Annual Living Earth Festival Highlights Native Performances, Food and Culture
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian brings the best of traditional knowledge and traditions to visitors during its sixth annual Living Earth Festival Friday, July 17, through Sunday, July 19. This year’s festival includes a Native cooking competition and music and dance performances. A concert with a lively violinist and artist demonstrations are also part of the celebration. The full schedule is available here.
Music and Dance Performances
Traditional songs and powwow-style dances will be presented by the Youghtanund Drum Group, who will have daily performances in the Potomac Atrium. GuateMarimba with Grupo AWAL will perform traditional Mayan dances accompanied by the marimba and other traditional instruments.
Indian Summer Showcase Concert
A concert Saturday, July 18, at 3 p.m. in the Potomac Atrium features virtuoso violinist and vocalist Quetzal Guerrero and his band, whose music bridges many Latin and American cultures and styles.
Family-Friendly Activities
On Friday at 10 a.m., Smithsonian Gardens and museum staff will invite visitors to help release hundreds of ladybugs into the museum landscape and learn how these natural pest controllers benefit plants and gardens. The museum’s imagiNATIONS Activity Center will host demonstrations and hands-on activity of making ti leaf lei bracelets. Visitors, ages 5 and up, will learn how to make their own bracelet from 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 1 to 3:30 p.m. daily.
Symposium
On Friday at 2 p.m., the symposium “On the Table: Creating a Healthy Food Future” will be presented in the Rasmuson Theater; it will focus on innovative ways to build a healthier, more resilient food future that provides fresh, nutritious choices while protecting public health and sustaining the environment. Presenters include Clayton Brascoupe (Tesuque Pueblo), Robin Kimmerer (Citizen Band of Potawatomi) and Ricardo Salvador.
Demonstration and Information Booths
Artists will have tables in the Potomac Atrium, including jeweler Janie Luster (Houma), who makes items from alligator and garfish scales; Stephanie Madere Escude (Tunica-Biloxi), who recycles items to make Native-inspired objects; Mayan artists, Juan and Marta Chiac, who use native henequen to create woven goods; Peruvian jeweler Evelyn Brooks (Ashaninkas), who designs jewelry with Huayruro seeds from the Amazon; and Angelica Lopez, a weaver from Guatemala. Information booths include the InterTribal Buffalo Council, Traditional Native Farmers Association, Native Seeds/SEARCH, Twisted Cedar Wines, Firenze’s Gelato and Cafe and a poster exhibition by youth from Navajo Community Health Outreach.
The youth-led Navajo Community Health Outreach group will present their efforts to improve health education and access to healthy foods on the Navajo Nation Sunday, July 19, at 2:30 p.m. in the Rasmuson Theater.
Native Cooking
On Sunday from 12 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. on the museum’s Welcome Plaza, Native Hawaiian chef Robert Alcain will compete in an Iron Chef-style competition against Native Hawaiian chef Kaimana Chee in preparing two appetizers, an entree and a dessert that incorporate this year’s special ingredient, cacao.
Throughout the festival, Mayan chefs Julio and Heliodora Saqui will create traditional Mayan dishes. Visitors can join the staff from Twisted Cedar Wines, owned by the Cedar Band of Paiute Indians in Utah, for a wine tasting in the Mitsitam Coffee Bar.
For more details about the festival, visit www.AmericanIndian.si.edu. Join the conversation on Twitter @SmithsonianNMAI and use the hashtag #LivingEarth.
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SI-338-2015
