LAKE CHAMPLAIN VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY:
Bringing History Home
Project Overview
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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