The Native American Studies Program at Eberly College of Arts and Sciences hosted the Peace Tree Ceremony Monday, along with and a forum that started Monday and continues today with Native leaders.
The events highlight Native Nations’ ancestral, cultural and historical connections to the land now known as West Virginia.
The Native American Studies Program at Eberly College of Arts and Sciences will host events on October 9 and 10 that will highlight Native Nations’ ancestral, cultural and historical connections to the land now known as West Virginia.
The annual Peace Tree Ceremony was held in recognition of Indigenous Peoples Day. WVU’s Peace Tree is between Martin and E. Moore halls on WVU’s downtown campus.
The Peace Tree, per Haudenosaunee (Iroquoian) oral history passed down for hundreds of years, centers on the Creator sending the Peacemaker to unite the warring Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk nations. He planted the original white pine Tree of Peace at Onondaga to symbolize these Five Nations forming the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. With the addition of the Tuscarora, it is now the Six Nations.
WVU’s first peace tree was planted on campus in 1992 by Chief Leon Shenandoah, Tadodaho of the Grand Council of the Haudenosaunee Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy. This year, Tadodaho Sidney Hill presided. Other guests of honor included Haudenosaunee Faithkeeper Oren Lyons, Delaware Nation President Deborah Dotson, Delaware Tribe of Indians Chief Brad KillsCrow, Shawnee Tribe Chief Ben Barnes, Eastern Shawnee Tribe Chief Glenna Wallace and Cherokee Nation history and preservation officer Catherine Foreman Gray.
The Peace Tree Ceremony included traditional Native music by singer John Block (Seneca Nation) and flute player Boe Nakakakena Harris (Turtle Mountain Chippewa). Wendy Perrone, executive director of Three Rivers Avian Center in Hinton, presented Regis, a bald eagle, symbolizing the eagle sentry the Peacemaker placed atop…