Also on today’s menu:
Clegg Indicted On Additional Charge In Concord Murders
ACLU-NH Questions Border Patrol Statistics
Housing Crisis Hurts Health Care Too
Chief Rick O’Bomsawin of Odanak First Nation, with tribal government offices at Odanak, Quebec, has a strict definition of who can claim to be members of the Abenaki First Nations: “The reason we claim that we are Abenaki is because we can date our families from this community for the last three or four hundred years with no breaks. We know who our grandmother was, our father was, our mother was. So we can actually date our families all the way back. That truly gives us a real connection.”
By contrast, he said, groups such as New Hampshire’s Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation and the Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook Abenaki People cannot claim to be Abenaki because they lack any authentic connection to the tribal nation. Self-identifying as Abenaki does not cut it.
Representative Sherry Gould of Warner, who claims to be the first enrolled member of an Abenaki tribe to be elected to the New Hampshire Legislature, bases her claim on letters and newspaper clippings describing relatives on her mother’s side as living a nomadic “gypsy” lifestyle in the 19th and 20th centuries — descriptions she and Nulhegan Band Chief Don Stevens say are coded terms for Abenaki people who went into hiding due to a government-sanctioned eugenics effort in Vermont — the same movement that relegated the “feeble-minded” and epileptics to the Laconia State School and formed the basis for Nazi Germany’s ethnic cleansing.
Gould filed a resolution to give the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation state recognition in New Hampshire, which would have made the group eligible for federal housing funding for tribes and the right to sell arts and crafts as “Indian-made,” among other benefits. The bill died, and some scholars, along with the Vermont Attorney-General’s Office, say there is no evidence that Abenaki people were in hiding or were targets of the Eugenics Survey of Vermont. Odanak First Nation points to numerous photographs, documents, and news articles from that era showing Abenaki families living publicly and running businesses in Vermont and New Hampshire.
Paul and Denise Pouliot, outspoken members of the Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook Abenaki People, who have called attention to Native American issues, face similar objections from Odanak First Nation. Denise Pouliot called NHPR’s request for documentation “quite offensive” and “abusive”. The Pouliots say they have been applying for federal recognition for more than 20 years, but their application does not appear on the Bureau of Indian Affairs website. The Cowasuck Band is a registered nonprofit — COWASS North America — but is not a state or federally recognized tribe.
Clegg Indicted On Additional Charge In Concord Murders
A Merrimack County Superior Court Grand Jury has handed up an indictment against Logan Clegg, 27, on one additional Class B felony count of falsifying physical evidence related to the murders of Stephen and Djeswende Reid on April 18, 2022. He previously had been charged with second-degree murder and other offenses in the case.
The indictment alleges that, on April 21, 2022, Clegg removed information from his laptop computer that would have aided the investigation.
Clegg continues to be held without bail, and the Merrimack County Superior Court will schedule an arraignment on this indictment.
ACLU-NH Questions Border Patrol Statistics
The American Civil Liberties Union-New Hampshire is suing U.S. Customs and Border Protection, claiming that the federal government has not provided specific data on its claims in a press release that the Border Patrol’s Swanton Sector, which covers parts of New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire, had increased apprehensions and encounters by 846% between October 2022 and January 2023, compared to a year earlier. The press release said border agents apprehended 367 people in January 2023 alone, “part of an upward trend dating back to the beginning of [fiscal year 2022].”
In its court filing, the ACLU alleges that “to date, no concrete evidence indicates that apprehensions have significantly increased at the New Hampshire/Canada border.”
That information is important to the debate among New Hampshire lawmakers who are considering Governor Chris Sununu’s proposal to spend $1.4 million for a task force to more aggressively patrol the northern border. The New Hampshire House stripped that funding from its budget proposal, but the Senate recently revived it. Sununu cited the Swanton Sector’s statistics when he called for a stricter federal border response, but Sununu’s office and the Department of Safety told the ACLU that they could not provide any specific data.
Housing Crisis Hurts Health Care Too
The lack of affordable housing is affecting all sectors of the economy, including the ability to fill health care positions. As of March, New Hampshire’s 10 community mental health centers had about 350 unfilled clinical positions, including therapists, psychiatrists, case managers, and mobile crisis responders. The same thing plays out in nearly every corner of New Hampshire’s health system, from major hospitals to agencies that care for seniors and people with disabilities in their homes. Some nursing homes have closed entire wings because they do not have enough workers.
“Over the last few years, we've had people accepting jobs, start the relocation process — and then actually withdraw their acceptance because they just don’t feel it’s feasible,” said Carolyn Isabelle, who oversees workforce development for Dartmouth Health, the state’s largest hospital system.
In an effort to ease the housing search for new hires, Dartmouth Health has started leasing blocks of apartments from landlords, and subleasing them to employees. Isabelle said that has helped to retain some candidates who might otherwise have had trouble affording local housing.
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