Maple event highlights Indigenous voices and roots

March was recently designated Maple Month in New York State, recognizing the state’s vast network of maple producers and the sugar maple’s social and economic importance. Various sugar houses throughout the state hosted their own Maple Weekend events on March 16–17 and March 23–24, offering tours of their facilities and product tastings.

Artist Sheila Novak held The Storied Maple: Community Storytelling Around a Maple Sap Boil at The Soil Factory on March 23 to honor the maple tree in a unique way. The interactive social sculpture invited an array of speakers to share their interdisciplinary knowledge through open discussion and participation in sap boiling.

Novak and attendees shared their personal maple experiences. Novak made maple-themed costumes for the event. (Ithaca Week/Rachel Williams)

“My hope was to allow anyone from the community to come and share a story, but to ensure that the day centered Indigenous voices and confronted the legacy of land dispossession in this area,” said Novak.

The Storied Map

The Storied Maple showcased

art and various items related to the history of maple and processes of tapping and sugaring. A central part of the event was the maple boil, where attendees gathered to hear others' experiences and to share their own maple stories. Invited storytellers included ecologists, maple farmers, local indigenous leaders and artists.

The Museum of Maple showcased items and artwork about various maple practices and traditions. (Ithaca Week/Rachel Williams)

Novak has worked with indigenous communities and nature in past projects. Prior to starting her Masters in Fine Arts at Cornell University, she explored nature photography, which led to her interest in maple. 

“A very ongoing theme in my practice is thinking about the boundaries and barriers for connection and what I can do as an artist to . . . get at that place and . . . shift it or move it,” Novak said. “[The Storied Maple] was an opportunity for everyone in attendance to contemplate kind of our . . . shared longing for connection to each other and into the natural world.”

Novak expressed how she thinks spaces for storytelling and personal discussion would benefit the Ithaca community.

“Especially in a place like Ithaca, where people are very comfortable sharing something grounded maybe in an intellect or in a cognitive space, but then moving into an emotional or personal realm is extremely hard. . . . I wanted to create a space where people could share and feel safe in sharing,” Novak said. “Storytelling is a powerful way for us to learn.”

Maple sap being prepared for tasting. (Ithaca Week/Rachel Williams)

As demonstrated in her past work, she also believes that any project relating to land or the natural world “requires a consideration of indigenous land dispossession and genocide and erasure that have happened.”

Maple then and now

Tompkins County lies within the territory of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫˀ (Cayuga) Nation, one of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. While the significance of maple — or ohwahdaˀ — varies among tribes, the Haudenosaunee view the maple as a symbol of life's renewal. It provides practical, medicinal and spiritual benefits for Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫˀ, which is celebrated in an annual Maple Ceremony mid-February. European colonization resulted in the appropriation and commercialization of maple sugaring.

When organizing this project, Novak considered how this legacy can be seen today and steps that can be taken to repatriate the land and practice. 

“Most of the folks who are profiting off the sap in this area are white farmers, and the concentration of wealth from the land into the pockets of white people is something . . . I will critique,” Novak said.

Helen Thomas, executive director of the New York State Maple Producers Association, said they work with various Haudenosaunee tribes and producers throughout New York. For example, the association partners with the Onondaga Nation to rent maple farms and relearn the process of sugaring. 

“We also work with the Maple program at Cornell, and those folks work with the Native tribes to get a better understanding of historically what was done 800 years ago, 1000 years ago, to preserve that history,” said Thomas.

Stephen Henhawk, the language and culture lead for the Gayogo̱hó:nǫˀ Learning Project, expressed that acknowledgment of Indigenous culture and struggle should go beyond historical recognition and into today. Watch him speak about it here: