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LAKE CHAMPLAIN VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY:
Bringing History Home
JOIN US IN LEARNING ABOUT THIS REMARKABLE CHAPTER OF VERMONT
HISTORY!
The Champlain Valley of Vermont, New York, and
Quebec was at the center stage of world history in the late
17th & 18th centuries. Long before this, for almost 500
generations, the lake served as homeland, transportation artery,
boundary, and sacred place for Iroquoian and Abenaki peoples.
Nearly 400 years ago, Samuel de Champlain "discovered"
the lake that he named after himself, and from that point
on political and cultural transformations began. Alliances
that existed among Native peoples of northern New England
and Canada play key roles in the period's historic rivalry
between the French and British to control the region. The
Valley became a battleground, both symbolic and real, and
key events in the region forever changed the history of the
New World and the globe. It was also a place where people
from France, at first, and then Britain, lived and traded
with the already well-established residents: the Abenaki and
Haudenosaunee (known to many as the Iroquois). Many contemporary
traditions are connected to this diverse cultural heritage.
The Quadricentennial of Champlain's arrival will be commemorated
in 2009. The heritage of those cultures who have lived in
the region since long before Champlain arrived are not widely
understood. Neither is the new era begun in 1609. This project
proposes to fill those voids, and to inspire communities to
learn about links between their own local area and world and
national history. It is designed to bring history home, working
from the local, participatory level up to a broader audience.
Through the community-based, "hands-on" archeological
survey and field investigations of French settlements, creation
of 21st century web-based teaching/learning tools, and a television
documentary chronicling stories from the 17th and 18th centuries
about the lake region's diverse people and amazing places,
this project will offer our region's residents multiple voyages
of discovery and will bring history to our doorsteps. In the
process, the partners hope to encourage historic preservation
projects in this internationally significant place and conservation
of its abundant natural resources.
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