50th Annual Seneca Fall Festival!
This year marks 50 years of the Seneca Fall Festival on the Seneca Nation Cattaraugus Territory, and it was packed with exciting fun for the whole family.
New Episodes Drop!! Going to be a Bunch of Episodes Coming out I was recently set up at the 50th Annual Fall Festival on the Cattaraugus Territory of the Seneca Nation. Get them wherever you get your podcasts. These are all videos you can see. I encourage everyone to watch the videos as well as listen.
Friends of the Turtle
Shaun Wilson (Six Nations Mohawk, Turtle Clan) Conner Ground (Six Nations Mohawk, Bear Clan)
The Turtle is a three-story building in Niagara Falls, NY. It opened in May 1981 as the headquarters for the Native American Center for the Living Arts, an organization dedicated to promoting Native American visual and performing arts. Its unique shape, with a geodesic dome roof “shell” and large porthole “eye” windows, invokes the Haudenosaunee creation story of the earth forming on the back of a giant turtle. After closing in 1995 due to financial trouble, the building has remained vacant, with its future preservation and use in question.
Our goal is to be a supportive advocacy group for the preservation of this iconic and culturally important structure. We will work for and support its acquisition by a group/persons who pledge to restore the building and fulfill its cultural vision.
https://niagaraturtle.wordpress.com/
The Turtle (Native American Center for the Living Arts) was originally founded in 1971, with the building created between 1977 and 1981 by Arapaho architect Dennis Sun Rhoades and Tuscarora sculptor Duffy Wilson in Niagara Falls, NY.
In the mid-1970s, the Haudenosaunee had developed a clear concern that their culture needed bolstering after centuries of the United States Government controlling nearly every action of tribal life, despite not overtly trying to dissolve tribal governments. The Turtle’s construction was a result of a growing awareness on the part of the Haudenosaunee for self-determination and preservation of their arts and culture
In terms of architectural importance, as a prime and exceedingly rare example of a cross between Postmodern and Indigenous architecture, the Turtle’s anthropomorphic shape is based on the Haudenosaunee creation story of the world resting on the back of a turtle. The Turtle’s design blends Postmodern approaches to anthropomorphism in conjunction with meaningful Haudenosaunee symbols and practices embodied in the function and form of the building.
For fifteen years The Turtle served as a cultural center for the Native American community nationally; it was the largest center for Indigenous arts in the Eastern United States. Representatives from the Smithsonian Institution visited The Turtle and incorporated some of its features into the design of the Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.
The Turtle hosted Pow Wows, Indigenous dance groups, and other performing arts in an amphitheater (under the domed turtle ‘shell’), art, artifacts, exhibitions, a quarterly magazine, and craft festivals featuring Indigenous artists from across the hemisphere. The permanent collection of the Center included thousands of artifacts, 200 contemporary artworks, a 500-volume library, and an archive of photographs. Eventually folding for lack of funding in 1995, it was sold to a real estate development firm; the three-story, 67,000 square foot building has sat vacant and unmaintained for thirty years of ownership.