Ashley Smith wins Fulbright to Canada

For years, the hidden history of the Abenaki peoples of the northeastern United States and Canada has captivated Wheaton College senior Ashley Smith, who has been researching the historical and contemporary lives and cultures of this Native American group. Now she gets to dig deeper.

Smith, a Madison, Maine resident, has been awarded a Fulbright scholarship to conduct research in Canada on the Abenaki. A Balfour and Presidential scholar at Wheaton, Smith has pursued a double major in French and anthropology, focused on Native American culture. (Last year, she also was awarded a Beinecke Scholarship to study the effects of oppression on Native American identity in the Northeast.)

"I want to explore how ‘divide and conquer' strategies continue to impact the Abenaki, who were divided by the U.S.–Canadian border. I am really interested in comparing and contrasting contemporary Abenaki life in Canada with the research I have already done in Maine. I am interested to see how the Abenaki have been affected by different politics in Canada, as they have federal recognition there and do not in the U.S. I am also interested in seeing how life on the reservations, of which there are two in Quebec, is different from the off-reservation communities."

According to Smith, the Abenaki are a group of Native Americans whose pre-contact territory spread from what is now eastern Maine, through to western Vermont, and up into southern Quebec. They had close ties with Nouvelle-France (an area colonized by France in North America) and Catholic Jesuit missionaries through the 1800s. In Maine, Abenaki were targeted by the British, who feared that they were going to rally with the French against the British. During this time, hundreds of Abenaki in the western part of the state were killed by the British.

Survivors are said to have scattered throughout Maine, many being adopted into eastern bands of Abenaki, and some are said to have fled north into Nouvelle-France's territories, in what is now Quebec, said Smith.

In later years, with the creation of the Canada–U.S. border, the territory was divided. The Abenaki as a people received political status as federally recognized First Nations people in Canada, but did not in the United States, Smith notes.

She knows a great deal about the Abenaki because her own personal history as a self-identified Abenaki has stirred her curiosity and inspired her research efforts.

Wheaton Professor of Anthropology Donna Kerner describes Smith as "a young scholar of considerable intellectual depth and curiosity." She notes that Smith's research extends beyond its relevance as an anthropological study of questions about Native American identity, and "offers an instructive case for examining problematic cases of autonomy, sovereignty, rights to land and other resources with other complex national settings outside of North America."

Smith agrees: "This type of research can be applied to political divisions forced upon indigenous peoples throughout the world."

While at Wheaton, she has undertaken demanding coursework that has combined literature, art history, ethnohistory, ethnomusicology, cultural psychology and socio-cultural anthropology. And she has managed to be a well-rounded student, winning scholarships and awards while engaging in extracurricular activities, including the French Club and Anthropology Club. She also worked as a research assistant for the Wheaton art history department and as a teaching assistant for the anthropology department.

After graduation, Smith plans to pursue graduate work in Native American studies and anthropology that may lead her to teach at the college level. She has big plans: "I want to investigate a range of Native American issues, examine concepts of cultural adaptation, challenge notions of tradition, understand how diverse perspectives on tradition effect Native American realities, and hopefully help to prevent the disappearance of Native American cultures."