Explore Abenaki culture, arts, foodways, and storytelling traditions.
The People of the Dawnland exhibit, located in the Jones House, invites visitors to learn more about Abenaki and Wabanaki peoples of Northern New England, Southern Quebec, and the Canadian Maritime Provinces; both past and present.
The People of the Dawnland exhibit invites visitors to touch traditional basket weaves, play with cornhusk dolls, step into a reproduction wigwam, and see what plants are growing in the Abenaki teaching garden.
Archaeologists at Strawbery Banke uncovered pieces of pottery, stone tools, and tent holes, demonstrating the presence of the Abenaki. For over 12,000 years, they visited the Seacoast seasonally for hunting, fishing, and food preparation. This exhibit describes the locations of Tribal groups from present day Newfoundland to the mid-Atlantic, their shared traditions, beliefs, and resources of their trade networks, and family relationships of the Abenaki and other Indigenous peoples who are still in New Hampshire.
Click the link above to listen to a virtual presentation by Anne Jennison and Alexandra Martin on the People of the Dawnland exhibit
For thousands of years, the Abenaki have made intricately handcrafted goods to meet their everyday needs, working with materials supplied by the natural world around them. Abenaki homes, clothing, weapons, canoes, baskets, pottery, cradleboards, etc. were practical yet beautifully made because Abeanki aesthetic traditions ask that an object made for daily use should be visually appealing as well as functional.
Today, there is a revitalization of Abenaki culture underway throughout N’Dakinna (Abenaki territory, literarally “Our Land”) — and a whole new generation of people of Abenaki descent are expressing a renewed interest in preserving their heritage by learning and practicing the traditional crafts of their ancestors.
The People of the Dawnland exhibit is open daily May 1 through October 31 and is included with general admission.
The exhibit, a part of the Strawbery Banke Abenaki Heritage Initiative, was created by the Collections and Education Departments in collaboration with members of the New Hampshire Commission on Native American Affairs, the Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook-Abenaki People, and the Indigenous New Hampshire Collaborative Collective.