This weekend, the Peace Quad turned into a festival full of vendors and educational groups in celebration of the Haudenosaunee people. Attracting students, faculty and community members of various walks of life, the goal of the festival was to ensure that Haudenosaunee history stays alive through education.

Themed around storytelling, the annual event brought together people from several clans and nations who gave talks, led workshops, gave dance and singing performances and shared a variety of crafts.

“Telling stories, to me, is very important because it’s a very positive way of teaching about Native peoples,” said storyteller and cultural educator Perry Ground, a Turtle Clan member of the Onondaga Nation. “The stories, the way that I tell them, are very fun, very engaging. I think that the audience today was having a very good time, and it makes people want, I hope, want to learn more about Native Americans.”

Ground shared the importance of communicating the continued presence of Indigenous people today.

“My biggest goal is to remind people that we are, still here as 21st-century people,” said Ground. “That our culture is alive. Not only that we still continue to exist as Native people, that our culture continues to exist, but that we have changed and evolved as Native people.”

The festival included workshops where attendees were able to get hands-on experience making traditional crafts. Marilyn Isaacs, a weaving instructor from the Tuscarora Reservation, led a booth where she taught people how to finger-weave, giving each learner their own setup. Isaacs told Pipe Dream that, to her, her craft isn’t just about what she creates, but also her relationship with the planet down to the fiber she uses.

Other stalls had vendors sharing intricate beadwork, highlighting older, more traditional regalia. Monica Paulis of the Onondaga Nation, a vendor at the festival, a beadworker and teacher of traditional dance, spoke about her craft and what she sells.

“We focus more on the older style of the Iroquois outfits, I would say like the 1800s,” Paulis said. “We have glass trade beads and then we also have shells with the dyed deer hair, and our moccasins, same style — the old style.”

Revisiting history, while also emphasizing the importance of recognizing modern, local Indigenous communities, was an important theme of the event. Tonya Shenandoah of the Oneida Turtle Clan and assistant director of Native American and Indigenous Student Initiatives at Binghamton University spoke about Orange Shirt Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness about the abuse Indigenous students endured at residential and boarding schools.

These government-funded, often church-led schools existed in the 19th and 20th centuries and aimed to force Native American children to assimilate. In many cases, children in the schools were physically and sexually abused, and many never returned home.

Blending remembrance and continuity, this year’s Haudenosaunee Festival was once again a vibrant celebration of the local community united under the goal of education and cultural visibility. Not only were traditional crafts and dances on display — stories permeated the air, emphasizing the importance of both education and the preservation of oral archives.

“The Haudenosaunee Festival is an opportunity to share the cultural aspects of our communities and celebrate and honor the resilience of our communities,” Shenandoah said. “You can learn about our oral histories that are in our stories, which embody our values and traditional teachings such as humility, such as kindness to others and such as reciprocity for the natural world.”