We spent most of our weekend at the Pow Wow put on by the South Dakota State University Native American Club. This was such an unforgettable experience!
Upon arrival we were really excited and everything was really new to us. The way it is set up is that there are drum circles from different nations in a circle around the main dancing area, and an MC type guy in the front that orchestrates the whole thing. There is food and people selling crafts and such. Members of tribes from MN, IO, SD, ND and NB were in attendance, perhaps elsewhere but I didn't catch everything. The whole experience is very busy and exciting, full of color, family, friends, drumming, singing and of course, dancing. At the begining of the celebrations an important man from one of the Nations spoke and he said something that stuck with me - he said that "as long as we keep our childen around the drum, we can preserve our culture". That just goes to show the importance of ceremony and tradition in keeping American Indian cultures alive.
And while I am on the subject, I think the pow-wow is such a beautiful testament to the power of a culture to survive. I mean, for the longest time American Indian peoples were not even allowed to practice their own ceremonies, spirituality, religion, etc. The Sun Dance, sweat lodgest, pow-wows were outlawed. For the longest time Indian children were literally kidnapped from their homes and sent to boarding schools where they were taught their traditional cultures were savage and wrong, and they were beat, or worse, for speaking their languages or refusing to cut their hair. There was a literal genocide and an attempted cultural genocide in this country and amazingly, American Indians have had the will, beleif and power to sustain their culture throughout these and many other forces against them.
The pow-wow begins with a grand entrance, and then there are different types of dances and the dancers compete with one another. Saturday it began at one, there was a community dinner provided at five and it went on until nearly midnight! Being just a spectator all of it can get just a bit redundant and hard to sit through, but we stayed for eight hours!
Today (sunday) we stayed for about 5 hours and it was much of the same as saturday but it was just as beautiful, exciting and inspiring. It was so cool to see a celebration that was truly ,ulti-generational - babies dresses in traditional outfits dancing the same dance that the eldest person in the room was also dancing. It was such an insight into the power of community, ceremony, tradition of American Indian Cultures.
I was reading something about the pow-wow, and one of the stories was about an outdoor pow wow that was rained out. They all put away their clothes and all the other stuff, and simpy had a drum they protected from the rain. They danced adn danced in their regular clothes to the beat of that drum, and the author said thats when she knew what it was about. its about the dance, the sacred beat of the drum, that spanned centuries and generations that kept her culture alive. and as long as they kept dancing, drumming and remembering, they would keep their culture.
I am really glad I experienced the pow-wow, and I am looking forward to more experiences like this that my family might bring me along to.
Hey this sounds like a great experience! I think that it would be such an eye opening experience to witness this first hand. I hope that one day as a teacher I can expose students not to just the genocide of Native Americans that is required by the state that I teach but to many more aspects of this amazing culture. Once I get a permanent job, my own classroom etc you have to come speak to my US History classes! I love you sis hope all is well!
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