Marshy lands in Quebec are home to a variety of ecosystems both above and below the water From north to south the towering cliffs of Canada’s Maritime Provinces lead to Maine and the lowlands of North Carolina’s coast The area sweeps west to the Great Lakes and Illinois Thick forests of pine birch and sugar maple crisscross the land There are many meadows lakes and rivers The Saint Lawrence Mississippi and Ohio Rivers flow through the area 6
In the north are boreal forests filled with evergreen trees To the south are the Appalachians This mountain chain stretches for almost 2,000 miles 3,200 km Many Native Nations share this vast area The Omàmiwinini Algonquin Wendat Huron Ojibwe Mi’kmaq and Abenaki are a few of the tribes who live here The PERSPECTIVES KARI KENNEDY HOAG ON STORYTELLING Kari Kennedy Hoag is a member of the Seneca Nation She works at the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum Hoag feels that Seneca families are no longer sharing stories as they once did Children are more likely to learn stories at school or in books Hoag believes storytelling connects us with why we do things today She shares her love of storytelling with children She creates puppet shows based on Seneca tales Haudenosaunee Iroquois a confederacy of six Native Nations also live in this region Their origin stories tell that they have been here forever Each tribe has different beliefs and ways of life 7
The Native Nations know their lands well They originally settled in areas where they could fish hunt or plant crops Women traditionally gathered berries wild rice and maple sap The forests provided people with raw materials Groups used bark to build lightweight canoes The Beothuk of Newfoundland built with birch bark One of their canoe designs looked like a half-moon The people put mossy rocks at the bottom of each canoe to keep it balanced on the water THE SPOKEN WORD For most of their history the people of the Northeast did not have written languages so they could not write down their stories in words Symbols and pictures were sometimes used to record things People also told tales out loud passing them from one person to another It was one role of the community’s elders to carry on this tradition Through stories children learned about their history They were introduced to important lessons Children listen to a Native American storyteller at an event in Vermont 8
