Learn about Abenaki oral traditions via Zoom on March 17

Father and son Joseph and Jesse Bruchac will take you on a journey to the roots of the Western Abenaki nations at 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 17, showing how songs carry the heart and meaning of this enduring Native American culture.

The Zoom only event is being presented by the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum.  The presentation is free, but registration is required.

Incorporating Pakholigan (the drum) and Pabekongan (the flute), Our Songs Remember is a combination lecture and performance focusing on the ways in which the Abenaki oral traditions of storytelling and music play a part in the preservation of indigenous ways.

English and Abenaki languages will be heard throughout the presentation. Several stories will be told that exemplify the way in which oral tradition has always served at least two purposes: to entertain and to instruct.

A published author in many genres, Joseph Bruchac is a citizen and honored elder of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation. Jesse Bruchac, also an enrolled Nulhegan citizen, is the founder and director of the School of Abenaki at Middlebury College, a musician and a frequent language consultant for television and movies. Both can be seen in the new PBS documentary Monadnock, The Mountain That Stands Alone.