The 7th annual Seeds Philly Celebration became a solemn and spirited tribute to Indigenous arts and culture: powwow dancing and flag songs, tepee raisings and fry bread, corn husk dolls and Powowpopart.
But this year’s two-day celebration, Saturday and Sunday at Cherry Street Pier, carried added significance. Founded as a small arts gathering in Fairhill, Seeds Philly has grown to include representatives and traditional dancers from 40 tribal nations and more art booths and performers than ever. And, marking the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the two-day event includes a special artist installation confronting hateful language enshrined in the founding document.
This also may be the last Seeds Philly Celebration for the foreseeable future, organizers say. Despite all the gains — and special city funding this year — money has run out.
“I would love to see a world where the city and other private foundations would recognize that this event is absolutely critical for this city,” said Tailinh Agoyo, cofounder and executive director of We Are the Seeds, the Philly-based, Native-led organization that runs the festival. “It brings attention to the fact that this is Lenape land we are on, and celebrates not only the histories of our people, but the diversity of the Native people who live in the city now.”
How Seeds Philly was born
Agoyo, who moved to Philadelphia from Sante Fe, N.M., helped form We Are the Seeds in 2016 to celebrate the heritage and culture of Indigenous people in the country’s founding city. At the time, some Philly-area Native American cultural organizations were fading after generations, she remembered.
“I felt like, where do we go?” said Agoyo, a descendant of the Narragansett tribe who is raising four sons. “Where do we have our conversations? Where do we see our community?”
The nonprofit has grown to include Indigenous Listening Gardens in West and North Philly and Kensington; an Indigenous-led theater project examining the myths surrounding Philadelphia’s founding in 1682; and a popular podcast, From Here, With a View, featuring Indigenous artists, culture bearers, and activists.
“We create these types of programs and events for Native people to come together and connect and gather and dance and celebrate,” Agoyo said. “And we invite the greater Philadelphia region to be a part of it.”
But with a key private grant expiring — and the growing festival eating up much of the nonprofit’s expenses — Agoyo said the group needs time and does not know when exactly the event might return. It is bittersweet, Agoyo said, that the festival, which was expecting more than 4,000 attendees — tickets are pay what you can, with a $20 suggested donation — may disappear just as it comes into its own.
This year, the city provided funding for the festival through its 250th programming, Agoyo said. And the group plans on applying for more grants and hopes to build partnerships with leading Philadelphia philanthropic organizations.
“The reality is the world is in a really tough place and we need to make sure that we stay healthy as an organization,” she said. “So we need to be strong and say, ‘Let’s just rest for our health and our family’s health and our community’s health, and then we figure it out.’”
Perhaps, next year, the festival could return as a smaller event, she said.
But the hard realities confronting the popular but endangered festival did not dampen Saturday’s celebration. At noon, after an honorary tepee raising, dozens of dancers processed into the powwow. Men and women from tribes up and down the East Coast danced traditional and fancy steps. Jingle dancers donning regalia adorned with dozens of clanking tin snuff lids danced steady rhythmic steps meant to promote healing. Musicians pounded beats on powwow drums made of maple wood and rawhide. Crowds flowed along the pier.
Garbed in a women’s jingle dress, Vaughnda Hilton, executive director of the Philly-based Native Nations Dance Group, said the Seeds Philly Celebration has become a premier Indigenous event.
“It shows we’re still here,” she said. “We’re keeping the culture alive, keeping the dances and songs alive. It’s who we are.”
Farther down the pier, Roger Sosakete Perkins, a Mohawk multimedia artist and culture keeper from the Bear Clan of Akwesasne near the Canadian banks of the St. Lawrence River, prepared a special fire-working kiln he had built for the festival. Considered a founder of “Powowpopart” — a blending of Native-inspired abstract design and vintage pop culture imagery — Perkins gathered clay from a roadbed near his studio to make Mohawk bricks for the kiln. Each is enshrined with “merciless Indian savages” — a phrase that appears in the Declaration of Independence. On Sunday, Perkins will burn a piece of his own art and a replica of the declaration in the kiln. In Mohawk culture, the burning of something is symbolic of “rebirth” and “replenishing” – like the intentional land fires set to “burn out old growth and bring in new life,” he said.
The installation is meant to represent a conversation, he said, building his kiln, brick by brick, as the pier filled.
“A conversation that has needed to happen for 250 years,” he said. “A real conversation.”