Welcome (Nitona)

Dear Readers,

Welcome to Denise Watso’s Abenaki News. Please allow me to introduce myself to the world of Blog readers. I am sure you will find the Abenaki News informative, intriguing, encapsulating, and cutting edge of Abenaki News, News from the historically known perspective. Now, I would also like to introduce myself to those of you who don’t know me, as well as introduce my vision of the blog.

Family Background: I was born to Frederick Watso and Susan Paradise in Albany, NY. My father worked as a guide and then as an ironworker like many of his relatives, Abenaki who traveled and lived in the Metro region of Albany, New York, and NYC, where they lived in Brooklyn’s “Little Kahnawake” Mohawk neighborhood, working on bridges i.e. (Verrazano bridge), factories, stores, etc. He is also a master woodcarver, actor in film, and great father, and grandfather. I have apprenticed with my father to carry on the traditional Abenaki woodcarving.

My Life’s Journey: We all have an interesting journey. My journey on the winding, rolling, hilly, bumpy, pot holes taking out tires, but still speeding down the red road of life, (written in no particular order), may take a different path than some of my Abenaki brothers’ and sisters’, but all of our paths lead to our Abenaki family connections. I grew up in Albany, New York, the Capital City of New York, surrounded by Abenaki friends and relatives, and have always visited family members at Odanak, too. Over the last few years, I have been meeting many more distant relatives – Tahamonts, Watsos and Watsaws, Johnsons, Degonzagues, Nagazoas, and others – and appreciating how large our Nation is.

My Vision: To help build Abenaki pride for the survival of our historically known people. With only approximately 2000 status members left in the entire world and many more non-status being discovered all the time, plus laws changing to reflect aboriginal rights adding more members to the roles, the need to help reconnect one another through the written word, as well as through new technologies that will begin building the bridge to connect Abenaki families.

My hope is to provide reliable information (and the occasional editorial) to our historically-known Abenaki people, status and non-status. Abenaki news intention is to provide community news, historical research citing credible sources, educational material, interviews, Indian law updates, perspectives on aboriginal rights issues and repatriation, and introductions to Abenaki community members. I hope that you keep returning to this blog so that together we can learn more about each other, our history, and some of the issues facing our people. And maybe we’ll share a few laughs along the way!

Denise Watsos Abenaki News reserves the right to delete submitted comments deemed harmful or derogatory to the Abenaki Community of historically known Abenaki people.

Submitting Comments: Comments and suggestions are welcomed and encouraged. Please read the guidelines for submitting your comments, questions or suggestions below:

The readers comment must accompany the subject, authors name and date in order for the comment to be posted; anonymous posting is counter productive to a positive environment.

If a person has an opinion about an issue and would like to submit the opinion/comment confidentially, please send to my personal email account, and I will keep the comment confidential and will not post it to the blog.