Photo courtesy of the artists

2008 NEA National Heritage Fellow Oneida Hymn Singers of Wisconsin Oneida, WI Oneida hymn singers

The Oneida people began to populate the Oneida Reservation, near Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 1822, following treaties with the Menominee Nation. As early as the mid-1600s, missionaries from the Episcopal Church of England had visited the Iroquoian homelands of the Oneida in New York state. Society of Friends visitors to the Oneida noted the quality of their singing as early as 1795. By 1835, there was a Christian hymnal written in Mohawk, a related language, intended for a capella singing. The Oneida Singers of Wisconsin have maintained this beautiful singing tradition for nearly 90 years. The informal group of singers, ranging in number from less than a dozen to more than fifty and in age from young teens to older than eighty, sing at funerals, tribal ceremonies, and on social occasions. In 2004, the Oneida Singers were selected to perform at the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. Their performance is featured on a Smithsonian Folkways Recording titled The Beautiful Beyond. In the notes for this recording, Gerald Hill says that the use of Native languages to sing the hymns "helps sustain the traditional values of Indian communities through a means of religious expression that is understood and accepted by present generations even as it honors the past."

The Oneida Hymn Singers. Photo by Linda R. Martin (Navajo)/National Museum of the American Indian. © 2001.

 
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