Indigenous NYC or Native American NYC was Lenape (original people). NYC is built on the Lenape homeland: Lenapehoking.
Broadway was the Lenape road from the market under what is now the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, past the site of the Sacred Council Elm under what is now Bowling Green Park, up to the old Lenape town in Inwood and beyond.
Indigenous Peoples are guardians of the land in a symbiotic (mutually beneficial) relationship with Mother Earth. The human mind is so flexible that we can adapt to almost every environment. This is the power of Indigenous Peoples. We are perfectly adapted to local conditions.
Indigenous peoples in the US and Canada are not necessarily Latin, but in Latin America we are. The colonial narrative is that we died out. That’s cover for the Indigenous Genocide committed by the European Diaspora, US Army, and Texas Rangers.
We didn’t die out. We were married in. Governments just stopped counting us in the Census to justify their thievery and violence. The Census says we don’t exist, but we are still here. We’ve been here for at least 15,000 years (possibly 30,000), the European Diaspora less than 1,000 years.
Indigenous NYC News
March 22, 2022
Colombian Cumbia Album Release Party
La Cumbiamba eNe Yé celebrates their “Resplandor” album release of Colombian Cumbia at Terraza 7 in Elmhurst, Queens on Fri, Mar 25 at 9pm. $20. 🇨🇴
Drums Along the Hudson
The Drums Along the Hudson Native American and Multicultural festival is at Inwood Hill Park in Inwood, Manhattan on Sun, Jun 5, 2022 from 11am – 6pm. Free.
Ongoing
Lenapehoking, the first ever Lenape-curated exhibition in New York City, shows Lenape artists of the past and present at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Greenpoint Library and Environmental Education Center in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Jan 20 – Apr 30. This is curated by Joe Baker of the Lenape Center. There are many events around the exhibition. bklynlibrary.org
Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting is ongoing at the National Museum of the American Indian in the Financial District. FREE. si.edu
Why We Serve: Native Americans in the United States Armed Forces is ongoing at the National Museum of the American Indian in the Financial District. FREE. si.edu
Infinity of Nations: Art and History is ongoing at the National Museum of the American Indian in the Financial District. FREE. si.edu
Lila Downs
Tuesday, April 19, 2022
SONY HALL
Times Square Theater District
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Celebrate Inti Raymi, Inca New Year
Friday, June 24, 2022
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The 2022 “Buck Moon” July Full Moon is a Supermoon
Tuesday, July 13, 2022. 2:38pm
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Celebrate Pachamama, the Andean Mother Earth!
Monday, August 1, 2022
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El Museo del Barrio Three Kings Day Parade 2020
Monday, January 6, 2020
EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO
LA MARQUETA
East Harlem, NYC
Giant puppets, camels, parrandas, BombaYo, Annette Aguilar, Wabafu Garifuna Dance Theater, Fogo Azul NYC, and the Three Kings bring the true spirit of the holidays to El Barrio. ¡WEPA!
Continue Reading El Museo del Barrio Three Kings Day Parade 2020
Previously in Indigenous NYC
Indigenous Enterprise performs Native American dance at The Joyce Theater in Chelsea, Manhattan, Tue-Sun, Nov 9-14. From $26. joyce.org 🇨🇦🇺🇸
Celebrate “Dia de Nuestra Herencia Taína” (Taíno Heritage Day) with Concilio Taíno Guatu Ma C A Boriken of NYC, Cacique Baracutei Jorge Estévez, and Orlando y Su Plena at El Maestro cultural center in Foxhurst, The Bronx on Sun, Nov 21 at 3pm. FREE. Facebook @elmaestrobx 🇵🇷
Aurelio Martínez & the Garifuna Soul Band play Garifuna Folk, with NYC’s own Wabafu Garifuna Dance Company opening, for the World Music Institute at Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village on Thu, Dec 16 at 7:30pm (6:30pm doors). From $20. worldmusicinstitute.org 🇭🇳|🇧🇿🇬🇹🇳🇮🇺🇸
Jules Tavernier and the Elem Promo, an exhibition of the artist’s collaboration with the Indigenous Pomo community in northern California, closes at The Met Fifth Avenue in Central Park on Tue, Sep 28. $25. 🇺🇸
The First Nations of Turtle Island
We still use many Lenape names for places. For example, “Manahatta” (hilly island) became Manhattan.
The Lenape market (trading post) was down on the battery where the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian is now.
The sacred Council Elm Tree meeting place was where Bowling Green is now.
Broadway was the Lenape road (trail) up the Hudson River.
The Lenape town (village) was the most beautiful spot in Manahatta, in what is now Inwood Hill Park.
At the time of European contact, the Americas were full of people who were cultivating and managing the land. Great civilizations among the First Nations included Mississippi Mound Builders and the Southwest Pueblos. These were large, highly-developed societies, but there were people everywhere. Most were farmers. Some were hunter gatherers.
There was nothing primitive about the First Nations. They just weren’t European.
The pre-contact population is highly debated but most estimates range from 50 to 100 million. European pandemics, genocidal practices, and the introduction of invasive livestock, caused a rapid 90% depopulation. Imagine the shock of that, yet many survived.
One of the big lies is that we were wiped out. If there are no people, you can take the land. The truth is that we intermarried or escaped into the mountains and forests. We are still here. We’ve always been here.
Colonizers tried to force us to be culturally European, but you can still see our Indigenous heritage in Latin music and dance, art, beauty queens, people’s names, place names, moon names, matriarchal family and leadership structures, and even in the ways that American Latins socialize.
For example, in Puerto Rico, a bohio (Taíno thatch building) becomes a chinchorro (roadside restaurant bar) which in New York City becomes a street fair kiosk or bodega corner store. The Taíno nation didn’t survive, but the people and social structures still live today.
Indigenous Festivals NYC
The Redhawk Native American Arts Council’s Indigenous People Day Pow Wow is the biggest Native American festival we know of in New York City.
The National Puerto Rican Day Parade is New York City’s biggest Indigenous Caribbean festival.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico is a Latin American icon of Indigenous heritage. New York’s biggest Indigenous Mexican festival is Las Mañanitas a Nuestra Virgen de Guadalupe, the Mexican birthday festival at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day!
Monday, October 10, 2022
Celebrate Native American Heritage Month!
Tuesday, November 1, 2022
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On the Day of the Dead, May You Always be Remembered
Wednesday, November 2, 2022
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Join the Indigenous Peoples Day NYC 2021 Pow Wow
Sunday-Monday, October 10-11, 2021
RANDALL’S ISLAND PARK
Manhattan
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Redhawk Indigenous People Day Pow Wow
Sun-Mon, Oct 13-14, 2019
RANDALLS ISLAND ~ The Redhawk Native American Arts Council’s annual Indigenous People Day pow wow celebration in front of Icahn Stadium in Randall’s Island Park
May Sumak Film Festival 2019
June 14-16, 2019
Friday-Sunday
GREENWICH VILLAGE, NYC & CORONA, Queens ~ Annual film festival of movies in Indigenous Quechua languages of the central Andes, that screens in New York City and Quito, Ecuador
Indigenous New York City
The name “Manhattan” comes from the Lenape “Mannahatta” which means “land of many hills.” The hills have mostly been flattened by development, but Indigenous NYC is still there underneath it all.
The old trading post is under the National Museum of the American Indian at the southern tip of Manhattan. Broadway was the trail north to the main village in what is now Inwood at the northern tip of Manhattan, and upstate along the Hudson River under what is now Route 9. The Bowery was the trail that led up to the mainland shore of Long Island Sound. Red Hook Lane in Downtown Brooklyn was a Canarsie trail.
In traditional cultures, great trees are meeting spots. The Lenape sacred Council Elm was underneath the fountain at Bowling Green park.
The U.S. government forced the Lenape Delaware off their lands to Oklahoma. Yet the spirit of the First Nations has always been here and the Great Spirit of the land, the land of many hills, Mannahatta, will always be here.
There are many Indigenous sites in New York City. People forget, but the land remembers. Wëli kishku (Good Day in Lenape Delaware).
Crown of the Andes and the Atahualpa Emerald are at the Met Museum
Ongoing
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
Upper East Side, Manhattan
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NY City Ballet’s “George Balanchine The Nutcracker” 2022
DAVID H. KOCH THEATER
Lincoln Center
Friday, November 26, 2021 to Jan 2, 2022
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Indigenous New Yorkers
Edmar Castaneda to Celebrate “Family” Album Release
Thursday, October 14, 2021
DIZZY’S CLUB
JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER
Columbus Circle
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Calpulli Mexican Dance Company
New York City’s leading Mexican folkloric dance organization has a touring company, a dance school and does arts in education programs. This company is so good, they should be on Broadway.
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¡New York Latin Culture Sponsor!
Dzul Dance ‘Tree of Life Trilogy III Wacah Chan’ at El Museo
Saturday, February 6, 2016
EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO
East Harlem, NYC
New York’s Mexican Mayan circus theater tells the story of “Wacah Chan,” the Mayan snake with two faces
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¡New York Latin Culture Sponsor!
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Dzul Dance ‘Tree of Life Trilogy I Soul of the Maya’ at El Museo
December 12, 2015
EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO
East Harlem, NYC
La Virgen de Guadalupe, patron saint of Mexico, makes a surprise appearance on her feast day
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¡New York Latin Culture Sponsor!
Continue Reading Dzul Dance ‘Tree of Life Trilogy I Soul of the Maya’ at El Museo
The Indigenous World
Indigenous people represent a continuum of cultures from Alaska and the Canadian arctic to Tierra del Fuego at the bottom of South America.
Indigenous peoples have a balanced symbiotic relationship with the land. Killing the people, kills the land; and killing the land, kills the people. Preserving Indigenous ways is really self-preservation.
Taíno NYC
Taíno are an Indigenous Caribbean people. The island of Hispaniola (Haiti/Dominican Republic)…
Aurelio Martínez & The Garifuna Soul Band Sing Folkloric Jazz for the World Music Institute at Le Poisson Rouge
Thursday, December 16, 2021
WORLD MUSIC INSTITUTE
LE POISSON ROUGE
Greenwich Village, Manhattan
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Gaucho are the Cowboys of the South American Pampas
ARGENTINA, URUGUAY, BRAZIL, PARAGUAY
Continue Reading Gaucho are the Cowboys of the South American Pampas
Indigenous Culture
Our culture is part of your culture.
Jarana Beat Does the Mexican Fandango at Terraza 7
Friday, May 13, 2022
TERRAZA 7
Elmhurst, Queens
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Remember Mictlancihuatl, Aztec Goddess of the Underworld
DAY OF THE DEAD
Wednesday, November 2, 2022
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Remember Catrina La Calavera Garbancera, the Queen of the Day of the Dead
DAY OF THE DEAD
Tuesday, November 2, 2021
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Make a Day of the Dead Ofrenda to Invite a Deceased Family Member to Visit
October 31
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We build home altars to invite family souls to visit us on the Day of the Holy Innocents (November 1) and the Day of the Dead (November 2)
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Cempasúchil Flowers, Aztec Marigolds or Mexican Marigolds, are Day of the Dead Flowers
October 31 – November 2
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Mexican Marigolds are a Central American flower with healing powers that attract spirits to visit their families on the Day of the Dead
Los Pleneros de la 21 and Pregones/PRTT Celebrate Las Fiestas de Cruz
Facebook Live @Pleneros21
Friday, June 11, 2021 at 7pm
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Quechua, the Inca Language of the Indigenous Andes
QUEENS, NEW YORK
PATERSON, NEW JERSEY
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PERU, ECUADOR, BOLIVIA
PARTS OF CHILE & ARGENTINA
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Maria Tallchief, the First US American Prima Ballerina, Popularized The Nutcracker
Ki He Kah Stah Tsa (Elizabeth Marie “Betty” Tallchief) was born in Fairfax, Oklahoma on January 24, 1925.
Look at her hands. That’s Balanchine technique. She danced for him at Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and then became New York City Ballet’s and America’s first prima ballerina. Dancing “The Firebird” in 1949 made her a star. Together with George Balanchine, the father of ballet in the United States, she popularized “The Nutcracker.” Tallchief danced the Sugarplum Fairy.
Today ballet has become a career for niños bien (rich kids) because it takes so much expensive training and support from an early age to achieve mastery. But it makes sense that natural talent would rise from an Indigenous community.
For us, dance is a spiritual expression. We dance to show that we belong to our community. We dance to show our individuality within our community. We dance for faith and we dance for love. It’s all the same thing, isn’t it?
In the beginning we are all Indigenous somewhere.
In the end, we are all children of the earth, sun, moon and stars.
It’s time to remember who we are.
Wanìshi
(Thank you in Lenape Delaware)