Jesse Bruchac

Jesse Bowman Bruchac (born 1972) is an author and language teacher from the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation, a state-recognized tribe in Vermont. He has dedicated much of his life to studying the Abenaki language and preserving the Abenaki culture. He created the first Abenaki language website.

Bruchac has traveled throughout the United States teaching both the Abenaki language and culture. When he is not traveling, Jesse works as the treasurer for The Ndakinna Education Center and teaches wilderness survival classes. He also is an active martial artist, skilled in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, isshin-ryū, pentjak silat, and taekwondo.

Jesse has worked extensively with the Abenaki language and taught other Eastern Algonquian languages including the Lenni Lenape languages Munsee and Unami; Mohegan-Pequot, and Passamaquoddy. He is the webmaster of WesternAbenaki.com, a free online language learning portal. Abenaki scholar Frederick Matthew Wiseman, author of The Voice of the Dawn, calls him an "important contributor to the Abenaki Renaissance."

He has worked in a short film by Alanis Obomsawin, When All the Leaves Are Gone (2010). Jesse was a translator for the AMC hit show Turn: Washington's Spies. Jesse was also a translator, dialect/dialogue coach and composer for the National Geographic movie Saints & Strangers (2015), a film which includes over an hour of translated dialogue in the Western Abenaki language and two months of on set actor training and filming in South Africa with over two dozen actors.