Bookmarks (18)

“The games are like a prayer.” —Phillip Blanchett The anticipation and uproar on the National Mall was palpable watching Peter Griggs execute a strong two-foot-high kick. This kick requires the athlete to jump and kick, with both feet, a hanging target, then they must land on two feet and maintain perfect balance. Two-foot-high kicks were among the many tradition-based Inuit games demonstrated at the...

Powwow dance exemplifies the spirit of community and the energy of competition. Some powwow dances are modern expressions, while others stem from resilient cultural stories and religious traditions that have survived decades of suppression. For fifty years, the United States government prohibited Native American dances and religious practices, only lifting the ban in 1933. Canada likewise outlawed dances, powwows, and similar gatherings from 1876...

“Silk? From Mexico?” Many visitors were surprised as they admired a delicate white rebozo, a type of shawl, exhibited in the Zapotec Weaving tent in the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s Indigenous Voices of the Americas program. “A lot of people don’t know there are communities in Mexico creating beautiful silk textiles,” said Moisés Martínez, a member of Yagaa, a collective dedicated to growing and...

“I was born in the middle of the jungle, where we are connected by river—not by road.” By the time he was eight years old, Johnson Cerda found himself alone at Lake Limoncocha every day after school. His household chores were to fish for his family’s meals, and he took it upon himself to catch extra for families in need. One day, he met...

What started for the musicians of Pamyua as a way to keep their Yup’ik and Inuit cultures alive within their communities in Anchorage and Juneau, Alaska, grew into a critically acclaimed band that shares their traditions with the world. In Yup’ik culture, the phrase “breaking trail,” in regard to advancing through snow, is typically used to describe exactly what Pamyua has achieved: making the...

When Cornelio V. Campos starts a mural, he has a solid idea of what he is going to paint, incorporating symbols from his Indigenous Purépecha heritage and bright colors to accent his shapes. He sketches it out and prepares the materials for painting. Then, he’s ready to invite everyone in. Campos, a self-taught artist originally from Chéran, Michoacán, Mexico, recreated this collaborative experience at...

Before Wade Fernandez’s fingers fretted the Fender Telecaster hanging on his shoulder, he invited the audience to reflect on their surroundings. The towering elms provided shade from the relentless summer sun. The solid earth cradled their picnic blankets and chairs below. The Menominee rock musician spoke softly into the microphone, each syllable lingering in the air at the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the...

The Gaudry Boys—brothers Dylan, Ryan, and Zachary Gaudry (Métis)—first played music together as children over twenty years ago. As their skills grew, they offered entertainment at retirement homes and hospitals in their hometown of St. Laurent, Manitoba, Canada. As professionals, they have performed at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and, this past summer, at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Here, in the National Museum...

“I am a woman of the earth.” Rufina Ruiz López spoke with unassuming strength, her gleaming black braids threaded with pink ribbon. The clay calavera skull she had sculpted bounced gently on her knee, her fingers wandering the hollows of its black eyes. It was the third day of the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, spotlighting Indigenous Voices of the Americas. López (Zapotec/Mixtec) sat in...

As a multidisciplinary artist, Di’orr Greenwood expresses herself through skateboarding, creating pyrographic and mixed-media skate-deck art, and designing skate apparel inspired by her Diné heritage, including her signature maroon and turquoise Nike Dunks. In this interview at the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, she talks about what pushed her from and pulled her toward skateboarding, the strength of the Indigenous skating community, and her dream...

“Music paints a portrait,” Tambura Amondawa says. For the Amondawa Indigenous “river people” of Brazil, their songs “take shape by writing, like poetry.” The storytelling in these songs recounts a bittersweet experience, encompassing their loss of land, people, and forest due to commercial greed, diseases brought by outsiders, and steadily rising temperatures. But the songs are also full of pride and resilience, evoked by...

A striking blend of the traditional and contemporary, the Zuni Olla Maidens bring dance, song, and pottery to audiences across the American Southwest and beyond. This summer, their participation in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival was one of many stops on a journey of cultural sharing that has spanned seventy years and generations of family. The women perform while balancing decorated ceramic jars called olla...

“Having students with thirty years of experience—that’s the value in the forest I have grown.” —Nalani Kanaka‘ole Nalani Kanaka‘ole is a third-generation kumu hula (hula teacher) at one of the oldest hālau hula (hula schools) in Hawai‘i. This summer, she brought her dance troupe to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, where they participated in the program Indigenous Voices of the Americas. During their performances and...

Sawaenemiyah (We Are Blessed) Wade Fernandez at the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival | Read audio transcription and lyrics translation At the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, visitors may not have been surprised to hear musicians striking drums and playing resonant traditional flutes. What may have been surprising about the Indigenous Voices of the Americas program, though, was hearing rap music and bluesy guitar ring out...

Hailing from San Juan Comalapa, Guatemala, Sara Curruchich is the first Indigenous woman to tour internationally singing in Spanish and Maya Kaqchikel—her Native language. In a featured concert at the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s Indigenous Voices of the Americas program, her opening song was “Abriendo La Voz” (Opening the Voice), honoring the many voices of nature such as the forest, rain, fireflies, and corn....

Members of the Native American Women Warriors, the nation’s first all-women Native American color guard, stand in a row wearing jingle dresses, each holding a flag. The first woman carries an eagle staff, bearing feathers of the creature sacred to Native women and stars from decommissioned American flags. Others have flags honoring all people in U.S. service, including those missing in action or taken...

Read more about Chickasaw storyteller Amy Bruton Bluemel, who performed daily at the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, on the Festival Blog. Zihan Zhang is an illustration intern at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and a graduate student at Savannah College of Art and Design. Under the artist name Mantageri, she hopes to use images to bridge language barriers and better disseminate folklore...

As a young girl, Amy Bruton Bluemel collected stories, like souvenirs, from every country she lived in. With a father who was formerly in the Navy but later served on bases around the world through the civil service, Bluemel grew up constantly adapting to new cultures. Despite the differences she found in the places that her family moved to—Germany, Türkiye, Scotland, and Japan—young Bluemel...