At the northern end of the Village of Bellows Falls sits Windham & Windsor Housing Trust’s latest transformation – the repurposing of a crumbling, century-old parking garage into much-needed affordable housing. The new building contains 27 apartments; quality, energy-efficient, mixed income homes with beautiful views of the historic Bellows Falls Canal, the Connecticut River and the picturesque downtown.
The old Bellows Falls Garage – the building itself – had a hundred years of stories and history embedded within its concrete walls, including its earliest use as a garage and a car dealership and later as a mechanic’s shop, a dry cleaners, a hippie commune and a sign shop. But the fuller history of this property – the land and its location on the Connecticut River – goes back much further, thousands of years, in fact, as the Native Abenaki people fished the waters near the Great Falls. Their stories, their voices and their values are as much a part of Bellows Falls and the surrounding landscape as the river itself.
Rich Holschuh is a citizen of the Elnu Abenaki tribe in the southeastern part of the State, and serves as cultural relations officer, liaison and ambassador for the tribe. He says there is a history of this place going back 12,000 years that can only be told from an Abenaki point of view.
“Bellows Falls, or the Great Falls, known as “Kchi Pôntegok” in Abenaki, is probably the most significant place on the Connecticut River to the Abenaki community. One of the primary reasons the falls were so important was as a fishing place. The people would go there every year dependably to connect with the fish that were coming to that place at the same time. This is seen as a relationship – the fish and the human beings coming together to a place, meeting each other, saying hello, I haven’t seen you since last year, it’s good that you’ve come back. And giving thanks for that. This is intentional on the part of the fish as well as the people. It’s a really different way of looking at the world.”
Over time, as Abenaki populations were forced out and industrialization diverted the falls and the flow of the river, this had a damaging effect on the Abenaki community’s relationship with the river, and the landscape. The fish stopped coming, blocked by the dams. The native voices grew fewer, then quieter. It seemed, for a time, at least, that the stories of Kchi Pôntegok would be lost.
But now, thanks to efforts of the contemporary Indigenous community, those stories are coming back into the conversation. Holschuh is the founder and co-director of the Atowi Project, a non-profit initiative with a mission of raising native voices and fostering awareness and an understanding of the Abenaki people and their relationship to this place above all places. The Elnu Abenaki partnered with the Town of Rockingham to receive a National Park Service grant in 2022 for the purpose of researching, documenting and preserving the petroglyphs – faces carved in stone under the Vilas Bridge believed to be thousands of years old. A collaboration with the Housing Trust and their property situated on Abenaki land so close to the river presented a serendipitous opportunity for Atowi and the Elnu Abenaki.
“Atowi is an Abenaki word meaning together in space and time, and that explains quite simply the mission we find ourselves in,” explains Holschuh. “Place does matter. The folks at the Housing Trust recognize the fact that the residents of this new housing community, and in fact Bellows Falls’ sense of itself, would be better served by learning some of these stories that are intimately connected to that place, and help it to be what it is, what it can be, and what it has been.”
The two organizations are exploring a number of ways to advance this mission using the community space within the new building. Some ideas include the addition of Abenaki signage, and engaging the Elnu community to make art for the building. It’s all about connecting people with place and revealing relationships from a different perspective.
“This is a place of enduring significance. The Abenaki people are still here. All of the stories that have transpired here are still here. And now, the residents in this new building are a part of those stories. It’s a continual relationship — all of these things are connected.”
This spring, as residents move into their new apartments in the Bellows Falls Garage, the next chapter in this story begins to unfold, weaving the past with the present, acknowledging the Abenaki belief that Place matters completely.
