Janaya Jones ’26 remembers the car rides from her hometown of Syracuse to Hamilton every fall, starting when she was 8 years old, to sell art with her mom at the Native American Arts and Culture Festival in Colgate’s Sanford Field House.
“I loved the open land along the drive and the towns we would pass through,” Jones says. “The peacefulness of the ride was something I cherished.”
Jones has gone from spending one day a year at Colgate as a vendor to a full academic year as a student. (The event itself has also undergone some updates, including a new name: the Indigenous Nations Festival.) Now both the campus and the faces Jones encountered at the festival throughout the years are part of her everyday life — including her thesis adviser, Professor Chris Vecsey.
“I was pleased when I learned in fall 2022 that Janaya had begun matriculation at Colgate and even more pleased in 2024 when I heard that she had declared a Native American studies major,” says Vecsey, the Harry Emerson Fosdick Professor of the humanities and Native American studies. “What a fine student: conscientious, discerning, original in her analytics, and elegant in her writing.”
Jones’ senior thesis is on medicinal plants — a subject she’s also known since childhood. She’s presenting a historical framework paired with current lab research using yarrow, a flowering plant. “The way the Natives will use it is they’ll boil it, and my family does this, too — make teas out of certain plants,” says Jones, who is of the Oneida Nation. “My mom would say, ‘Go get the peppermint… You’re getting a cold. We need to make a tea.’ I’d run outside and bring it in. I’m very used to collecting and using plants when they’re needed.”
In the lab, she is using a Soxhlet apparatus to extract compounds from yarrow while carefully collecting the steam. Jones then takes the plant’s concentrated extract and adds a sample to a spot plate containing the specific bacteria she is studying. She compares this plate with a control sample treated with an antibiotic. “I’m trying to test if yarrow can inhibit the bacteria’s growth as the antibiotic does,” explains Jones who, at press time, was too early in her research to report results. “It is truly a blessing to combine my research in the lab with what I have enjoyed learning from my family for years.”
With a second major in biology, she’s well-versed in lab work and finds overlap in her two concentrations. For her biology major, Jones is doing a research tutorial with Professor Ken Belanger, looking at the health of the gut microbiome.
After Colgate Jones hopes to work in a lab doing clinical research. “I enjoy the aspect of working with people and collaborating on projects,” she says, “but I also like to combine that with research at the bench.”
Just as knowledge of medicinal plants has carried through the generations of Jones’ family, so too have artistic talents. “It’s a family blessing and gift that’s been passed down,” Jones says. Her grandfather was a wood-carver, using sticks he’d find on the ground. “My mom said it was his way to bring life into the sticks again after they’d fallen,” Jones says. Her mom, meanwhile, is a painter and silversmith.
Jones’ chosen mediums are painting and creating pebble art. The inclination to work with stones came naturally to Jones, who was part of a gem and mineral club at a very young age. She started collecting pebbles at her aunt’s house on Skaneateles Lake and making little pictures out of them. Throughout the years she’s refined her craft, using repurposed natural stone tiles as her background and “a super-secret” adhesive. “I don’t want people to know exactly what it is because it took me so long to figure out what works,” she notes. The final products are simple but sweet portrayals: families, love birds, a hiker, a lacrosse player.
“I don’t go into it thinking about what I want to make; I look at the stones and see what they look like,” says Jones, who sells her creations under the name Janaya Skye Pebble Art. “I think it’s a lot more meaningful.”
Jones has taken on additional responsibilities for the annual Colgate festival, starting as a first-year when she helped revive the event following its hiatus during the pandemic. As a member of the Native American Student Association (of which she is currently treasurer), she’s also been involved in other efforts such as advertising.
This year, though, she focused on preparing her art for the show and spending time with her mom. “I love being able to see my mom. We’ve been doing it together for so long, and especially now that I’m getting older, it’s nice to be able to have that thing with my mom that we’ve always done.”
Her other favorite part of the festival is seeing the people she’s known throughout the years and meeting new ones. “I enjoy hearing people’s stories,” she says. “And what I really like is when my art touches someone.”