After last year's successful Campfire theme, it was a challenge to come up with something as evocative and comforting! We decided to look at where we will be at Hutton Brickyards. On the banks of the Hudson, Down By The River Side. 

 

So we really looked at it. The river, the flora and fauna, the tributaries, the currents, the tide, the land. Whose land will we be on? On the ancestral territory of the Schaghticoke, the Mohican and Munsee Lenape Peoples.

 

These Peoples were systematically pushed out, exterminated, and erased. Yet they persisted. Today, some have thriving communities while others struggle to thrive. Some live here, some live as far away as Oklahoma. But no matter where they are, this was and is their land.

Before the colonizers named it, this river was known as Ka’nón:no for the Haudenosaunee, Mahicannittuk for the Mohican, and Muhheakantuck for the Lenape Munsee. These names speak to the river's long tidal range due to the ocean flowing from the estuary. They mean “the river that flows both ways” or “the waters that are never still”. The Schaghticoke call it Pishgatikuk, which means the “mingling of waters” or "gathered waters," reflecting the merging of different waterways in the region where the Schaghticoke people lived. All along the river, the hundreds of tributaries create an ecosystem like no other in the state.

 

It is in this spirit of mingling waters in perpetual movement that we gather for A Woolen Affair. As Minna Salami said, “The merging of streams into rivers shows us that there is power in the collective.” Together, we share our love and reverence for ancestral fiber practices on ancestral indigenous land. We find power in subversive ways to create, to clothe, warm and nourish our bodies. We teach each other, we collect knowledge, we pass it on to the next generation. We build community through joy to weather the uncertain times ahead.

 

We hope this is inspiring creatively, of course, and also emotionally. No doubt each of us has had to dig deep to find the resilience, the courage and the will to be true to ourselves and to thrive, in connection with one another and our planet.

 

Please take a minute today, tomorrow, or in the next few days to check out the following resources to learn more about the Schaghticoke, the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican and Munsee Lenape Peoples. Consider adding Indigenous voices to your line-up with All My Relations and Red Nation podcasts. Find out whose land you’re on at https://native-land.ca/.