Haudenosaunee Festival: A Celebration of Upstate New York's Indigenous Community

Welcome to "Confluence: Humanities in the Public Sphere," an IASH sponsored podcast where we discuss various public humanities projects on Binghamton University's campus and elsewhere.  In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Brianna Langlie, associate professor of anthropology, to discuss the seventh annual Haudenosaunee Festival that was hosted on Binghamton University's campus from September 29th and 30th, 2023. This festival welcomed members of New York State's indigenous community and featured indigenous speakers, food, music, storytelling and so much more. We also discuss the joys and challenges of planning such an important event and explore plans for the future as the university looks to build deeper collaboration with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. 

Transcript

Welcome to Confluence humanities in the public sphere an IASH sponsored podcast where we discuss various public humanities projects on Binghamton University's campus and elsewhere. I'm your host, Josh Kluever. On September 29, and 30th 2023. The purple and white flag of the Haudenosaunee confederacy flew over the Binghamton University campus as part of the seventh annual Haudenosaunee  festival. This festival welcomed members of New York State's indigenous community and featured indigenous speakers, food, music, storytelling and so much more. Joining me today is Brianna Langlie, associate professor of anthropology at Binghamton University, and one of the lead organizers for the festival to discuss the joys and challenges of planning such an important event. We will also explore plans for the future as the university looks to build deeper collaboration with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Dr. Langlie, thank you for joining me. I just want to begin by kind of having you introduce yourself and the kind of the work you do here on campus and some of how you initially got interested in kind of this festival's organizing,
Sure. So I'm an Associate Professor of Anthropology here at BU I am also an affiliate of Latin American and Caribbean studies as well as the environmental studies program. And with those kind of associations affiliations at BU you can probably already tell that I have research that takes me far and wide. Both physically and theoretically, I'm a very interdisciplinary transdisciplinary scholar, I have a background both and bought me as well as in archaeology. My actual title of what I do is either Archeo botany or paleo ethnobotany depending upon which continent I'm on. But that means I studied plants from the archaeological record, I study the deep history of agriculture and food through the lens of plants from the archaeological record. With that personal background and research interest that led me to be getting involved with starting a three sisters garden here on campus. What are the three sisters they are corn, beans and squash. The three sisters garden is in the science one courtyard, you can visit it all year round. Right now it's going into a period of rest for winter after we just harvested it on September 29. But that three sisters garden is a great tool to explain indigenous agriculture campus for all of our students, students in history and environmental studies and anthropology classes, visit the garden to learn about traditional agriculture. From there, I got involved with the Haudenosaunee  festival because I had these relationships with the garden. The garden is not just a pedagogical tool. It is a renewal of friendships with Haudenosaunee  people both in the fall in the spring with our planting and our harvest every year. We have heard initially people coming from Onondaga from Mohawk, coming in and helping us plant that garden, speaking about Native science, traditional ecological knowledge, the plants, they bring the seeds, their sacred seeds. And because I was involved in this collaborative community engaged project bringing indigenous people to campus. It grew from there into this whole festival, which I can tell you a little bit more about the background if you want to know about it.
Yeah, before we kind of get into the background of the festival, I hope that you could maybe kind of flesh out who the Haudenosaunee people are maybe their connections to the upstate New York area just for our listeners to kind of situate themselves before we dive into the festival. Where do I do
with Haudenosaunee  history. The Haudenosaunee  have been on the land of New York for time immemorial. We can go back 1000s of years. These are the people that lived in New York state before European colonization of the Americas. So before European invaders or colonizers came to the Americas. These were the indigenous people that lived in New York State on the lands here in the northeastern United States forever. They are the keepers of this land. They farmed here. They had complex civilizations. They call this place Turtle Island that they lived on. They still do. It's not just that they lived here for time immemorial. They still live here. They live across New York state. There are our six nations that are currently part of the Haudenosaunee confederacy when the Europeans showed up there was only five. Those nations include the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, and the Seneca. And then in the 1700s, the Tuscarora joins the Tuscarora used to be in North Carolina. And after colonizers, European colonizers pushed them out. They joined the Haudenosaunee  Confederacy in the 18th century. So this is the Haudenosaunee  Confederacy. And most people that live in New York State live on land that was unseated by the Haudenosaunee people. So
let's get to the festival itself. It's been hosted before but not on Binghamton campus. So if you just kinda wanna flesh that out. And what was it they did here with the festival
It was started about seven years ago. That's its seventh iteration was on BU campus. About seven years ago. The festival started at the Vestal Museum, which is located on Vestal Parkway in front of the Vestal library out by skylark diner, a special shout out shout out to Skylark diner if you make it out to the vessel Museum, head for a great diner meal at skylark diner. At the vessel Museum, they're really all about conveying to the general public history of the local population, which includes indigenous history, not just settler colonial history. So if you visit the Vestel Museum, you'll see displays about what vestal look like in the 1800s. But they also have displays about the people that lived here before colonial settlements. So it's a great museum. It's directed by Shri Rosales, who is also happens to be a graduate student here at Binghamton University. So she wears two hats. She's director of a museum and she's also a graduate student in the in the arts. And actually she's a local artist as well. She has a residency coming up at the Brown County Arts Council pretty soon here. And so she started this festival about seven years ago. And it never really quite took off. It wasn't very big, they wouldn't have 40 people attend the festival. And they would bring in these world famous speakers. Angela Ferguson has spoken there several times. She's the director of the Onondaga Nation farm. Angela is also she's eel clan. She has been featured in National Geographic both in the print edition, as well as the documentary on National Geographic Channel. In addition to that, she also has been featured in The New York Times. We have a world famous lacrosse stick maker has been featured at the Vestal Museum, and they would get these small crowds and eventually sharees and this guy, carpenter, he is a local guy, he's not Haudenosaunee he started a lacrosse magazine. So he's really deep in the class lacrosse world and he's making a documentary about a famous finish on a stick maker I'll shock. He has been involved in the in the Vestal museums iteration of the hood and Ashanti festival for years, and he reached out to President Stenger and said, Hey, we would really like to make this festival bigger. Is there any way we could partner up with you and bring it to campus and President Stenger said I have just the right team for you to work with. Because we have these two faculty members one is, is in the center for civic engagement. And then the other one is me Barry Breton in the Center for Civic Engagement, and then myself, who already have relationships with some of the people that that presented the Haudenosaunee festival every year like Angela Ferguson, and we were teamed up with Bob carpenter and Teresa rosellas. And and President Stenger said what do you guys need to move it to campus and we said we needed money and President Stenger he said Sure thing, and he signed off on it. And we got the money. From there. We ran with it. We made it as big as we could. And in the end, I think we had well over 1000 people attend.
Well, that's, that's incredible that you were able to grow it from something that was always something so small and insular but had the potential to grow. And I'll definitely I want to return to that kind of the impact of that many people getting involved in this festival. But I wonder if we could speak to some of the specific things that were done at the festival and kind of you mentioned before about the the Three Sisters something that you mentioned you were dealing with plants. I know that was something that was already on campus with the three sister garden so if you could maybe kind of speak to what a what are the three sisters for our listeners, and kind of what was done in the past and at the festival.
Three years ago now Barry Breton and I from the Center for Civic Engagement teamed up and we started the three sisters garden and the science one courtyard. We started this garden by reaching out to Angela Ferguson from the Onondaga Nation farm because we thought that relationships were just as critical to start in the garden as where the plants themselves and The garden space itself and Angela is a sacred seed keeper. She has over 1000 varieties of corn in her stores up at the Onondaga Nation farm. She grows tobacco she grows, beans and squash. So back to your question what are the three sisters that are corn beans and squash. These are part of the of the Haudenosaunee creation story. They were the original founder. So there's some other important crops in the creation story like strawberries, a wild strawberries, but corn, beans and squash are called the Three Sisters for a reason. from a biological perspective, the three sisters help each other grow. The corn creates a stalk it's the first plant that's planted and it creates a strong foundation for then the beans to pull up. So rather than creating a trellis and for the beans to grow up, the corn stock creates a natural trellis for the beans to wind up. And then from there around the outside of the mountains because these are planted collectively in mounds very different from the European style of of creating furrows with little mounds. This is one central mound that's kind of like a lump of of soil. You plant the corn in the middle the beans go up the corn and then you plant the squash around the outside of the mound. And the squash creates a little bit of almost like an umbrella that creates a shade they have these big spiky broadleaves that actually shade out competitor weeds. They're a little bit spiny, so they scare off predators as well. And the neat thing is, you see this almost like a really slow dance of the beans, climbing up the pole of the corn and then the squash fanning out the side you see that happening above ground. But there's also a dance going on underneath the ground in the soil between these crops as well. So as corn is pulling nitrogen out of the soil beans actually have cyanobacteria in their root natural that takes nitrogen out of the air and fixes it in soil and makes it available for corn and beans. And so it's a very sustainable way of growing food and planting a mounds growing these three, three sisters in concert with one another is actually actually creates higher yields, which is pretty cool to think about. Like think about driving through the Midwest. I'm from Minnesota, you drive through Minnesota, and it's monocultures everywhere, right, a single plant a single field of just corn that's not good for the soil, you're not putting nutrients back into the soil that way you're just pulling them out. But by planting beans with the with the corn and planting them all together, they're like a natural pesticide. You're scaring away the critters and their natural fertilizer. It's so cool. This is what Native science is all about. The Haudenosaunee figured this out 1000s of years ago.
I'm also a fellow Midwesterner I'm from Wisconsin, so I know a large plot of corn as well as as well as anybody. But I think what you said there at the end that you know a lot of native knowledge of planting, there are still ways for people on campus and the following community to kind of still get involved with this three sisters do you guys do you said like a harvest and a planting kind of a year to year basis is the plan.
Every year, Yeah, we're gonna be planting this day as for time immemorial, hopefully. We play planted usually the first week in May and then we harvest sometime in late September, early October, depending upon how the crops are maturing as well as Angela Ferguson's schedule because we can't do the harvest without our partners on this. This is really not just a pedagogical tool to see the crops growing. It's also symbolizes the relationship we have with the Onondaga with the broader hood and and showing people this every year. This is a renewal of our friendship between Binghamton University and the Haudenosaunee. That's the goal of the garden is it's not just not just like a display of native science, which is cool in and of itself. Don't get me wrong, but it's more important than that. It's a land acknowledgement. It's a friendship.
And another thing that the festival had was a was a witness to injustice, I believe on the end of the first day. Can you speak a little bit more about what that entailed? Kind of what happened at that event and some of the powers of having that type of witness to injustice at the festival.
So we started before and Friday morning on the 29th with the garden harvest, because it's a celebration of fall, and Fridays a day when students are on Campus so we wanted to start things off with a bang. We had delicious food that Angela Ferguson brought down. She's a fantastic chef. And so we had delicious food. And then in the afternoon, we had a real opportunity for an educational experience. The Haudenosaunee have a long history of being occupied by colonial invaders from Europe, and many centuries of genocide. And we can't just celebrate Haudenosaunee culture without confronting the realities that Binghamton University and people of New York State have been responsible for a lot of this history. So we had an opportunity to confront that history head on. And in order to do that, we invited a group called the neighbors of the Onondaga nation who are a branch of the Syracuse peace council down to facilitate this interactive kind of public humanities program. And what it was, as we all gathered on the peace squad, and amazingly enough, when I sent out invites, I thought it was just going to be students, but pretty much every department, every administrator that I contacted, was interested in having some one of their somebody from their unit get involved. So for example, President Stenger was out there. Brian Rose vice president was out there. The Provost showed up, we even had, oh, Lea Webb came by. So we just we had really good turnout from the highest echelons of this university, supporting this programming wanting to participate. Pam Smart from Harper College, Dean's office was a core participant. So a little bit more about witnessed to injustice. It's an interactive program. It's a three hour program. So it's a big commitment. We had over 120 people watching. I know that because I ordered chairs from Taylor rental, and I had 110 chairs and there were at least 10 people standing around and every chair was full. So I can tell you those numbers based upon chairs occupied, but they what they do is the neighbors of the Onondaga Nation, it's a mixed group of facilitators. There's there's a couple of white people that help out facilitate it. And then there was four, four people from Haudenosaunee. We had Curtis Waterman play flutes. And then and then we had Sam George, he's a Sachem from Cayuga, and then we had his wife and then there was one or two other people. It was a group of facilitators that supported each other. Then they laid out blankets in the middle of the circle. And then there was 25 core participants. And I had those people sign up ahead of time, I needed them to know it was a three hour program, I needed them to know what they were getting into. Apparently, neighbors of the Onondaga nation have never done this. Beyond just that group of core participants. They've never done it at this large of a scale. So we had over 100 people watching this. It was very moving, incredibly moving and I actually participated in it. And what what we did was, we were rumored to walk on blankets and we stood in the middle those of us that were participating, everybody else was watching around the circle. And they talked about centuries of genocide. It from first showing up in the Caribbean islands to bringing disease intentionally inflicting disease on indigenous people, colonial settlers intentionally inflicting disease on Native American people as a tactic of war tactics, genocide, bringing smallpox to ending with Native American boarding schools that were all about cultural genocide that are just ended in the 1980s. A lot of the people in the audience some of the students that participated didn't know that history. Some of us that participated knew that history. But being told that history while people are locked off the blankets with Curtis playing the flute, and being told to close your eyes and imagine, you know, 80% of your relatives are killed off and then that people disappearing off the blankets, the blankets getting smaller to kind of simulate being moved to reservations. And then it was it was an immersive experience, that even if you knew that history, there was no way not to be touched by it. Not to be impacted by it. There was probably not a dry eye in the house by the end of it. And then at the end of it, we all sat down in small groups and in the facilitators kind of helped us unpack and how we can continue to move through the world thinking, well, we can do better so as to perpetuate cultural genocide going forward through some structural programs and politics that are in place today, because this is still ongoing. 
Yeah, I think it's such a powerful part of the festival, like you said, it began with the kind of a celebration of harvest, certainly the three sisters but I think that this witness to injustice is such an important part of the power that the festival can have both for the Haudenosaunee people, as they, you know, the something that they have done before. But also, I think it's something that's very powerful for Binghamton campus and the surrounding area. I was hoping maybe you could kind of speak broadly about that, but also just the power of the festival more broadly about maybe the impact that it has, for participants that may have been there, but kind of maybe some changes, you hope that it kind of builds in the future and the way that the university kind of interacts with Haudenosaunee people.
So one thing that we got to by the end of the Witness to Injustice program was that those that survived are just incredibly resilient, you know, honoring the resilience of the Haudenosaunee People retaining the culture that they have through generational trauma. And celebrating, that was definitely what day two of the festival was all about. And, and, and from there, I think that the impact of the educational experience and then the beauty of the Haudenosaunee culture on Saturday was very moving to anyone that attended that was absolutely apparent. I know, the administration is very eager to look into supporting Native American and indigenous scholarships. There's conversations around starting Native American and Indigenous Studies program here at Binghamton University, we currently do not have a Native American Indigenous Studies program. I know LACAS is celebrating its 50th year I'm a part of Latin American and Caribbean studies. And there's a lot of intersectionality between Latin American and Caribbean studies and Native American and Indigenous Studies, because many of our students from LACAS us also identify is indigenous, whether that's indigenous Ecuadorian, or indigenous Mexican. I know those students on campus and those are Native American and indigenous students. So there's a lot of intersectionality, there lack of showed up on Saturday for the festival. There's a lot of support for moving some of these efforts forward. And, and people are examining in their home departments, all those that participated, whether that's the President's office, or Harper, Dean's college office, or the biology department, Biology Department participated in the witness to Injustice -- event. I mean, that's fantastic. People are thinking about, you know, in their own way, how can we, how can we pay respect? How can we celebrate? How can we partner up? How can we collaborate with indigenous people here in New York State, there's so many ways to do that, that are dynamic. For example, the three sisters garden is one example of that. It's both a community engaged space as well as a pedagogical tool for teaching about indigenous science, you know, it's dynamic space. What other ways can we infuse indigenous knowledge Haudenosaunee History across our curriculum, that's what we're thinking about as a result of this festival. And we're thinking about it, and we're amplifying the voices of indigenous peoples. It shouldn't just be we're teaching this. Let's bring those people back to campus and have them be guest speakers in our courses. Let's figure out new ways that we can start research projects in new collaborations. I know that's happening right now as well. I know there's a big grant going in about indigenous knowledge. I can't tell you the specifics of it, but there's a big grant going in and I'm actually not involved in that. So that's, that's beyond me, even. And it that was a result of some of these partnerships that came out of the three sisters garden as well as the festival.
That is really exciting. Anytime that you know, this, the university can continue to grow, expand, you know, the different programs that we offer to our students, the different viewpoints, the different paths of knowledge and study that you know, that hopefully will encourage more going forward. Can we return to like that day two of the festival what were some of those other events that participants or attendees could have, could have seen while there.
It was a fantastic day it was a an exciting day. It started in the morning with everyone setting up we had We had 12 vendors on campus Haudenosaunee vendors came out and sold their their crafts and their art. We had a stone sculptor, Tom Huff, we had Tony Ganye who is faith keeper from Onondaga and he's a wampum belt maker. We had Tuscarora Woodworks came down and they just have some really neat stuff including catchy T shirts and keychains but also wood carvings and really cool the stuff. He also had. Angela Ferguson gave us some traditional recipes. And we took the harvest from last year the corn from the three sisters garden, and we took that corn and partnered up with Sodexo and we processed that corn in the Sodexo kitchens and we had free samples of corn mush and a three sisters squash, corn beans and squash soup. And then we had a strawberry drink all traditional recipes all made in Sodexo kitchens. So that was really neat to get indigenous foods and recipes into Sodexo their kitchens talk about tentacles and reverberation across the campus changing Sodexo kitchens. And then so we had all the vendors setup. We also had the public archaeology facility how to attend the Vestal Museum and the Vestal historian had a tent as well, along with the view Art Museum brought out one of the wampum belts that they had in their collections, commissioned by an by Tony Ganye Tony made it and sold it to the the BU Art Museum on campus here. We also had Latin American and Caribbean studies was out there so we just had a lot of people Oh, can't forget Josh Demaree had native plants. So thinking about what plants are indigenous, not just people but what plants were indigenous to New York State thinking about all the invasive species, the colonizers, the colonized plants, so thinking about the landscape as being colonized by plants is important to So Josh Demaree was out there from the greenhouse selling native plants. And in the main tent, we had speakers lectures. The first speaker of the day was Perry Ground, and it was a tent started at 10 o'clock. There wasn't a seat in the house, and he was a Native American storyteller. So he got all the kids riled up. Kids and adults alike love a good story. And he's told traditional Haudenosaunee stories about Turtle Island, the creation story. I mean, he had people putting their hands over their heads flapping them like birds, and he was running all over the place. I don't know one person that doesn't love listening to Perry Ground's storytelling, and he's amazing. We followed that up with some some flute playing by Curtis Waterman. He's an incredible flute player. Then we had Angela Ferguson, about traditional agriculture and her work at the Onondaga Nation farm. We also had Ethan Tayo, do a cooking demonstration right there on the main stage. We had a documentary about El shock, the famous lacrosse stick maker, Bob Carpenter, who I mentioned earlier in the program. Bob has been making this documentary for years. It'll premiere at a film festival in the not too distant future. But he was able to show snippets and of this of this documentary, and that really got the crowd going. Then we had a more serious talk about the work that Wendy and Tony Ganye Wendy Ganye and Tony Ganye are brother and sister. Wendy is a clan mother and Tony is a faith keeper are both from Onondaga and they both work on repatriation. So you have everything from storytelling to repatriation and repatriation. That's serious stuff. That's that is reclaiming the ancestors bones and repairing them. I mean, I you know, we think about the work that the US military does, and trying to identify unidentified human remains that were killed in combat abroad. That's a serious part of what the military does. Every Native American nation in the United States is grappling with the fact that their ancestors are in museum collections. Their ancestors bodies are you know, they're reclaiming them. They're taking them back out of museum collections and paying proper respect to them and bringing them home and burying them back in the ground where they belonged where they're where they wanted them. Tony and Wendy oversee that for the nation that process they partake in overseeing that and they talked about getting body parts of their ancestors back and boxes and and putting them back in the ground and how important That was for to reclaim their cultural heritage. And that's really extremely heavy stuff. As an archaeologist, I'm familiar with that process but hearing about about the day in and day out process of that is always difficult. So the festival was serious. It was fun. It was educational. It was pulled at your heartstrings. And then we wrapped up the day with Chris Thomas and smoked dancers. Chris brought out family and friends and they dressed in their traditional regalia. And Chris drummed and sang and we came out from underneath the tent and there was a giant circle. And children of all ages from from their 80s all the way down to there was a one year old there dance to Chris Thomas's Drumming and singing, and they let us and traditional Native American dances, some of them are specific for their own a Shawnee, I participated in one traditional dance from they did a dance from Florida called the alligator dance. That's what it translated to. So that was, that was really fun. A great way to end the day. And then we had, then we had a traditional Thanksgiving blessing led by Chief Sam George, from Cayuga that close things out.
Yeah, it's a jam packed day. I think it's the epitome of I guess, you know, this is a podcast about public humanities, about all you know, dancing and artwork, and history and family storytelling, like all the different parts that make up the humanities, all the strength, all the different organizations on campus, but also, outside of the Binghamton area, the museum, you know, the art museum, everything from the top down of the university, all the way down to the students that participated. And then of course, the Haudenosaunee people, you know, being part of this process and sharing their their lives, their cultures, with campus, I think is incredibly powerful. So what are the plans for the future? Like, is this something that the university wants to continue to do on a year by year basis? And you said, there's probably 1000 Some people that took part over the course of everything in the two days like, is this something you hope is even bigger going forward?
On a personal level, I hope to see it grow some of the vendors and some of our community partners and they had ideas that if we could make it big enough and and prestigious enough, we could potentially host a smoke dance competition, which would be amazing. That would be so fun to see to see smoke dancers come and compete. On BU campus, we talked about bringing more vendors and we talked about, about making the festival bringing the vendors out on Friday to make it more of a two day festival. So the vendors would be there. For the students on Fridays, the students are walking to classes as well as on second day. Everybody, I've talked to you, the administration, the feedback has just been phenomenal. Everybody's seems really excited about bringing it back. So hopefully we can partner up continue to partner up with the vessel museum to to turn this into an annual event. The banner I had printed for Bartle Drive has no year on it. So I want to reuse that banner as many times as I can. We hope to bring it back again and again. And again. The cool thing about partnering with the Vestal Museum, is that it really encouraged the general public not just for you, faculty, staff and students to come to the event. But the general public to campus. You know, Homecoming weekend, all these other events, Parents Weekend are really for the BU community. But we really want to make this event for the broader public and draw the general public up to campus. You know, some universities are in the middle of cities being obtained is up on a hill. How do we convince people to come to public by partnering or come to campus? By partnering with organizations like the Vestal museum, we can make it more comfortable for the general public to come to campus because this is this is also their campus. We're the state of New York. This is everybody's campus. We're a state school. Everybody should feel welcome here. And so our goal in partnering up with the Vestal Museum is to help get the word out and let people know we're here as to be a part of your community. We want to be a part of your community and we want you to be a part of our community. Not just the Haudenosaunee people but everyone living in Binghamton, Vestal, Endicott, you know, the broader from counties. So we hope that more people show up from the veteran community next year too.
Well with that Brie Anna Langlie, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of confluence. Thank you for sharing about the Haudenosaunee festival and I hope people hear this and already get excited for for next year's festivities. Thank you so much. Thank you all for listening. I hope you're inspired to think about how your community is connected to the history of indigenous groups. Now, you might try to strengthen them in the future. If you're in the Binghamton area, look out for next year's Haudenosaunee festival. We'd love to see you there. Before I sign off, I want to give a huge thank you to Shruti Jain who launched this podcast and hosted the first few episodes that you can find in the podcast feed. I am grateful to be able to continue this podcast and know that I have huge shoes to fill. And don't worry Shruti may be back in the coming months to discuss the other amazing projects that she's currently working on. Once again, Confluence is sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the humanities. If you like what you hear, please leave us a review on your podcast app of choice and share it with family and friends. We'll be back soon with more amazing public humanities projects.