2026 Annual Meeting

About Chief Don Stevens

Don Stevens, Chief of the Nul­he­gan Band of the Coosuk — Abena­ki Nation and Pres­i­dent of the trib­al non-prof­it AHA-Abena­ki Help­ing Abena­ki, Inc. Don is a leader, busi­ness­man, and lec­tur­er. He has been fea­tured in mag­a­zines, books, media, TV shows, and doc­u­men­taries involv­ing his work with uplift­ing the Abena­ki Community.

Don was appoint­ed to the Ver­mont Com­mis­sion on Native Amer­i­can Affairs by Gov­er­nor Dou­glas in 2006 for two terms; where he served as Chair in his sec­ond term. Don helped lead the fight to obtain legal recog­ni­tion for the Abena­ki Peo­ple in Ver­mont who were rec­og­nized by the Ver­mont Leg­is­la­ture in 2011. Don was able to acquire land and hunting/fishing rights for the Nul­he­gan Tribe which had been absent for over 200 years. Don is very proud of his work in part­ner­ing with Mid­dle­bury Col­lege to revi­tal­ize the West­ern Abena­ki Lan­guage. There were six flu­ent speak­ers of the lan­guage in 2010. Now there are thir­ty peo­ple per class. Don con­tin­ues to work with the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment, Leg­is­la­tors, State & Local Gov­ern­ments, Insti­tu­tions, and oth­er Indi­an Nations to rep­re­sent Nul­he­gan Abena­ki viewpoints.

Don has over 30 years of expe­ri­ence in suc­cess­ful­ly devel­op­ing Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, Project Man­age­ment, and strate­gies for mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar com­pa­nies. He proud­ly served in the US Army and grad­u­at­ed from Cham­plain Col­lege with a degree in Com­put­er Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems. Don cur­rent­ly serves on many State Boards and Advi­so­ry Panels.

Don was hon­ored by Mid­dle­bury Col­lege, Cham­plain Col­lege, and Ster­ling Col­lege with Doc­tor­ates of Human Let­ters Degrees. Don is mar­ried to his love­ly wife Diane Stevens. They have 6 Chil­dren and 9 Grandchildren.