Roasting Ears of Corn Festival

Overview

The Museum of Indian Culture invites you to Pennsylvania’s oldest Native American Indian festival on the grounds of the museum, the Roasting Ears of Corn Festival (August 16-17, 2025).

Bring your lawn chairs and blankets and join Museum of Indian Culture for a weekend of live Native American drumming, singing and dancing. This year’s entertainment includes host drum “Youngblood Singers” from Shinnecock Indian Nation, NY, and guest drum “Black Bull Moose Singers” from the Anishnawbek Nation, Canada, and Aztec Dancing by the Salinas Family from Mexico City.,

Premiering this year is Canadian country and blues powerhouse Crystal Shawanda, performing both days at 11 a.m. and again at 4 p.m.. Crystal is from Wiikwemkoong First Nation on Manitoulin Island in Ontario. She became the first full blood Indigenous woman to appear in the Top 20 on the American Billboard Country Music chart, selling over 300k records, and to sing at the Grand Ole Opry, as well as the first to win the CCMA for Female artist of the year in 2009. She is also the first to win a Juno award for "Blues album of the year" in 2020, and the first to appear in the Top 10 of the American Billboard Blues chart in 2022.

The festival includes activities for people of all ages, including: a children’s hand-on activity area where they can learn to make Native American style crafts such as “wampum" bracelets, gourd rattles, and drums, and help paint our Roasting Ears of Corn Festival mural. Other activities include face painting, pony rides, life skills demonstrations including Atlatl and Tomahawk throwing, flint knapping, primitive fire making, flute making, and Native Cooking demonstrations; and artifact displays by the Indian Artifact Collectors Association of the Northeast; and Cree demonstrator Katrina Fisher will present her award-winning Plains teepee program.

Vendors will offer hand-crafted items such as handmade Navajo and Zuni silver jewelry, Iroquois wampum jewelry and bead work, pottery, leather goods such as moccasins and handbags, hand drums, soap stone carvings, dreamcatchers and other crafts.

Must-Try Native American Dishes

• Buffalo Burgers
• Indian Tacos
• Frybread
• Corn Soup
• And the famous, fire roasted corn

Hours & Admission

• Gates open 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. rain or shine; Grand entrance is at noon.
• Admission: $10 adults, $7 children 12-17 and seniors over 62, free for children 11 and under.

The Museum of Indian Culture is a non-profit, member supported organization dedicated to presenting, preserving, and perpetuating the history and cultural heritage of the Northeast Woodland Indians and other American Indian Tribes.

Photos courtesy of Don McLaughlin / 3rd Sibling Photography.