Abenaki Signs Installed on the Green Mountain Audubon Center Property in Huntington
By Lucie Lehmann
Several years ago, the Green Mountain Audubon Society applied for and received a $1500 grant from National Audubon in support of equity, diversity, and inclusion. The grant was used to commission a series of drawings of five native trees, with signage in English and Abenaki, from Swanton-based Abenaki artist and art therapist Fellicia Cota. The artwork was made into weather-durable signs, which Green Mountain Audubon Center staff installed in November in the arboretum outside the main offices on the Huntington property.
Cota says she has “always had a passion for art and nature, and I knew that I wanted to incorporate my culture [as a member of the Abenaki community] into my work as an artist.”
She has always been proud of her heritage, something that her mother, Brenda Gagne, the new chief of the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi, encouraged and instilled in her. “Many people don’t have that sense of confidence because of generational trauma. I feel like I have a responsibility to speak for others,” she notes. “It’s my duty to keep the heritage alive.”
The signage project was one way to do that. In consultation with GMAS, Cota chose trees as the theme for the artwork because they play such a vital role in Abenaki culture, providing food and shelter, as well as wood for building traditional boats and other structures. In addition, “they offer so much as they change through the seasons, showing strength and sacrifice, the letting go and coming back, and how they are dependable and how we can count on them,” she adds.
GMAS hopes that the beautiful signs, which depict oak, white ash, maple, balsam fir, and birch, will not only be educational, but that they will remind visitors of the Abenakis’ ancient ties to that property, their ancestral land. Kim Guertin, Director of the Green Mountain Audubon Center, concurs and is grateful for the gift of the signs. “Fellicia’s drawings are beautifully detailed, capturing the look and texture of each tree species she drew. We hope that visitors to the Arboretum Trail take the time to enjoy each sign and reflect on the generations of people who have stewarded the forests here for millennia.”
Green Mountain Audubon Center trails are open to the public every day of the year from dawn to dusk.
Photo by Sarah Hooghuis