So begins the chapter titled “The Three Sisters” from Braiding Sweetgrass, headliner Robin Wall Kimmerer's brilliant and transformative book. The Three Sisters are corn, beans, and squash. They are also the image we asked our friend (and alum from last year’s inaugural event!) Stella Nall to create for us as the symbol and mascot of this year’s festival, RESISTANCE 250+. What she came up with is beautiful and we love it.

The question that immediately comes to mind is this: what do plants, these particular plants, have to do with resistance?

Let us back up a little first. Shortly after the inaugural IndigiPalooza MT (IPFEST for short) in 2025, we, the organizers, began discussing how another event might unfold. We didn’t want to do a simple repeat of the first event with different presenters, we wanted to have an entirely different theme. We chose RESISTANCE 250+ because 2026 is being heralded as the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. We asked ourselves what this means to Native people, whose stolen land (combined with the forced slave labor of Black people) is the source of the foundational wealth of our settler colonial nation; the Declaration of Independence goes so far as to identify the original human inhabitants as “Merciless Indian Savages.” We decided to devote IPFEST to the ways that Native people have resisted the genocide of entire communities for more than 250 years to not just survive, but thrive in the wake of all of this calamity.

We also wanted to go beyond the big, headline-grabbing events. Things like the occupation of Alcatraz, Wounded Knee, and Standing Rock. Those acts of resistance are important but we wanted to focus on the small and significant ways Native people resist in their day-to-day lives, both personally and in community. Ways Native organizations have stepped in to address problems created, and then ignored, by settlers. How Native people have begun to address the decimation of language and culture, and rebuild traditional relationships with our older than human relatives. Much of this activity has been happening underground … and now more and more of it is coming to the surface. This is where we wanted to focus this effort toward education, beginning with the people directly engaged in it.

Which brings us back to the question: why the Three Sisters?

The Three Sisters work together to ensure their mutual survival; they don’t compete, they cooperate. They have taken this cooperation into many areas all over the world and adapted in a multitude of varieties to survive and thrive. There is what we see of their relationship above ground, yet there is so much going on below the surface too that you’ll miss if you aren’t paying attention. And when any part of this system flourishes, the entire community flourishes. 

Which makes these magnificent plants perfect representatives for the efforts Indigenous people are engaging in across Turtle Island in the face of continued efforts by the state aimed toward assimilation and, ultimately, elimination, of our ancient languages and cultures. We want you to consider each of these three relatives and how they use their gifts to improve the lives of each other, the whole being greater than the sum of their parts. This is how our resistance – and just like the plants, it is an inter-tribal resistance – must look too.

“Together these plants—corn, beans, and squash—feed the people, feed the land, and feed our imaginations, telling us how we might live.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer

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This lovely video below from Rebecca Webster not only tells a story about the Three Sisters from a Haudenosaunee perspective, but also explains how these plants work together.

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