Dancing, Singing, and Solidarity at Powwow
Native American culture is alive in California.
A brilliantly dressed array of representatives from tribes from all over the state–including the Navajo, Lakota, Cherokee, Chumash, and Crow Nations–gathered for two days in a grass clearing on the CSUB campus in revelry and fellowship.
The tribes pitched their canopies in a circle about thirty yards wide and each tribe had dancers to represent them in the middle. Live drum circles played and sang native songs in native languages with pulsating rhythms and visceral tribal singing that was haunting yet powerful.
Fry bread (not “fried” bread) with honey and powdered sugar, delicious Indian tacos with traditional native sauce, and shaved ice were available from the numerous native food vendors that set up around the dance circle. Other merchants included craftspeople selling dreamcatchers, tribal memorabilia, jewelry, and toys for the children.
The event was a time for families, many of whom had native roots or were natives themselves, to celebrate the beauty and peace-loving nature of their culture.
The blistering heat did not seem to disenchant the enraptured dancers who were garbed in a beautifully colored array of heavy traditional clothing along with the flamboyant feathered headwear. The dancers were skilled and athletic in their performances, dancing with the drummers’ beats in perfect synchronicity. Some songs were for certain age groups only, some for professional dancers only, and some were for everybody as indicated by the emcee.
The underlying theme of the event was an expression of solidarity with the thousands of Indians that have gathered in North Dakota to protest the building of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which may be built on sacred native lands near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation under Lake Oahe. Protesters argue, as did Sioux Nation representatives at the powwow, that it would contaminate the water and disrupt lands of ancestral significance. Legislation around its building is ongoing and a donation was collected from a representative of the Sioux Nation.
-Richard Raygoza