M y work as a traditional Abenaki storyteller often dovetails with my efforts as an Indigenous archaeologist. In both roles, I explore and interpret physical and ephemeral locales where memories reside, where Indigenous knowledges are situated, and where histories of past events speak in some way to the present. I am particularly attentive to places where Indigenous stories and understandings have been distorted, threatened, or forgotten. Some of my travels to Native sites are meticulously well planned—research visits, field trips, consultancies, performing gigs, and such—but others are seemingly random—a wrong turn on a back road, a chance meeting with an elder, a casual comment by a landowner, an artifact on a dusty shelf, or an invitation to dinner in a foreign country (both figuratively and literally). The quixotic, and yet always informative nature of these encounters has trained me to pay close attention to local landscapes and historical mem- 66 I NDIGENOUS J OURNEYS — S PLINTERVILLE , D RENTHE , A MHERST Margaret M. Bruchac C HAPTER S IX B&B2 Ch-06-bkbb.qxp 2/8/2010 2:56 PM Page 66