The Colgate University Office of Equity and Diversity and ALANA Cultural Center hosted the annual Indigenous Nations Festival in Sanford Field House from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 25.
In addition to a keynote speech in the morning and a panel discussion in the afternoon, artisans displayed their traditional craftwork throughout the entire event. Attendees shared stories and food, and observed handmade pieces that carried generations of meaning.
Among many artisans at the festival, Mohawk artisan Wilma Cook-Zumpano displayed intricately crafted beaded pin cushions and miniature baskets and spoke about the timeless beauty embedded in her craft.
“A lot of the items here are things that were created 100 years ago,” Cook-Zumpano said. “This mat would have been in the foyer on a table. It’s obsolete today, but it’s still a pretty piece.”
At her festival station, Cook-Zumpano described the tactile richness of her materials, from sawdust-filled velvet cushions to intricate hairpins, each piece connecting the present to the work of past artisans.
“We like to raise it up,” Cook-Zumpano said. “It makes ours different. It’s three-dimensional.”
The festival also featured a panel, where several artists shared their work and reflected on Indigenous experience more broadly. Panelist, Santee Frazier, a Cherokee poet and educator, spoke about writing as a kind of liberation.
“A poet pushes the boundaries of language,” Frazier said. “As I work to deconstruct how the English language imprisons Indigenous peoples into what Frantz Fanon calls ‘subaltern status,’ I’m searching for new and more dynamic ways to express who we are.”
Poetry for him requires reflecting on the English language, the same language of colonial education and having it in conversation with the Indigenous voices it once tried to erase.
“If you don’t recognize the ways colonial oppression influences your life, it continues to affect your art, your teaching, your sense of self,” Frazier said.
Frazer added that Indigenous people can offer innovations for the future, not just remembrances of the past, by contributing to a decolonized education.
“Education should contribute to the student’s emotional and intellectual well-being,” Frazier said. “Indigenous peoples and nations have something to offer the contemporary world.”
Another panelist, Ronnie-Leigh Goeman, creates woven baskets and felt each piece tells a story of its own.
Through their multimedia basket pieces, often made of sweetgrass and moose hair and incorporating sculptures, Goeman shared stories that connect indigenous identity and history. One of her pieces represents the Two Row Wampum treaty of 1613; its twin purple lines symbolize the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch traveling down the “River of Life” side by side as two distinct nations coexisting.
“We were to live side by side and not interfere with each other,” Goeman said. “Stay in your ship, and we’ll stay in our canoe.”
Goeman said her other pieces speak to resilience. One, titled “Never Lose Your Fire,” honors children who endured residential and boarding schools (in Canada and the U.S.) meant to erase Indigenous identity. The sculpture depicts a young girl clutching a sweetgrass basket, a traditional symbol, surrounded by miniature versions of policies of genocide and treaties that had either been broken or disagreeably modified.
“They tried to take everything from us,” Goeman said. “No matter what happens, never lose your fire. Even though all that has happened, we continue to stoke our fire and stay strong. We’re still here.”
Nearby, artist Jessica Farmer shared the Haudenosaunee legend behind her cornhusk dolls, which are made without faces to teach children that beauty lies in kindness, not vanity.
“The doll was told to go from village to village and play with the children,” Farmer said. “But when she became vain, the Creator took her face away. We teach our children that real beauty is how you treat others.”
Her dolls, dyed in purples inspired by wampum colors and adorned with sweetgrass hair for protection, carry that lesson in every detail.
For some, these conversations left a lasting impression. First-year Luca Varona shared what he found meaningful in his conversation with Farmer.
“The festival offers a lot of learning opportunities to understand the culture, and I’m really grateful for Colgate offering that,” Varona said. “Like when Jessica showed me how to fold the corn husk to make the dolls, she explained to me about the process and the meaning behind it.”
