Vinyard Indian Settlement hosts Reconnection Days
The Vinyard Indian Settlement is celebrating Reconnection Days Saturday and Sunday at it's Herod headquarters.
Reconnection Day began in September, 2010, as a way for descendants of the Shawnee Indian natives of Karber's Ridge or other indigenous refugees who settled with them to connect or reconnect, according to a release from the settlement.
This with photos, written or oral histories are invited to bring and share them.
According to the VIS history, Shawnee Natives fled Ohio while pursued by the colonial militia, crossing the Wabash River, then the Ohio River into Kentucky, and back to Shawneetown in 1809. Eventually, they took refuge in a region north of what is now known as Karber's Ridge.
The events begin 10 a.m. Saturday at the headquarters 1 mile north of Herod on state Route 34:
Saturday
10 a.m. - Descendants of VIS curious about their history and membership in the VIS may bring photographs and items that relate to the settlement. Coffee, tea, spring water and snack foods will be served.
Noon - Traditional foods will be available throughout the day.
1 p.m. - "C" - a traditional, natural, land-fibers weaver - will demonstrate fiber techniques. She will have fibers on hand to conduct a workshop throughout the afternoon. Her passion for weaving springs from her love for the land and the actual gathering of the fibers from the homelands of her ancestors.
"I want to see native plants from our area propagated here at VIS. Everything is a learning curve," she said, in a prepared release.
2 p.m. - VIS citizen Christine Wagner loves working with natural clays she gathers locally. She shapes and models effigies of images within stone, wood and the earth itself.
"My hands in clay bring breath to my soul, images emerge, faces appear; some I have seen in stones, some are a part of the clay and appear as a gift to my soul," she said, in a prepared release.
3 p.m. - Peter Greene is a practitioner of traditional survival techniques and has been working with various outdoor companies sharing skills such as flint-knapping, bow making and teaching survival courses. He will be demonstrating flint-knapping techniques and showcasing Southern Illinois' unique chert rock. He will lecture on and demonstrate arrowhead, knife and spear styles found historically throughout the Ohio Valley region.
4 p.m. - Mark Denzer will demonstrate construction and use of blowguns which were used historically for small game hunting by most tribal communities of the southeast region of the country. Denzer is vested in the vision of land reclamation, cultural restoration and traditional homeland knowledge. He is both Oklahoma Choctaw, a citizen of the Vinyard Indian Settlement and a member of the New Tallahassee Green Corn Grounds at Porch (Muskogee) Creek in Alabama.
After dark there will be a song and dance.
Sunday
Sunday will be a symposium on questions of faith, the purpose of ritual or ceremony, religion and truth and theory.
Presenters include Rick Raining Light Arrow Williams who, with his wife Phyllis Silver Cloud War Eagle Williams, have been on a journey of faith since 1997. He has walked with many groups including bikers, Native Americans and Messianic Jews.
Marsha Forrest of Mohawk ancestry and raised on the Six Nations Reservation in Ontario, Canada, is a registered nurse of 40 years. She holds a holistic view of health which finds the balance of the spiritual, emotional, physical and mental aspects of one's own being as they grow to their full potential.
Renee Richard Tumukumde is a former Christian rapper-turned missionary to America. His ministry birthed Camp 120, a group of young professionals in Uganda who have been fasting and praying for revival and community transformation.
Mark Denzer will delves deeply into the traditions of ancestors and finds both commonality and differences in all tribes, as it is with all people who adhere to specific religions and ceremonies.