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Current Program

  • Curved exterior of the National Museum of the American Indian in DC, pale bricks glowing as if during sunrise.
  • Indigenous Voices of the Americas
    Celebrating the National Museum of the American Indian
    June 26–July 1, 2024

    At the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall, Indigenous artists and makers, professional chefs and home cooks, musicians, dancers, athletes, and storytellers will demonstrate the depth of multigenerational traditions as well as new, innovative approaches to cultural expression.

    Join a circle of celebration with stories, songs, and dance. Experience ancestral foods like the Three Sisters (beans, corn, and squash) and inventive, sustainable cuisine. Learn stories that underlie Indigenous sports and games. Hear how Indigenous youth are reclaiming their languages through spoken-word and hip-hop. Explore traditional arts that flourish in their connections to place and environmental knowledge.

Festival 101

  • The Smithsonian Folklife Festival, established in 1967, honors contemporary living cultural traditions and celebrates those who practice and sustain them. Produced annually by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the Festival has featured participants from all fifty states and more than a hundred countries.

    Our Festival takes place every summer on the National Mall, with free performances, workshops, demonstrations, and other activities. It is an educational, research-based presentation that features master artisans and other tradition bearers. We invite visitors to sing and dance along, try crafts and games, learn traditional recipes, ask questions, and take part in this unique cultural exchange.

Featured Video

Past Programs
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  • A person leaves a mat hanging from a standing wooden frame while a small crowd of children and adults watch. Old color photo.
    1970 Festival
    Southern Plains Indians

    Marking the first of six years of programming focused on Native American life, this program invited artists from Oklahoma to present craft demonstrations, musical performances, and nightly powwows at the center of the National Mall

  • A garden plot with rows of green sprouts, marked with a hand-painted sign as spinach, with the U.S. Capitol Building in the background.
    2005 Festival
    Food Culture USA

    Celebrating the recent “food revolution,” this program looked backward at long-held community traditions in growing, marketing, cooking, and eating, and forward toward innovations making these traditions sustainable. 

  • Two people crouch and sit on the ground, adding colored sawdust to an image of two kids at the foot of the U.S. Capitol, held by two hands.
    2017 Festival
    On the Move: Migration Across Generations

    Part of a three-year series, the program invited intergenerational conversations about the interplay of migration, creativity, and culture, highlighting the social power of art and the role of youth as bridge builders among communities, generations, and to the future.

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