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The Voice of the Dawn: An Autohistory of the Abenaki Nation. Frederick Matthew Wiseman. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001.
Frederick Wiseman's The Voice of the Dawn is an important new study of native New England. From the very first page, Wiseman's "autohistory" reclaims the Abenaki story from "White hands" and underscores the importance of Abenaki perspectives. Clearly, it must be read with the contemporary political struggles of the Vermont Abenaki people in mind, but this does not mean that Wiseman's work lacks perspective. Instead, he ably demonstrates that Abenaki voices, including his own, must be central to any history of the Abenaki people. In the process, he skillfully proposes a very different view of the history and culture of New England's native people as well as that of the European colonizers.
Wiseman reframes his narrative of the Abenaki people in several important ways. First, he proposes a revised periodization that brings Abenaki...