nova Scotia to New York. If it leads to one more crop variety saved from extinction, or an improved relationship between indigenous and Euroamerican gardeners, it will have served its purpose,” stated Dr. Wiseman.
The exhibit was funded in part by a Making of Nations grant from the Champlain Valley National Heritage Partnership and with support from the Montpelier Community Fund.
Free and open to the public. For more information, contact Special Collections at uvmsc.uvm.edu or 802-656-2138.