LOCALadk Magazine

LOCALadk 38 The First Adirondackers is a book with a mission. Its main aim is to push back against false and harmful nar- ratives of regional history in which the Adirondacks are said to have been uninhabited until White people set- tled here. There is more to it, though, because the book itself also has a backstory of its own to tell. My co-author and I take an unusual approach to chal- lenging the myth of absence by combining our perspec- tives as a science-friendly Haudenosaunee artist (David Kanietakeron Fadden) and an arts-friendly Euro-Amer- ican scientist (me). To demonstrate that Indigenous people have lived in the uplands since the end of the last ice age, we employ archaeological evidence, Dave's paintings, my research in regional environmental histo- ry, and Haudenosaunee cultural traditions. Each chap- ter focuses on a key time frame that begins with a vi- gnette that takes place at the same location through the ages — a knoll overlooking Lower Saint Regis Lake on what is now the campus of Paul Smith's College, my place of employment. We describe this two-part collab- oration in terms of a "two-row wampum belt," meaning that we travel in respectful tandem while remaining within our own cultural traditions. The origin of our collaboration also turned out to be another two-part story, though we didn't realize it at first. In practical terms, my working connection with Dave began in 2014. My parents were celebrating their 80th birthdays, and amid the festivities we stopped by the Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center in Onchiota. It was founded during the 1950s by the late Ray Tehaneto- rens Fadden and his wife Christine, whom I had met and befriended soon after I moved to the Adirondacks in 1987. Ray's son, John Kahionhes Fadden, had since tak- en over the reins, and we enjoyed hearing his masterful descriptions of some of the countless items on display there. A wooden dugout canoe that was lying in a corner of the main room caught my father's attention, and he asked John how old it was. "We don't know," John replied. "We haven't had the resources to date it." My father turned to me and said, "You have a research grant. Why don't you have it dated for them?" "Um... sure," I replied. I did have funding to use ra- diocarbon dating on sediment core samples from local lakes, though canoes were not what I originally had in mind. John turned to his son, Dave, and said, "Why don't you help Curt sample the dugout when he's ready?" "Um... sure," Dave replied. Thus began a collaboration that has deepened into a close friendship. In the years that followed, Dave and I published a scholarly paper on old dugout canoes of the Adiron- dacks and worked together on a project funded by the Lake Champlain Basin Program that would later shape our approach to The First Adirondackers. The goal of the project was to blend science and the arts in order to raise people's awareness of watersheds The First Adirondackers: A Two-Row Journey Against the Myth of Absence By Curt Stager

• Cover