2024 Spirit of John Brown Freedom Awardees named

May 9—LAKE PLACID — The 2024 Spirit of John Brown Freedom Awardees — Dr. Dexter Criss, The Fadden Family of Onchiota, and Amy Godine — will be recognized on Saturday, May 11 from 2 to 4 p.m. at the John Brown Farm, 115 John Brown Road, Lake Placid.

"As John Brown Lives!, we are so honored to honor these three extraordinary individuals and the Fadden Family, for all that they contribute to the life, understanding and the community of our beloved Adirondacks," Martha Swan, executive director of John Brown Lives!, said.

MUSIC MAKER

Criss, a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at SUNY Plattsburgh, is the artistic director of the Plattsburgh State Gospel Choir, founded in 2001, which brings this uniquely American musical genre to singers and audiences of all ages, on and off the college campus.

"I am completely humbled and grateful that the John Brown freedom committee has selected not just me, but the many people who work along with me, mostly the Plattsburgh State Gospel Choir and Lake Champlain Mass Choir, to inspire people to be the very best of themselves," Criss says.

"Gospel music has the authority to inspire ordinary people to do extraordinary things. The very fact that Danny Glover and Tom Morello are prior recipients of this prestigious award reinforces the notion that the good people here in Plattsburgh and the surrounding areas are doing the good work for all of us."

CULTURE KEEPERS

For seven decades, the Fadden Family has welcomed thousands of people to the Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center in Onchiota, steeping visitors in Haudenosaunee history, story, culture, and art and reaffirming their traditional values and enduring vitality and presence on this landscape.

"We are very honored to be a recipient of the John Brown Freedom Award," David Kanietakeron Fadden, says.

"Similar to the spirit of a just and free society for all people, my grandparents, Ray and Christine Fadden, opened the doors of the Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center 70 years ago to enlighten and educate all those who enter to the rich and vibrant culture of the Haudenosaunee and all Indigenous peoples of this continent.

"My family has strived to lift the veil of ignorance when it comes to the contributions Indigenous people have given the world in terms of democratic thought, food cultivation and an array of life skills. Seventy years ago, one primary mission was to instill a sense of pride into the Indigenous youth who had that self-esteem ripped away partly due to the forced assimilation through Indian residential schools.

"If not for folks like my grandparents and my parents, John and Eva Fadden, the confidence and pride we now see in Native Country may not be as apparent. Today, I will simply follow their lead and continue to guide our work to address the problems and issues we face today and strive for those whose faces have yet to appear."

INTREPID DISRUPTER

Amy Godine, independent scholar, researcher, and author of "The Black Woods: Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier," first brought the news of the 1846 scheme promoting justice, Black voting rights and land ownership as curator of JBL!'s "Dreaming of Timbuctoo" Exhibition to audiences around the state, forever transforming the public's understanding of the region's history and notions of belonging.

"When I light on a topic for an article, I don't hew to an activist's agenda," Godine says.

"But I do write — always have — to challenge and subvert conventional readings of Adirondack history. My new book, The Black Woods, dives deep into the too-long under-valued history of an antebellum Black farm colony in the Adirondack wilderness, and urges a fresh way to think about it. To be acknowledged by JBL!, an organization which has advanced the cause of social justice and human rights for a quarter of a century, is more than gratifying. It assures me that what I wrote has had an impact. It is more than read. It inspires. It will be used. You can imagine my delight!"

John Brown Day is an annual tradition, started in 1922, by Drs. Jesse Max Barber and Spotuas Burwell, Black Philadelphians who made their first of many pilgrimages to Brown's gravesite to lay a wreath on his grave on the anniversary of his birth on May 9, 1800, according to a press release.

John Brown Day 2024 will be held outdoors, under a tent, and is open to all. Immediately following, all are welcome to gather at a reception at Lake Placid Pub & Brewery, at 5 p.m. For tickets, at $65 per person or $120 for two, email info@johnbrownlives.org.

ENLIVENING HISTORY HERE

Leading up to John Brown Day, JBL! teaching artists Gale Jackson, Lindsay Pontius and Amy Robinson are in residence in six different schools — three in the Adirondacks and three across Lake Champlain in Vermont —introducing students to the Black settlers of 'Timbuctoo' and the abolitionist Brown family. Grounding the residency program in history and place, the students, their teachers, and the artists visit the John Brown Farm together. Whether working with poetry and collage, theater and movement, bookbinding and creative writing back in the classroom, students explore different ways to express their voice and their views about history, themselves, and their world.

With a 2024 local Heritage Grant from the Champlain National Heritage Partnership, poet, storyteller and scholar Jackson is working with elementary students in the Petrova and Bloomingdale schools in the Saranac Lake School District while Pontius, founder/director of Courageous Stage, is bringing professional experience in theater arts to middle school students at Willsboro Central School and Pond Brook School in Addison, Vermont. Writer of poetry and prose, Robinson is introducing Vermont students from Vergennes Union High School and fourth- and fifth-graders in the Cornwall School to bookbinding, zine-making and creative writing.

Student work will be presented at John Brown Day. With a generous Artists in Communities grant from Lake Placid Center for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), musicians Yacouba Sissoko, Jerry Dugger and Taína Asili return to the region to meet with students in Tupper Lake, Elizabethtown, and Keene schools. They will also give evening performances at Keene Arts and the Peony Farm in Whallonsburg.

A native of Mali in West Africa, Sissoko is a master kora player from a family of musicians and griots dating back centuries. Now living in New Orleans, guitarist, bassist and vocalist Dugger is a New York Blues Hall Of Fame inductee and a veteran of the New York City Blues community. Asili is a songwriter and bandleader of Puerto Rican descent who combines powerful vocals with an energetic fusion of Afro-Latin, reggae and rock.

All three performed at JBL!'s annual Blues at Timbuctoo concert, held every September at the John Brown Farm, in 2022, and will be reunited to share their cultural traditions and explore the power of music to connect people and communities during the week of May 20-24.

For more information about the concerts or John Brown Day, to schedule a field trip to the John Brown Farm or find out how you can support JBL!'s work with students and communities, go to www.johnbrownlives.org or email info@johnbrownlives.org.

Email: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com

Twitter@RobinCaudell