The Fertile Ground, Home to the Seneca Nation

Get your ticket now for “The Fertile Ground, Home of the Seneca” with Peter Jemison, Seneca artist, educator, advocate, and Historic Site Manager of Ganondagan State Historic Site. Jemison is the first guest in our new speaking series in partnership with the Skä·noñh-Great Law of Peace Center looking at the impact of the Erie Canal on the Haudenosaunee and their foodways as part of our larger Erie Eats Foodways Project. Admission is $10 for the general public and $5 for members of either the Erie Canal Museum or the Onondaga Historical Association. Museum members, please email outreach@eriecanalmuseum.org to receive your discount. When you preregister for this special lecture through the Shop page of our website, you’ll receive an email providing access to this secure event. You can register here: https://eriecanalmuseum.org/store/product/virtual-discussion-peter-jemison/

Jemison will discuss the Seneca people and their ancestral homeland in Western New York, as well as the issue of food sovereignty. In particular, Jemison will reflect on the Iroquois White Corn Project, an effort at Ganondagan with the goal to “restore the farming, consumption, and distribution of traditional Iroquois White Corn to Native American communities and to offer Iroquois White Corn products to the community at large”

Peter Jemison has served as Historic Site Manager at Ganondagan since 1985, co-edited the book Treaty of  Canandaigua 1794: 200 Years of Treaty Relations between the Iroquois Confederacy and the  United States, produced the multi-award winning  “Iroquois Creation Story” film, and has produced art that has been acclaimed and exhibited all over the world, among many other accomplishments. Jemison is currently on the Boards of Trustees for the National Museum of American Indian and  the New York State Museum, was the founding director of the American Indian Community  House Gallery in New York City, and was past Board Member-at-Large of the American  Alliance of Museums. Jemison’s roles and responsibilities also include representing the Seneca Nation of Indians on the  Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) as well as a past Indian Tribe/Native Hawaiian Representative of the Federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation  (ACHP).  A member of the Heron Clan of the Seneca Nation, Jemison’s work is rooted in the framework of Native American art.

Funded in part through the generous support of the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor