(steady drum music) (crowd chanting, cheering) - [Daniel] This tradition goes back as far as our oldest oral histories.

(steady drum music) (crowd chanting, cheering) Often we're discussed as a people of the past.

We have a lot of collective trauma as a people.

You may hear of the Hartford Treaty, you may hear of the Mystic Massacre, its really positioned as a way of, that's the end of our people.

(steady drum music) (crowd chanting, singing) And we've been rebuilding ever since.

(steady drum music) (crowd chanting, singing) - This would be our Thanksgiving for our corn specifically.

So when we harvest corn, which has been happening for thousands of years, we come together and we give thanks for that corn.

Thanking the creator for allowing us to have that opportunity to feed ourselves.

And then we also replenish Mother Earth with more seeds, that way she'll continue to feed us.

(steady drum music) (crowd chanting, singing) - A lot of the songs that we sing have been passed down, like a lot of the songs are passed down through the generations, different languages too.

So we hear the Pequot language, you know, the Algonquian dialect, my people's language, Shinnecock is not too different 'cause we're all Algonquian from, you know, this area, this region.

(steady drum music) (crowd chanting, singing) And you like, when you really get into it, when youre really deep into the songs, it takes me to another place personally.

It's our way of prayer.

It's our way of receiving medicine.

It's our way of giving back medicine.

So when we sing, we have all the dances, they dance and we get, it's invigorating.

It's powerful for ourselves too.

And it represents the heartbeat.

(steady drum music) (crowd chanting, singing) - Like I've been dancing like my whole life.

I just love coming here and just like all my family is, like we're all like stuffed together in this area over here.

It's just like coming home kind of.

Within the schooling system, they like teach you about the like Trail of Tears and all these other massacres that happened to Native people.

But like, they don't really show a lot of what, like right now or like any present problems within the community or anything.

So it kind of like depicts a picture that like, Natives are stuck within a time period, but like, we're still like growing and evolving.

(steady drum music) (crowd chanting, singing) So I feel like showing that we're still dancing and it just like shows people that we're still here, basically.

(steady drum music) (crowd chanting, singing) - A lot of things in our culture have been involuntarily forced out, you know, by other cultures, our ceremonies, our songs.

So we're trying to regain a lot of this once again.

And I'm considered to be by my people, a culture keeper.

I got learned from my elders.

Taught from my elders.

So it's my job to teach the next generation down to keep this going.

If you still got it, you hold onto it, you hold onto it, you pass it down to the next generation, you don't wanna lose it.

(steady drum music) (crowd chanting, singing) - An event like Schemitzun being able to come to every year.

I've been coming to this since I was a little kid.

Schemitzun is just a sister tribe.

Like basically it's, they're relatives to us, all New England Native nations are relatives to us.

It means a lot to be able to be included in, be in the ceremony with them.

Like as a younger wampum maker, probably the youngest wampum maker around here at all.

People see me and it shows the younger generation that they can do it as well.

(steady drum music) (crowd chanting, singing) - A lot of young ones are joining the circle at a very young age.

Even though it is a challenge to keep the attention and compete with things like social media, we have a lot of young ones that's already setting examples for their age group.

We don't come from a written language.

So the fact that you are forced to interact generation to generation, that's how information gets shared.

You're not gonna read it, you have to sit down.

You have to immerse yourself.

So that approach is one of the other reasons why we've been able to keep so much alive at a time when it was outlawed.

The importance of preserving cultural history, it allows people to understand who they are.

It gives them a starting point, and then you could always find out where you're headed once you understand who you are.

(steady drum music) (crowd chanting, singing)