Nya:wëh Sgë:nö’,
I hope everyone in our community is doing well and that you enjoyed our 50th Fall Festival. It was great to see so many families and community members enjoying all of the events and the beautiful weather. Ja:göh to everyone who made this year’s festival the best one yet. Here’s to another 50 years!
From the celebration of Fall Festival, we have two much more solemn events at the end of September. This Saturday, September 27, will be our annual Remember The Removal walk in Allegany. The walk is the latest in a series of events we have been having throughout the month to remember the pain inflicted on our people more than 60 years ago through the taking of our land for the construction of the Kinzua Dam. The walk will begin at 9 a.m. at the Steamburg Community Center.
Just a few days later, on September 30, we will hold our annual Every Child Matters Remembrance & Community Healing Walk in Cattaraugus. The walk will take place at the Sully Huff Heritage Center starting at 5 p.m. We coordinate this walk each year to honor and remember the victims and survivors of the Indian Boarding School movement, including those who were forced to attend the Thomas Indian School, which operated on the Cattaraugus Territory for over a century. Our walk travels the grounds of the former Thomas Indian School campus.
That same evening, Seneca Gaming Corporation will hold its annual Every Child Matters walk starting at Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino and traveling through downtown Niagara Falls to the Falls themselves and then back to Seneca Niagara for a social. Everyone is welcome to attend one of the walks and encouraged to wear orange as a sign of solidarity with the survivors and families here in the Seneca Nation and those connected to boarding schools that operated across the United States and Canada.
The Remember the Removal and Every Child Matters events call to mind very dark, painful chapters in history that forever changed our Nation and our people. The pain and intergenerational trauma remain with us and still impact us to this day. It is important that the world knows what happened, and that we continue on our road toward healing from the wounds our people, our families, and our entire community suffered through these atrocities.
Finally, as we look to the start of October, I hope everyone has their calendars marked for the Salamanca Falling Leaves Festival on October 3-5. The Nation is happy to present this annual community celebration in partnership with our neighbors in Salamanca. The weekend will be filled with live music, fun, family-friendly events, games and contests, inflatable attractions, food, vendors, a parade and more. The full schedule of events can be found at sninews.org.
Just as it is important that we take time to remember and heal, it is important that we also take time to celebrate the many gifts we have received from The Creator. We are surrounded by incredible natural beauty every day. The Falling Leaves Festival is a great chance to enjoy the scenery of our homelands with our families, friends and neighbors.
Until next time,
J.C.
