Consisting of hundreds of Native Americans groups, the Waban-Aki people have lived in New England and Quebec for over 11,000 years and believe they are the grandfathers of all other nations, Obomsawin said.
"They are the first to receive the light of sunrise over the sea," she said. "This is the East, where life began."
French and English settlers have threatened the Waban-Aki people's lives and property throughout history, she said. Although the European accounts of those conflicts are well known, Waban-Aki people have their own perspectives on the events, she said.
Obomsawin told the story of Maj. Robert Rogers' raid of Waban-Aki land in early October 1759 by first reading from Rogers's journal and then telling the Waban-Aki account.
"I found the Indians in a frolic, or dance," she read from Rogers' journal. "At a half hour before sunrise, I surprised the town when they were all fast asleep. The enemy had no time to recover themselves or take arms for their own defense until they were chiefly destroyed."
Obomsawin said she heard a different version of Rogers' raid from her mother's cousin.
"In the dark of the night, a young girl heard a stranger calling her," she said. "He whispered to her, Don't be afraid, I come to warn you there are white people here. They will exterminate you.' The young girl warned the people."
In the Waban-Aki version of the event, the Waban-Aki warriors split Rogers's men's whaleboats after receiving a warning, Obomsawin said. The English could not leave the Waban-Aki territory and Rogers then lost many of his men to starvation and hardship, she said.
"We have a story too," she said. "He killed a lot of people, but not all of us."
When describing Waban-Aki history, Obomsawin discussed Dartmouth's relationship with Native Americans.
Eleazar Wheelock, whom Obomsawin called a "revivalist preacher and very much a politician," believed conversion of Native American people to Protestantism would be more successful with Native American missionaries, she said.
Wheelock collected funds for that purpose but later changed his mind, Obomswain said. After Wheelock founded Dartmouth on Waban-Aki territory, the College recruited very few Native Americans, she said. Between 1777 and 1949, only 19 Native American students graduated from Dartmouth.
In her lecture, Obomsawin described many traditions held by the Waban-Aki people, including summer and winter solstice, the selection of the tribe medicine woman or man and the marriage process.
"Perhaps a boy was carving something and dropped a chip of wood near a girl. If she picked it up, she was interested," she said, eliciting laughter from the audience.
Obomsawin grew up in Odanak, Canada, on Waban-Aki territory in the 1930s, she said. Later in her childhood, she and her family moved to a small town, where she experienced cultural conflict.
"That's when I found out I was poor," she said. "My life in those days was not so good. I was often beaten by other children, and there was illness and hardship in my family."
Obomsawin's father died of tuberculosis in 1944, she said.
"The hate kept on following me, and I kept on running," she said. "But the love within me was stronger than all the hate. I survived, and I won."
Her childhood story is the subject of her latest short film, "When All The Leaves are Gone," which she screened after her 50-minute lecture.
Obomsawin is a "pathfinder" in her career as a documentary filmmaker, storyteller, singer and social activist, according to Richard Stamelman, the Montgomery Endowment's executive director, who introduced Obomsawin's lecture.
Obomsawin has made 37 films for the National Film Board of Canada, all of which concern indigenous people's struggle for sovereignty, Stamelman said.
Suzanne Abetti of White River Junction, Vt., who attended the lecture, said it is important to hear the voice of people who have been suppressed for so long.
"She's beautiful, and she's brilliant," she said. "Watching something like this is just heartbreaking."
