Ganondagan, Seneca Art and Culture Center, and the Iroquois White Corn Project

Bark Longhouse

Name: Ganondagan State Historic Site, Seneca Art and Culture Center, and Iroquois White Corn Project
Tribe: Seneca, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy
Location: 1488 State Route 44, Victor, New York, 14564 (near Rochester)
Type: Cultural heritage, art, and event center (SACC), historic site and hiking trails (Ganondagan), food sovereignty project (IWCP)
Visiting Info: Ganondagan - May 1 through October 31 (closed Mondays and some Sundays), trails open year round, admission $2-$3;
The Seneca Art and Culture Center - due to open July 2015;
The Iroquois White Corn Project - retail at various locations and online and volunteer opportunities
Contact: Ganondagan - Website, telephone 585-924-5848; Iroquois White Corn Project - Website, telephone 585-742-1361 or email whitecornproject@gmail.com to volunteer.

Ganondagan is the re-creation of a 300-year-old Seneca town in upstate New York. Admission includes access to the Visitor Center, a replica 17th-century bark longhouse, and three guided hiking trails. Group tours are available for a fee, but self-guided trail hikes are free year-round. The Granary Trail leads up to the Fort Hill mesa where the settlement's protected granary and fort once stood. Illustrated signs along the way tell the story of the day in July 1687 when the French Canadian Governor General Marquis de Denonville's campaign destroyed the original town. An exhibit by Seneca artist Carson Waterman and a video program are located in the Visitor Center. The Friends of Ganondagan also host a summer day camp for high school students focused on conservation issues.

A new 17,300 sq.-ft. Seneca Art and Culture Center is scheduled to open in October of 2015. It will include a gift shop, outdoor exhibit space and gardens, and gallery space offering changing exhibits on Seneca art, history, and culture. There will also be performance and event space, including a catering kitchen, with plans for year-round cultural and community events.

The Iroquois White Corn Project, located nearby on County Road 41 at the Ganondagan State Historic Site Farmhouse, describes itself as a "non-profit, 'agri-cultural' business." The Project grows, processes, and sells the heirloom white corn, as well as creates educational programs to promote its continued production and consumption. They use and teach traditional methods for planting, growing, and processing the corn as a cultural preservation effort, and they accept volunteers at every step of the process from fields to sales.You can buy Iroquois white corn products and merchandise at Ganondagan or online. Their website also lists stores, restaurants, and distributors in New York that sell or use their corn and flour.



Resources:
The Seneca Nation of Indians
Seneca Nation of Indians Tourism
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy
About "Food Sovereignty" at Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance

Beginning a New Project

This all started with a link to the Iroquois White Corn Project.

Someone I follow on Twitter posted a link to it. As I read through their website with great interest I realized that we drive right past the Ganondagan site every other summer on road trips to visit family in the Midwest. We could so easily stop there - if only we had known about it!

I bookmarked the page and tried to file the information away in my mental to-do/bucket list, but in the midst a life full of raising kids and school activities and mortgage payments, these kinds of things are hard to keep track of.

I was reminded of Ganondagan and the Iroquois White Corn Project when I read this news article on Indian Country Today. The National Parks Service and the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association (AIANTA) are partnering to create the "American Indians and Route 66" program which will highlight Native historical and cultural sites for visitors along the highway from Illinois to California.

I'm from Oklahoma and used to travel a piece of Route 66 on the way to visit my grandparents when I was growing up. I'd love to take my kids on a road trip down that same stretch and be able to show them, not just the Sonic drive-in in Bristow where we used to sit and watch the classic car clubs pull through, but also the pieces of Creek Nation history and culture we might be missing.

Although my family is white with no Native American ancestry at all, we (settler colonials, yes,) have lived in Indian Country for six generations. I grew up in Okmulgee, the council town of the Muscogee (Creek) tribe, and Pawhuska, the capitol of the Osage Nation. I have history and anthropology degrees from the University of Oklahoma. Indian people, indigenous history and culture, and current sociopolitical issues are interesting and important to me. Native American communities are integral to the fabric of Oklahoma life, and they should be across all of America.

Again, I bookmarked the webpage and added this info to my mental checklist.

I finally had the idea for this travel blog when I came across the Massachusetts Native American Trails Project, which seeks to create a single website that educates locals and tourists about all of the Native tribes in Massachusetts and promotes their heritage sites.

I live in the Boston area now and am trying to educate myself about the tribes in New England. My knowledge of Native American culture east of the Mississippi is pretty thin, I admit. The tribes here are smaller and lower profile, and you really have to go looking for places that even mention their existence. But after a trip to Plimouth Plantation a few years ago, where we listened to a Cherokee interpreter speak about Wampanoag wetus and the relationship between the tribe and the English villagers, my interest was sparked. There are a handful of places on the Trails Project website within a day-trip's distance of us that I could take my girls to this summer.

I feel like there is a lot of information scattered over the internet, but you have to go digging for it. I wanted to start putting all these ideas and destinations together somewhere for myself. I'm also hoping to write here about my own adventures travelling to some of these places with my family.

Native tourism is growing by leaps and bounds right now. New places are opening all the time. Tribal communities all over North America are witnessing a renaissance, and greater resources are available for historical preservation and education through tourism, as well as growth in Native-owned businesses that promote tribal culture and traditions. I want to know what's out there so I can visit them and learn with my kids. I want to support Native artists and crafts people and small business owners.

I believe people should get to know their neighbors and listen to the stories that need to be told right here at home. There's so much about America that I don't know. It's time to get out on the road and see it.