The 2025 Veterans Powwow takes place July 19 & 20 at the Seneca Allegany Casino and Resort in Salamanca, NY.

Visit senecapowwow.org for information on ticketing, lodging, and more, and be sure to follow the Facebook page (link above) for all the latest updates.

Interested in volunteering at this year’s Powwow? Join us and have some fun while volunteering at the Seneca Veterans Powwow. Sign up today! Send an email to Volunteers@SenecaPowwow.org to learn how you can get involved! You can also contact Volunteer Coordinator Emily Nephew at 716-801-2223 or 716-945-1790 x 3627.

Let us introduce the 2025 Marvin “Joe” Curry Veterans Powwow Arena Director Osceola Red Shirt, Head Powwow Lady Dancer Marley Fairfield-Staats, Mens Powwow Dance Judge Kevin S. Haywahe, Head Haudenosaunee Lady Dancer Gowagowa:neh eya:soh Mandy Bomberry, Head Haudenosaunee Male Dancer Jordan Smith, 2025 Powwow Co-Emcee Clifton Goodwill and Head Smoke Dance Judge Natasha “Tasha” Thompson. Check out their Bios below.

Also, check out these upcoming specials:

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Seneca Niagara show set for July 3, Seneca Allegany on July 5

NIAGARA FALLS, NEW YORK-SALAMANCA, NEW YORK: (July 1, 2025): With the busy Independence Day weekend upon us, Seneca Gaming Corporation has the holiday packed with amazing fireworks displays for everyone to enjoy.

Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino will get things booming with its annual fireworks extravaganza on Thursday, July 3, with fireworks expected to start at approximately 9:40pm. Seneca Allegany Resort & Casino keeps the celebration rolling on Saturday, July 5, with its own fireworks spectacular, which is also expected to start at approximately 9:40pm.

“Our fireworks shows have become a fun part of the community’s Independence Day celebrations and traditions,” said Seneca Gaming Corporation President & CEO Kevin Nephew. “With Independence Day on a Friday this year, we’re able to provide a thrilling bookend to the actual holiday and keep the celebration all weekend long.”

While there will not be public viewing areas established on-site, the displays at each facility will be visible from the surrounding area. In the event of inclement weather, the rain date for Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino will be Sunday, July 6. The rain date for Seneca Allegany is Monday, July 7.

Seneca Gaming Corporation is a wholly owned, tribally chartered corporation of the Seneca Nation of Indians and operates the Nation’s three Class III casino gaming properties – Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino in Niagara Falls, Seneca Allegany Resort & Casino in Salamanca, and Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino in downtown Buffalo, along with the award-winning Seneca Hickory Stick Golf Course in Lewiston. Since 2002, the corporation has completed more than $2 Billion in private investment to build, expand and develop its three world-class properties. Today, Seneca Gaming Corporation is one of the largest private sector employers in Western New York with more than 3,000 employees across its three locations. For more information, visit SenecaCasinos.com.

Seneca Resorts & Casinos…NOTHING ELSE COMES CLOSE!

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This special event celebrates the shared history of the town’s residents and the Seneca Nation honoring the ancestors who lived on this land over 200 years ago. The day will feature native dance performances, lacrosse exhibitions, museum exhibits, hands-on children’s activities, food vendors, arts and crafts vendors, and new this year – a focus on the agricultural history of our community. Join us for an educational day of activities on historic Seneca lands!

When: Saturday, July 5, 2025
Time: 10am-4pm
Where: Caneadea Town Park, Houghton, NY

• FREE ADMISSION! Pay to park.

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Submitted by Mary Jacobs

The Six Nations Agricultural Society is asking you to consider being a sponsor at our 7th Annual Golf Fundraiser to benefit the New York State Fair Indian Village. This event will be held on Sunday, July 27, 2025, at the Seneca Hickory Stick Golf Club in Lewiston, NY. Contributions will assist with provisions needed to operate during the fair, and the conservation of the village.

Established in 1924 with the purpose of promoting agriculture to Haudenosaunee territories in NY State, the society began operating the Indian Village at the NY State Fair in 1928. President Roosevelt declared the Indian Village land at the New York State fairgrounds as reservation land, designating the Onondaga Nation as custodian through an Executive Order in 1932.

Every year, for two weeks during the NY State Fair, representatives from Tonawanda, Cattaraugus, Allegany, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Tuscarora, and Cayuga educate the public on Haudenosaunee culture. Native craftspeople from the territories demonstrate and sell hand-made crafts. We maintain a restaurant with native foods, an archery and lacrosse shoot booth, wood splinting for baskets, a canoe demonstration and our most popular attraction – the Haudenosaunee dance show performed 3 times daily on the Turtle Mound. Visitors from New York State and around the world attend the New York State Fair where the Indian Village is a main attraction.

Sponsorship information and the form to return is included. If you have any questions, please reach out to Heath Hill at 716-440-3044 or email 6nagolf@gmail.com. Our membership relies heavily on do good people such as yourself for financial support and your generosity and act of giving is valued and appreciated.

Nya:wëh,

Six Nations Agricultural Society

Click on the files above to enlarge/print.

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June 11, 2025 | By Melissa Jenson | news.byu.edu

Pictured above: Michalyn Steele – Photo by Abby Shelton/BYU Photo

With 574 tribes, countless treaties and evolving court decisions, Native American law can be a complex maze. BYU law professor Michalyn Steele has spent her career helping navigate that maze in defense of Native rights and sovereignty.

Steele’s expertise has led to her appointment as executive editor of the 2024 edition of Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law. More than just a book, Cohen’s Handbook is considered the “bible” of Native law and serves as the official reference for courts and practitioners. While the handbook is typically updated every 10 years to reflect new cases and statutes, the latest edition marks the most extensive revision yet.

“We wanted to make this version more accessible to practitioners and people who want to understand Indian law,” Steele said. “The Supreme Court has also been very active in the field of federal Indian law, so we had lot of very important cases that needed to be incorporated.”

One such case is Haaland v. Brackeen, which upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act and affirmed tribal authority in child welfare matters. Other recent cases endorsed existing treaties or reshaped federal involvement in matters like healthcare, criminal jurisdiction, taxation and water rights.

Steele has also been writing and speaking about the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which requires the return of Native American remains and cultural items to tribes and protects burial sites from disturbance. However, inconsistent enforcement of this law has left around 40% of reported ancestral remains and cultural objects still in storage at federally funded museums and institutions.

“Here we are, 35 years later, and there are still far too many ancestors in boxes,” Steele said. “We as descendants must fulfill our obligations to those ancestors and see them properly buried.”

Steele has written law review articles on the subject of cultural sovereignty, including in the Harvard Law Review, and recently spoke about NAGPRA at the Fordham Law Symposium. Her expertise and contributions led to an appointment as the Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School during their 2025 winter term.

Steele’s contributions to Cohen’s handbook will help lawyers, judges and lawmakers to take further action to protect tribal rights. In 2023, the Supreme Court drew on the handbook in its majority opinion for Arizona v. Navajo Nation, a case which dealt with water rights. Additionally, lower courts have already begun to cite the newest edition in their rulings.

For Steele, her work in Native law is more than just a career. She treasures her dual heritage as a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians and as a descendant of early Latter-day Saint pioneers. (Michalyn is from the Beaver Clan. She grew up on the Cattaraugus Territory and is the daughter of Lynn and Carolyn Steele and the granddaughter of the late Martin and Norma Seneca.)

“God has used culture and peoples as instruments in His work,” Steele said. “We all have things to learn from one another — from the diversity of God’s children. I believe that Native culture contains precious truths that are beneficial for us all.”

Source

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Pictured above: Oral historian Gerry Ebalaroza-Tunnel, left, stands with Seneca elder Elliott Tallchief.

More than half a century after the Thomas Indian School closed, local remaining Native American survivors of the institution are telling their stories as part of a national oral history project.

The school, on the Seneca Cattaraugus Territory east of Lake Erie, was one of hundreds across the United States responsible for forced assimilation of Native American children.

Unlike federal Indian boarding schools, Thomas was run by the state of New York for most of its history, and predates the first federal boarding school, Carlisle, in Pennsylvania.

“The school didn’t have no wire fence around it,” said Seneca elder Elliott Tallchief, a Navy veteran and survivor of the school. “The wire fence is what they’ve built in our minds. … We didn’t have no say in what they were doing. How am I going to? How am I going to fight that at 5 years old?”

Tallchief is now 85, and he is one of nine boarding school survivors who recently shared their stories in Rochester with the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.

The healing coalition is traveling the country and sovereign nations to record the oral histories of survivors of the Indian Boarding School Era that spanned 150 years.

“They were children when they attended these schools, and they’re just sharing this experience now as elders. So it’s really important to collect and gather these stories, and be there in support of them during this time,” said oral history program operations manager Lacey Kinnart, whose Ojibwe name is Mukwa Ode Quay.

The stories collected through this project, more than 200 so far, will be publicly available through the Library of Congress as videos and transcripts. It’s part of the Department of the Interior’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative launched during the Biden administration.

“Every single Indigenous person in this country has been impacted by Indian boarding schools,” Kinnart said. “We’re not taught that as a general public. We’re not taught that as Native people to tie all these things together. And the more we learn about it, the more we find out what happened to our family members, the more healing can come.”

The way that the coalition approaches its work with boarding school survivors is intentional and “healing centered,” she said. So, relationships are established ahead of time, the process opens and closes with ceremony, meals are shared, and traditional medicine is provided during and after the process.

Afterward, healing coalition staff send a care package and the protocol is to check in with survivors weeks, months and more than a year after the oral history is recorded.

“Our survivors are the priority in this whole project,” Kinnart said. “We don’t just come into the community and open up these wounds. It’s, we come in and establish relationships with our relatives so that we’re just a phone call away.”

Rochester was the 12th stop on a tour across 20 states. Next is Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in late June. The rest of the tour is scheduled to continue for another year, before materials are turned over to the Library of Congress — where each video recorded oral history will be housed and made publicly accessible.

The coalition’s visit to Rochester and the Ganondagan State Historic Site took place the same week that Gov. Kathy Hochul came to the Cattaraugus Territory to formally apologize for New York state’s role in running the Thomas Indian School. Tallchief attended the school from about 1945 to the late 1950s, when it closed.

“Over its long sordid history, over 2,500 students passed through the doors, and they came not just from the Seneca Nation, but from others throughout the state,” Hochul said in her apology in Irving. “But instead of being a haven for orphaned children, it became a place of nightmares, a place some would call a torture chamber, a site of sanctioned ethnic cleansing.”

Tallchief didn’t think much of the apology. “To me, it was just political,” he said.

He has spoken previously about the treatment he and his classmates endured, starting when a state social worker placed his sister and him there. They were separated not just from their parents, but also from each other.

“The school was split from the girls and the boys,” Tallchief said in a speech shared by the Seneca Media and Communications Center in 2021. “(I) remember being punished for using our language. They lined us up, put us in the cold shower, wash our mouths out with soap.”

His words are interrupted by poignant long pauses, some lasting half a minute.

“They made us feel like everything we did was wrong. So, it was their way, or get beat up for it,” he said in his speech.

“I can remember, they had visiting day on Sunday. And at naptime, we’d listen to the phone hoping someone’d come to visit us,” he said. “We’d get no phone call. So, that was how the day ended.”

For Tallchief, the experience telling his story to the oral historian with the healing coalition was different.

“When you speak, sometimes it’s hard to relate to people,” he said. “Unless you actually went through the same thing I went through, I don’t know how you would get the same feeling out of it. … I think they had more understanding than other people.”

Tallchief has struggled to make peace with the experience. That sense of healing has proven to be elusive.

“I think I’m gonna leave this earth with that same feeling, probably take it with me,” he said. “You have a beginning, and there’s got to be an end. You’re not going to be here forever. So … that’s what I’m saying, I’m going to take that with me. That would be the time I say I’m healed.”

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At our May meeting, we interviewed three elders from the Cattaraugus Territory: Maria Corwin, Joyce (Maybee) Gates and Jean (Parker) Jemison. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed hearing their stories of their life growing up, going to school and of course some genealogy family info. It was a lively conversation with a lot of laughs!

Our June meeting was extremely informative. Jare Cardinal talked about the Senecas and the Salamanca Railroads. She provided us with a list of men who worked on various railroads and their position.

We always like to see new faces, young and old at our meetings. We always have Elders at our meetings and there are interesting stories to hear from them. So, please come to a meeting! We would love to see you plus we always have good eats! Last but not least, bring any questions you may have about your family. Someone may have an answer at our meeting or we have researchers who could point you in a particular direction.

Our next meeting: July 10, 2025 at 6pm at the Cattaraugus Community Center, Cattaraugus Territory, 12767 Route 438, Irving, NY. Topic: Elizabeth (Winnie) Waterman, Presenter: Rosy Simas.

Our August meeting will be held at the Allegany Community Center at 6pm. The presentation: Cornplanter’s Daughter presented by Teresa VanAernum/Jack Ericson.

Please bring a dish to pass. Plates/Utensils provided and water. Hope to see you at our next meeting and bring a friend! Nya:wëh!

Check out our website: www.iroquoisgenealogysociety.org.

Leatha Jimerson, IGS President; Marilyn Anderson, Vice-President/Secretary; Teresa Van Aernam, Treasurer

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Ely S. Parker Commemoration Ceremony at Forest Lawn Cemetery
May 30, 2025 | Repost from The Buffalo History Museum FB page & Forest Lawn FB page

On the morning of May 30, 2025, Buffalo History Museum Executive Director Melissa N. Brown joined Congressman Tim Kennedy, Buffalo’s Interim Mayor Chris Scanlon, and Museum Board Member Melissa Parker Leonard—founder of 7th Gen Cultural Resources—gathered for a powerful tribute to Ely S. Parker.

A proud Seneca, Civil War veteran, and the first Native American Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Parker’s legacy continues to shape our understanding of American history.

Surrounded by his descendants, veterans, and community partners, we commemorated his enduring contributions and the sacrifices of Native American service members.

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz officially proclaimed May 30th, 2025 as Ely S. Parker Day—a powerful recognition of a life that bridged nations and shaped American history.

We’re proud to help preserve and share the stories that have shaped Buffalo—and the nation.

“I am a man of two worlds.” — Ely S. Parker (Ha-sa-no-an-da)

Today, we honor the legacy of a visionary leader whose life bridged Native tradition and national history. From writing the terms of surrender at Appomattox to becoming the first Native American Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Ely S. Parker’s story is one of resilience, intellect, and profound impact.

On the 120th anniversary of the unveiling of his grave marker, we gathered in reverence`—family, community leaders, and cultural historians—to celebrate his enduring legacy at Forest Lawn Cemetery, where he rests beside his ancestor Red Jacket.

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The Castellani Art Museum at Niagara University has launched a new exhibit exploring the horrific history of Native American boarding schools that were unknown to most until a few years ago.

“This exhibition is about community, told by community, and supported by community.” Through paintings, ceramics, photographs, digital works, and video, We Were At the School. We Were There. We Remember. maps ancestral pain and radical resilience, while offering pathways for remembrance and healing,” Haynes said.

“We Were At the School. We Were There. We Remember.” features works from Peter B. Jones, Samantha Jacobs, Luanne Redeye, Tami Watt, Patrick Redeye, Randee Spruce, Amanda Lickers, Brody D. Jimerson, Haynes, and Jocelyn Jones. The exhibition also features archival objects and photographs on loan from former school resident Marlene Bennett.

Source

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Submitted by Win Bowen

The pictured posted below was brought in by Win Bowen of the Allegany Territory, complete with photo identification. It is of grades 4-5, 1961-1962, at the Allegany Indian School. Who remembers this time, back in 1961-1962? Check it out! Nya:wëh, Win for sharing this with the readership. Enjoy.

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