This is a special time of year for Mary Ann Robins, and not because of the shopping.

November is national Native American Heritage Month.

Robins, who lives near Willow Street, is an Onondaga/Seneca Indian and president of Circle Legacy Center, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting and empowering Native Americans.

"I'm not a big store or mall person," said Robins, 61, who still embraces the simple family lifestyle she learned as a child at Onondaga Reservation near Syracuse, N.Y.

Her family's medicine cabinet was stocked mostly with herbs gathered by her mother and aunt.

"The first time we had a television," she said, "I was 8."

She and her siblings watched a few shows a week, but they spent much of their time hunting, trapping and learning "how to track, how to be in the woods and know your surroundings," she said. "That education you can't find in a book."

But you can try to expose others to traditional culture. That's what she and her cohorts do.

Circle Legacy sponsors cultural and education programs every second Friday at Community Mennonite Church, 328 W. Orange St.

The group also is collaborating with the 1719 Hans Herr House & Museum and the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society on the longhouse recently constructed in a former horse pasture at the Hans Herr site in Willow Street.

The Indian/Plain connection isn't incidental for Robins, who is married to Derek Robins and has a 16-year-old son, Eliezer.

She's worked four years as a Plain community liaison at the Center for health at Garden Spot Village in New Holland.

She came to appreciate the similar sovereign values of the Amish after moving to Lancaster in 1989 and working with a local midwife.

"What fascinated me was their way of living, the simplicity," she said, "the assistance they would give one another."

And their skills in making things by hand.

For the interior of the longhouse -- a 62-foot-long replica of a wooden communal structure Robins says is akin to "the first apartment" -- she'll help fashion bedding and household supplies.

Medicine is Robins' professional focus.

Her Native American name, Skewayquas, means Medicine Light; in keeping with her passion for blending traditional healing arts with Western technology, she holds a 1973 medical technology degree from Boston University and formerly did cancer research at the Tufts Medical Center in Boston.

But she's also an accomplished artist.

A wall hanging she meticulously assembled from birch bark and porcupine quills adorns her office door.

Robins has long been immersed in showing people Indian ways of old.

When she lived in Massachusetts, she said, she gathered bullrushes and wove them into mats "from scratch" for replica wigwams at the Plimouth Plantation living history museum.

Visitors, especially kids, light up when they try their hands at making fire with a bow drill, she said.

After such experiences, Robins said, they no longer view Native Americans "as cigar store Indians or someone dressed up for Halloween."

But there are many more light bulbs to illuminate.

"One of the many things we're trying to raise awareness of," Robins said, "is the Christian doctrine of discovery," in which early colonial governments usurped native lands on behalf of the church.

That doctrine has never been repealed.

According to Robins, honor and healing efforts continue, such as the 2010 ceremony in which Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, Presbyterians and others met in Lancaster to publicly acknowledge the area's Native American legacy.

Meanwhile, experts say, indigenous tongues are disappearing faster than endangered animal and plant species.

"We want to keep our tribal customs," Robins said. "We want to keep our beliefs."

But as elders die, and with poverty, alcohol and drugs entrenched on many reservations, she said, it becomes harder each year to inspire American Indian youth and sustain native traditions.

Complicating the mission is that many native groups remain divided by culture and official status.

Federal recognition, for example, gives some a leg up on education and employment programs, Robins said.

"There's a lot to be done" to get tribes on an equal footing and focused on their commonality, she said.

Despite the government's drawn-out policy in the 1900s to assimilate American Indians by taking children off the reservations and plugging them into faraway schools and homes, Robins said, "We're still here.

"We're still going strong. ... We're still a separate nation within the nation."

jrutter@lnpnews.com