The Smithsonian Folklife Festival
By Sophia Fedus, Festival Program Assistant, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage/Brandeis University ‘24
The Smithsonian Folklife Festival is a free, public cultural and educational event produced annually in Washington, D.C. by the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Since 1967, the Festival has brought millions of people together on the National Mall to explore community-based traditions from around the world, having featured more than 100 countries and every U.S. state.
The Festival is a place where culture bearers across all kinds of tradition come together to share their stories. As a 2024 Brandeis graduate, where I studied Anthropology and Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation (CAST), I feel overwhelmed with gratitude to now have the opportunity to work on the curatorial team for the Festival.
Last summer, I was an intern on the Music, Dance, and Sports curatorial team, for the 2024 program, Indigenous Voices of the Americas. I had a wonderful and enriching internship experience. My role during the Festival was to stage manage the Sports and Games pavilion, which meant I spent a lot of time working closely with culture bearers to ensure their presentations ran smoothly. We presented several extraordinary sessions, which included Haudenosaunee lacrosse workshops, maracá relay races put on by Pataxó artists from coastal Brazil, and native Hawaiian Hei string demonstrations.
A session that particularly struck me was called “Arctic Games with Pamyua and Friends.” Phillip Blanchett (Yup’ik), Peter Pilak Griggs (Yup’ik/Sugpiaq), and London Walker presented and taught Festival visitors about traditional Inuit arctic games. I was awed by their physicality, and felt inspired to learn more about the cultural significance and what participation in the games personally meant to them. I had the opportunity to interview them post-Festival, and highlight their stories on the Festival blog page.
As we are currently preparing the program for the 2025 Festival, Youth and the Future of Culture, to be held July 2-7, themes from my conversation with Phillip and Peter remain top of mind. The value of mentorship and intergenerational cultural transmission needs to continue to be spotlighted. Ultimately, festivals are incredible places for gathering, learning, and uplifting the voices and stories of all cultures. Engaging with spaces like this can foster understanding and tolerance, which is something our world can definitely use some more of right now.
Read more in Sophia’s article about the 2024 Festival, “Prayer in Movement: Arctic Games with Pamyua and Friends.”
Indigenous skateboarder, skateboard maker, and shoe designer Di'orr Greenwood (Diné/Navajo) at the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Photo by Toni Shapiro-Phim
Toni Shapiro-Phim, Sophia Fedus, and Gustavo Nascimento (Smithsonian intern from Brazil and Brandeis University student '27), at the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Photo courtesy of Toni Shapiro-Phim