- The Iroquois Museum is a non-profit archeological art museum, that has one of the largest collections of Iroquois or Haudenosaunee, as they prefer to be called, art.

We're Howes Cave, Schoharie County, and just a beautiful museum to see.

It's replicated of a long house, and we have many beautiful things to see there.

My role is the assistant to the director.

It's a position that the director and the president of the board kind of, kind of made for me.

I was a volunteer there for a couple years, and then I had some availability, so they helped me create this position.

I am in charge of mostly marketing.

I am in charge of the shop, the museum shop, and I do a lot of the scheduling, and I assist in all the educational programs that we have at the museum currently.

- Now when you say longhouse, what is like, what is a longhouse?

- The longhouse is the traditional home of the people that used to live in this area.

Our building is very interesting.

It's, everything is very symbolic in the building.

Even the beams like that go, the rafters that go on the top of the building go in a form of a Wampum belt.

So which would, a Wampum belt would've told the story.

So it has a lot of meaning to it.

- That's amazing.

So it's like even in the building's bones, like a respect - [Heather] Yes.

- for the indigenous communities.

- Yes.

- So what sparked your passion to get into indigenous native education and advocacy?

- Well, when I was, this is kind of crazy, but when I was about 12, I found out that I was biologically had a different heritage than I was raised.

I was raised more in the Italian community, and I found out I was more Irish than anything else.

And I felt a loss of knowledge.

Like I didn't know anything about the Irish, I didn't know any traditions, that kind of thing.

And that's a little important to me.

So at the time, we were also studying the Native Americans in history class, which is my favorite subject.

I'm a former history teacher, so that really stuck with me.

So having a loss of culture and loss of identity because of like the period of the residential schools and what the United States and Canada has done to these people, I really felt very akin to it.

So it's really driven me for a long time.

- Yeah, and do you like feel that in multiple aspects, like you find knowing your heritage and ancestry really important for all folks?

Do you think that's important for everyone to?

- Well, I don't disrespect, I'm proud of where I have been.

I'm proud of my Italian too.

I mean, I found that very interesting and comforting.

I just felt, feel like some people have had their toes stepped on and I don't, we've took, we took it away from them, unbeknownst to them, where mine was just my step-grandfather didn't wanna talk about the past and that was his generational thing, and I would never do anything to disrespect him.

And that's how come I don't really know more about the Irish side of my family because I didn't wanna respect, disrespect that person.

But that's a whole different situation from where, you know, we've taken these children from their homes and cut their hair and taught them not to do their religion and they couldn't speak their language.

And that we have, as you know, now, years and years of trauma, generational trauma with the people and you know, it's, but at the same time there's such a beautiful comeback right now, like we have seen throughout the years and more people are reaching out and.

- Getting connected.

- Yeah.

- So let's talk about a little bit about the upcoming festival, which seems to be a huge connector for indigenous communities and non-indigenous communities.

So let's give a little bit of background about what's this festival coming up?

- Yeah, it is great.

It's the 41st festival, Iroquois Festival at the museum.

It's gonna be August 31st and September 1st, 10 to five, both days.

This year on Saturday we will have opening ceremonies.

We will have Perry Ground, who will be our emcee and storyteller.

We'll have the sky dancers perform twice during the day.

We have Kevin Stacy coming to do a lacrosse demonstration both days.

On Saturday, we'll have the Iroquois Indian Band, which is actually a marching band.

All of that will be on Sunday as well, except the band, we're gonna have one of our staff members, Mike Tarbell, he's gonna do Tools of the Trade and he is Mohawk and he works with us and it's wonderful.

He does our educational programs.

- Awesome, so there seems to be activities, food, music, dancing?

- Yes.

In addition to the main stage, we'll have a food truck, which is Onondaga Food Truck.

We have the art tent, the children's tent, the flint knapping tent, endangered species section, and of course, the museum's open so that you could take a tour of the museum, walk the nature trails, and of course shop in the museum shop.

- Awesome, witnessing the beauty of the arts and the culture is my favorite part, but close second is the gift shop.

So how have you seen this festival, since it's on its forty?

- First.

- First year.

How have you seen this festival impact the community at large?

- We have a lot of local people that come and return year after year.

We're really making an effort this year to reach out to the local community.

- And do you feel like they're gaining a lot of respect for the Haudenosaunee culture and understanding the history and the trauma behind?

- Well, I think that we're just an afterthought for a lot of people.

Oh yeah, the museum's there, I'll get there sometime.

And now we're doing other things like within the community.

Like we had a Teacher Appreciation Day, we've had a blood drive last week.

We have the animal shelter day coming up, so we're trying to incorporate more things locally, so people will come and share.

And we also have our annual fundraiser, which is August 2nd.

It's Roots, Rhythm, and Ale, and we bring all the local artists in and a couple local bands and we just have a party at night.

- Nice.

- And it's fun because it is all local.

- Now what about, so when folks walk into this museum, you know, I know you have exhibitions and workshops and things like that.

Do you wanna describe a couple that are upcoming that folks can enjoy?

- Well, we have a couple artist demonstrations coming up, which are really interesting.

Margaret Jacobs is going to do a welding demonstration and workshop.

She works in steel.

We have a luthier coming, Glenn Hill from Aquasausnee.

He makes beautiful guitars.

We have a talk with Hannah Claus.

She currently has the most popular piece in the new exhibit for this year, "Outside the Box."

And of course we have our like Early Technology Day in October, which all of our archeological staff come and they can identify points or bowls or anything that you happen to have and you can bring it too or you just watch the demonstrations and the kids get to flint knap and do that.

We're trying to provide as much education and interesting, fun things that we can do for the community.

- Thank you so much, Heather, for sitting down to talk to us.

I hope folks go visit the festival and all these beautiful workshops that are at the Iroquois Museum.

And again, thank you for visiting us today.

- Thank you for having us.