Crystal Shawanda, international, multi-award winning Native American country and blues singer, performs 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. Aug. 17 and 18 at the 44th Annual Roasting Ears of Corn Festival, Museum of Indian Culture, 2825 Fish Hatchery Road, Allentown.

Shawanda is from Wiikwemkoong First Nation, Manitoulin Island, Ontario. She is the first full-blood Indigenous woman to chart on the Top 20 Billboard Country Music, selling more than 300,000 records. She has sung at the Grand Ole Opry.

She won the Canadian Country Music Association Female Artist of the Year in 2009. She is the first Indigenous woman to win a Juno award for “Blues Album of the Year” in 2020, and the first on the Top 10 Billboard Blues chart in 2022.

Master of Ceremonies is David White Buffalo, Rosebud Sioux Tribe.

Entertainment includes host drum Youngblood Singers from Shinnecock Indian Nation, New York, guest drum Black Bull Moose Singers from the Anishnawbek Nation, Canada, and Aztec Dancing by the Salinas Family from Mexico City.

Featured dancers include Native American Hoop Dancing by Gabe Tone-Pah-Hote; head man Timothy McGregor, Anishnawbek Nation, and head woman Kim Wheatley, Ojibway Nation.

There will be a children’s hands-on activity area where they can learn to make Native American-style crafts such as “wampum” bracelets, gourd rattles and drums, and help paint the Roasting Ears of Corn Festival mural.

Other activities include face-painting, pony rides, life skills demonstrations including Atlatl and Tomahawk throwing, flintknapping, primitive fire-making, flute-making, native cooking demonstrations by Heart to Hearth Cookery, artifact displays by the Indian Artifact Collectors Association of the Northeast; and Cree demonstrator Katrina Fisher’s award-winning Plains teepee program.

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

American Indian cuisine of Frybread, buffalo burgers, buffalo stew, Indian Tacos, blueberry wajopi, corn soup and more will be available.

Gates are open 10 a.m. - 6 p.m., rain or shine. Grand Entrance is at noon.

Free admission for children 11 and under.

Attendees may bring lawn chairs and blankets.

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.

Information: Pat Rivera, 610-797-2121; info@museumofindianculture.org; museumofindianculture.org