It’s a chilly morning in New Hampshire as several hundred people gather at the edge of the Connecticut River.
A fog hovers over the water. Slowly, out of the mist, shapes emerge – canoes gliding toward shore, rocking gently as singing begins.
The canoe docks. Musicians step out. And as the sun breaks over the horizon, a performance begins.
It’s a welcoming of sorts. A gathering that comes from a cosmology of northern New England’s Wabanaki people and stands as a symbol of generations of Indigenous traditions of respect and reverence for the natural world.
This is “We Are Water, A Northeast Celebration,” a collaboration of Indigenous musicians, storytellers, visual artists and one of the world’s most famous cellists, Yo-Yo Ma. The event was part of a special weekend celebration of the arts at nearby Dartmouth College.
“Collaborations like ‘We Are Water’ give me hope,” Ma said. “They demonstrate what can happen when we gather our many wisdoms and invite our storytellers, visual artists, and musicians to weave them together, making sense of our larger purpose, and charting a new path for our species and our planet.”
“Wabanaki being ‘the people of the dawn,’ we’re in the part of the country that sees the sunrise first. And we actually have a duty to welcome the dawn with music,” says Chris Newell, the Connecticut musician who co-curated the performance.
A source of creation
Newell is Passamaquoddy, one of the Wabanaki Nations, and directs the University of Connecticut’s Native American Cultural Program.
Music can be a pathway to better understand our relationship with the natural world, including water, he says.
Water is a source of creation, shaping everything around us: the contours of land, even names that define us. Names like: Connecticut.
“In my language, Quonoktacut. In Abenaki, ‘Kwinitekw.’ Tribes down here, they would say ‘Quinnehtukqut,’” Newell says.
The name “Connecticut” comes from an Indigenous word for New England’s longest waterway.
“Different derivations of Algonquin words that describe the river itself as ‘long tidal river.’” Newell says. “For us, waterways are connectors of people.”
All people are increasingly threatened by unhealthy rivers and oceans. Native peoples lived for thousands of years in harmony with the world’s waterways, Newell says, and they have wisdom to share.
“We can use Indigenous understandings of water and waterways as lessons to learn from, because we all live here now,” he says.
Water’s bounty
Historically, many tribal communities in the Northeast lived near rivers, lakes and streams. Some relocated seasonally to be closer to the shore.
“The coastline provided extraordinary resources,” says Ned Blackhawk, a Yale University history professor and a member of the Western Shoshone Tribe of Nevada. He says the Connecticut River also provided Native peoples with an artery for travel and commerce.
“This complex world of trade, of political organization, of social relations was heavily concentrated in the more sheltered regions of the Northeast where Atlantic currents and storms were less disruptive than they were elsewhere,” Blackhawk says.
Before Europeans arrived, Native peoples traveled Northeast waters by canoe. Newell grew up hearing his dad sing a canoe travel song.
“He could kind of freestyle the lyrics as he went along,” Newell recalls. “And it would describe a journey by canoe, the lessons you learn along the way. And eventually coming back home.”
An unexpected email
Newell, also a singer, got an unexpected email a few years ago; at the time, he was executive director of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine.
The email’s subject line read: “From the Office of Yo-Yo Ma.”
At first, Newell thought it must be spam. But the email was real.
Newell learned that Ma was planning a tour of national parks in the U.S. and planned to start in Acadia National Park.
“They had a very serious question,” he recalls. “What could Yo-Yo Ma do with music that would be meaningful to the Wabanaki people?”
Newell suggested that Ma join Native musicians to welcome the day with music. Their first collaboration took place in 2021 and became an award-winning documentary film.
At this year’s performance, Newell and Ma wanted to be near the Connecticut River. Standing beside cattails and dogwood trees, far from any of the world’s major concert halls, Ma spoke to the crowd.
“Good morning, everybody. Thank you all for getting up so early! And isn’t this absolutely magical? I can’t imagine a more beautiful morning and I can’t imagine a more frozen cello,” he jokes.
Newell introduced the artists, and also sang. The program began with Native storyteller Roger Paul and Indigenous musicians including Lauren Stevens, Mali Obomsawin and Juno-award winner Jeremy Dutcher.
Ma asked Jeremy Dutcher to join him. As Dutcher sang a powerful Indigenous melody, Ma accompanied him on cello. Then, Dutcher stepped back and Ma began an extended solo cello improvisation, gradually moving into Bach’s first Cello Suite.
After the performance, audience member Rachel Karpf reflected on the concert. Hearing Bach outdoors was an expansive musical experience, she said.
“It’s taking the music that we historically think of as very high-brow, classical music, and putting it in a place that is very democratic and saying this is for everybody,” she says.
And it was beautiful, she said, to see the cellist collaborate with Native artists.
“To really see him not only centering his craft, but the craft of other people,” she says.
Water inspires
In a conversation with Vermont Public, Ma said water inspires him in many ways and even helps him to perform. Before beginning the Bach cello suite, Ma visualizes joining a flowing river.
“It’s really hard to start it,” Ma said. “And if the music has already started and the river is flowing and you join it, then you have a communal shared experience. As Chris Newell would say, the Connecticut River can divide us or it could unite us.”
Uniting in music with Ma gives Native artists an opportunity to share their culture and knowledge with more people, Newell said.
“He gives us a sense of visibility that we have something to teach the world,” he said.
And a sense that music and water can help us cross divides and reach one another.
Read more from Still Here: Native American Resilience in New England
Chapter 1: For Native Americans, an enduring spiritual connection to the land
Chapter 2: The hidden history of Indigenous slavery in New England and beyond
Chapter 3: 'Unsung hero:' How runner Tarzan Brown put the Narragansett tribe on the map in the 1930s
Chapter 4: Amid mist and music: A Native American reverence for water, celebrated on the banks of the CT River
Chapter 5: Power of powwow: A cultural connection echoes across generations of Native Americans
