As the sky turned golden and crickets began to chirp at Opus 40 on Saturday, Theresa Bear Fox, a singer-songwriter from the Akwesasne Mohawk Territory in upstate New York, took the stage to hoots and cheers.

“I am trying to learn my language that is so beautiful,” Fox sang.

About 80 people sat on blankets and lawn chairs across the grass. A few others perched on the stones of the sprawling earthwork sculpture from which the outdoor venue takes its name. Overlook Mountain rose to the east.

The venue sits about 250 miles south of Akwesasne, where the Mohawk people resettled after European contact in the mid-1700s. The original Mohawk Territory is about 90 miles from Opus 40, in New York’s Mohawk Valley.

In her song “Kanienkeha Blues,” Fox, 60, described growing up as an English speaker with a father who spoke only Mohawk, an Indigenous language she never learned.

“I always carried the shame of not knowing my language,” Fox said. “I wanted to make sure that my kids didn’t.”

That experience led Fox to enroll her five children at the Akwesasne Freedom School, a full-time Mohawk-language immersion school founded by parents in 1979.

“I’m so grateful to the Akwesasne Freedom School for teaching them the language that I could not teach them,” Fox said.

One of her sons now teaches at the school, and her grandchildren have started attending.

All proceeds from the fifth annual benefit supported the school and its mission to ensure the survival of the Mohawk language and traditions. The event was held in partnership with Panther Mountain, a Catskills-based nonprofit music label centered on Indigenous voices.

“We’re trying to do what we can,” said Panther Mountain founder Matthew O’Neill, who organized the event.

O’Neill’s efforts reflect a growing focus on recognizing and re-establishing ties between Indigenous Catskills communities, including the Munsee-speaking Lenape people, and their ancestral homelands. He began raising money for the school after meeting and befriending Fox.

Fox’s sister, Elizabeth Nanticoke, 71, was one of the parents who founded the school in 1979.

Nanticoke said the school grew out of a struggle by Mohawk families to preserve their language and cultural identity amid government pressure to assimilate.

“The children were going to public school, and they would be harassed by the people who were not traditional people,” Nanticoke said, using “traditional” to describe the Mohawk people. “From there, we decided the traditional people would have our own school.”

The school initially taught subjects including math, reading, and writing in English. The community eventually began teaching in Mohawk and building its curriculum around Mohawk culture and traditions.

Nanticoke’s four children attended the school, which serves students from pre-K through eighth grade. Two of her daughters, Iawentas and Tekonwakwenni, now teach there. Nanticoke estimated that about 100 students have graduated since the school’s founding.

Levi Herne, 26, a graduate of the school, opened the benefit with a traditional Thanksgiving Address called Ohénten Karihwatéhkwen, or “The words before all else,” delivered in Mohawk. Herne said the words traditionally open gatherings by giving thanks to those present, the earth, and the Creator. Each day at the Freedom School begins with the address.

Herne performed while his 2-year-old son, Julius, who is enrolled at the school, sat quietly onstage at his feet.

Nanticoke said Herne and other graduates can now lead community ceremonies in Mohawk, drawing on their education at the Freedom School.

“It’s reversing all of that damage that was done,” Nanticoke’s daughter Iawentas said.

She was referring to the forced assimilation of Indigenous children through government-supported boarding schools during the 19th and 20th centuries. Beginning with the Civilization Fund Act of 1819, the federal government supported schools intended to assimilate Indigenous children by suppressing their languages, cultures, and beliefs.

The independent Freedom School doesn’t receive funding from state, federal, or provincial governments. It relies on donations and fundraisers such as Saturday’s benefit.

“It’s continuous work, you can’t just stop,” said Alvera Sargent, executive director of Friends of the Akwesasne Freedom School, the nonprofit that raises money for the school.

Recent fundraising helped pay for a new 13,000-square-foot school building that cost $5.5 million. Teachers and students moved into the mostly completed building in December.

Diné artist and singer-songwriter Hataałii and Woodstock writer Sophie Strand also performed songs and read poetry during the benefit.

As the evening drew to a close, Fox joined Nanticoke’s daughters, Iawentas and Tekonwakwenni, onstage to sing as Kontiwennenha:wi (pronounced Goon dee wa na há wee), meaning “the women who carry words.”

The singers invited the crowd to join a series of social dances meant to bring strangers together. Elders, young adults, and parents with children rose and joined hands in two large circles near the stage. The women taught them the steps and performed their final songs of the night.

“There might be people who have never experienced any of this,” Iawentas said as the crowd gradually dispersed. “To be able to share some of our language and show them our dances and songs and get them to participate; I love it.”

Original photography by Steven Visneu/The Overlook.

Isabella Schoonover is a staff reporter for The Overlook covering Woodstock, Saugerties, Hurley, and surrounding Ulster County communities. Send correspondence to isabella@theoverlooknews.com.