This past Tuesday, October 28th, the Hoop House hosted its fifth annual Harvest Festival in collaboration with the Religion, Spanish, and Critical Ethnic Studies departments, the Environmental Stewardship Center, and the Center for Civic Engagement to celebrate and give offerings to Our Mother Corn, or Tatéi Niwetsika. Brought to Kalamazoo College from Mexico and stewarded by K’s very own Dr. Cyndy García-Weyandt, Our Mother Corn teaches us about resistance and tending to ancestral relations through the land. It shows us the need coexistence and solidarity when fostering reciprocal relationships.
Every year, the Harvest Festival aims to offer gratitude to Our Mother Corn for all the learning, nourishment, and beauty that it has provided us this past growing season. It’s a chance for students to honor the kinship that we have with something outside of ourselves: the land. One student, Amelie Sack (K’27), was happy to see a celebration of the successful cultivation and stewardship of the land on K’s very own campus. She emphasized that not only does the Harvest Festival bring people together and foster community, but “it’s also just really fun!”

To kick off the festival, a blessing circle led by Elder Rosalía Lemus and Felipa Rivera from the Wixárika community Y+rata was held. Students, staff, alumni, and community members came together to give gratitude to Our Mother Corn, light a candle, and make an offering to the corn. Meghan London (K’26) shared that one aspect she loved about the festival was that it gives students “the space to engage with Indigenous practices, which is something we talk a lot about, but don’t have a lot of opportunity to do.”
Once everyone had made their offering, guests were invited to enjoy performances by Danza Folklorico, “Corazón y alma,” from El Concilio. Then, Dr. García-Weyandt offered a personal reading of a poem about her relationship with Our Mother Corn. After that, guests were free to mingle, share food together, make crafts, and purchase jewelry and beadwork made by the Wixárika community. Recent alum Ava Loncharte (K’25) spoke about the how important this event was because “there’s not a lot of things like this on-campus that combine gardening with spiritualism” and that it “reminds us of the reciprocal relationships we have with the land.”
Thank you so much to everyone who joined us on Tuesday, and we hope to see you next year!


Environmental Stewardship Center
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