These acquainted with the Picnic Home in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park would possibly acknowledge it as a preferred venue for weddings and different personal celebratory occasions. However this previous weekend, December 7 and eight, the sound of rhythmic drumming, conventional chants, and ringing bells could possibly be heard pulsing by the historic constructing’s brick partitions throughout the adjoining Lengthy Meadow, marking the inaugural Eenda-Lunaapeewahkiing Indigenous Tradition Truthful.
The free occasion gathered Native American neighborhood members from throughout Turtle Island (the identify for the land mass now often called North and Central America) and native Brooklyn residents in a site-situated celebration of Lenape historical past, tradition, and artisanship. Organized between the Éenda-Lŭnaapeewáhkiing (Land of the Lunaapeew) Collective, which is at the moment made up of 5 Lenape communities spanning Ontario, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; the New York Metropolis-based nonprofit American Indian Group Home; and the Prospect Park Alliance, the truthful introduced instructional performances, hands-on craftmaking, and Native-made items again to the Lenapehoking, the place the Lenape had been forcibly displaced by European colonizers in the course of the seventeenth century.
“We’re spread all around and that’s part of the problem,” Éenda-Lŭnaapeewáhkiing Collective founder George Stonefish, who’s of Lenape and Ottawa descent, informed Hyperallergic.
On Saturday afternoon, a number of Crimson Blanket Singers members briefly took their chanting and drumming outdoors.
A part of the ReImagine Lefferts initiative addressing Prospect Park’s historical past of land dispossession and enslavement, the truthful can also be an extension of Stonefish’s personal longtime work. In 2018, he organized the primary Lenape Powwow on Manhattan Island on the Park Avenue Armory, and he hopes to do one other in Prospect Park. New York Metropolis Parks Division officers didn’t allow the multi-day occasion this yr, so in mid-August,Stonefish proposed the cultural truthful as a substitute.
Embroidered and beaded Indigenous-made artisan items had been on the market all through the weekend-long market occasion.
“This [event] is a real departure for the Prospect Park Alliance and the Picnic House as a venue … but the leadership of the Alliance and the Parks Department really wanted to support this as a welcoming gesture, and hopefully we can do something like this again,” Dylan Yeats, undertaking supervisor for the ReImagine Lefferts initiative, informed Hyperallergic.
All through the weekend, Brooklyn residents had been handled to performances by the Crimson Blanket Singers, a Southern-style Native American drum and dance group made up of Nanticoke, Lenape, Haliwa-Saponi, and Mohawk tribal members, who carried out conventional dances originating from communities throughout the continent. At a desk in one other nook, youngsters realized methods to make dolls out of dried corn husks and wire whereas their mother and father shopped for handmade vacation presents crafted from uncooked disguise, grapevines, deer bone, wampum, turquoise, and different pure parts.
The Picnic Home in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park remodeled into an Indigenous artisan craft market this weekend.
Most of the artisans who had congregated on the Picnic Home have longstanding relations and had been glad for the chance to meet up with previous family and friends, who they may usually see once they collect at powwows, the place they sometimes promote their items.
“We’ve known George Stonefish our whole lives, we’ve known Red Blanket, so it’s nice to get together because we see people that we know,” Rozlynn Tone-Pah-Hote, a Kiowa-Maya-Oneida up to date beadworker, informed Hyperallergic. She and her husband had introduced handmade jewellery, lacrosse heads, and beaded vacation ornaments to the market, which she mentioned had gone higher for them in gross sales compared to this yr’s Thunderbird American Indian Powwow in Queens.
She thinks that is due to the truthful’s lack of vendor charges and its free entry to the general public, in contrast to the powwow, which is a ticketed occasion that may rack up bills for sellers. Along with the purposeful omission of sales space charges, distributors got lodge room lodging and parking areas.
“We were taken care of very well, which is not very common anymore,” Tone-Pah-Hote mentioned.
Deer pores and skin clothes and moccasins on the market by Schenandoah Deerskin Designs, who had been additionally promoting handmade jewellery
Partly funded by the ReImagine Lefferts Initiative, which acquired funding from the Speaker’s Initiative of New York Metropolis Council Speaker Adrienne E. Adams, the occasion was additionally supported by the Manna-hatta Fund by the American Indian Group Home and the Éenda-Lŭnaapeewáhkiing Collective.
Brent Stonefish, one other founding father of the collective who traveled from Ontario, informed Hyperallergic that he hopes extra Lenape neighborhood members from Canada will return for future occasions. He mentioned he has visited New York Metropolis 5 instances since September and each journey he “envisions more people” coming too to reconnect to the land.
“It’s nice to come home,” he mentioned.
One of many Crimson Blanket Singers performs a conventional hoop dance on Saturday.
Paintings by Randy Silva, a Pueblo and Navajo painter
Beadworker Rozlynn Tone-Pah-Hote meticulously strings collectively beads for a brand new set of earrings on the truthful. 
Corn husk dolls with hair comprised of horse mane and clothes comprised of cloth items had been offered on the market. 
Emily, who went into the truthful along with her good friend Franklin Zhang, purchased a pair of earrings from one of many distributors after seeing indicators within the park. 
Youngsters and their mother and father realized methods to make corn husk dolls at a workshop desk on the truthful.
Crimson Blanket Singers carry out a rhythmic jingle dance, which originated among the many Chippewa in the course of the early twentieth century.
A vendor carves silver butterfly earrings on the truthful
The outside of the Picnic Home in Prospect Park, situated alongside the Lengthy Meadow on the West aspect of the park