A Gathering of Nations
The Gathering of Nations Powwow in Albuquerque, N.M., is North America’s largest powwow.
The Gathering of Nations Powwow in Albuquerque, N.M., is North America’s largest powwow. It’s a dance competition, marketplace and Miss Indian World pageant all in one huge three-day event. But most of all, the powwow is a social gathering where American Indians of all ages—from babies in delicately beaded moccasins who dance in their mothers’ arms to tribal elders who carry eagle staffs in the grand-entry procession—celebrate their traditions through song and dance.
"It’s the only time we come together—all the nations—and it’s powerful," says Sammy Tone-kei White, 74, a Kiowa from Anadarko, Okla. (pop. 6,645), who has emceed the powwow since it was started in 1983.
About 250 participants showed up the first year that Derek Mathews, an adviser for the Indian Club at the University of New Mexico, staged the event. The winning combination of a central location and thousands of dollars in prize money for dancers has created a sold-out powwow that attracts 150,000 spectators on the last full weekend in April.
"When you dance, you forget all your troubles," says Juanita Marcus Turley, 69, as she braids her long black hair in preparation for competition. Turley, a Taos Pueblo who lives in nearby Santa Fe, wears a buckskin dress and leggings adorned with intricate beadwork crafted by a Shoshone woman.
Her husband, Frank Turley, 68, became interested in American Indian culture as a 13-year-old Boy Scout and began dancing at powwows the next year.
"The music is beautiful," he says. "You dance to a song you may never have heard before, but you listen to the drum cues."
Tribal traditions
Singing, drumming and dancing take center stage at all powwows, and each dance has its distinctive steps, regalia and rich history. Men compete in three basic categories—traditional, grass dance and fancy, while women compete in traditional, fancy and jingle dress dancing.
Men’s traditional dancers wear ribboned shirts and porcupine headdresses and tell a choreographed story of a hunter stalking game or enemies, while female jingle dancers, clad in dresses adorned with hundreds of jingling metal cones made from snuff can lids, keep their feet flying in intricate movements.
"The judges look for how coordinated the dancer is and how smooth," says Tosha Goodwill, 27, a Lakota Sioux from Rapid City, S.D. (pop. 59,607). "Like with any sport, some are more coordinated than others."
Dancers treat their regalia respectfully, and if an eagle feather, considered sacred, drops during a dance, it is picked up only by a war veteran who performs a special dance. Veterans or warriors are held in the highest regard and honored during opening ceremonies.
For professional dancers, powwows are a way to earn a living while sharing their cultural heritage. Cash prizes at the Gathering of Nations totaled $130,000 last year, and most of the 1,000 powwows held across the country year-round award prizes.
"I love the music, I love the dance, I love being around everyone," says Steven Middle Rider, 27, a Blackfeet and Chippewa-Cree fancy dancer from San Jose, Calif. He competes as a chicken dancer with movements mimicking a prairie chicken.
Many dancers began following in their elders’ fancy footsteps as toddlers. Three-year-old Tate Bear, a Meskwaki and Lakota from Denver, Colo., stands obediently on a bleacher while his mother dresses him for the tiny tots’ competition for dancers under age 6.
"He’s been dancing since he could walk," says Tanski Clairmont, 23, a Rosebud Lakota. She straps on his back bustle of bright blue and white feathers, small arm bustles and his headdress.
Then she turns her attention to 5-month-old Wakinyela, decked out in beaded moccasins tied with pink ribbons and a pink satin appliquéd dress.
Clairmont rocks Wakinyela in her arms, and the baby is lulled to sleep by the ever-present bone-deep drumbeat.
Trade goods
Outside the stadium, the line stretches longer by the minute for Indian fry bread, a round deep-fried bread drizzled with honey or sprinkled with sugar. Business is brisk, too, inside the traders’ tent where 800 artists and merchants sell handmade wares and trade goods from deer hides to turkey feathers and ornamental beads to tribal history books.
Terri Grimm of McIntosh, N.M., is fascinated by tables laden with turquoise jewelry. "It’s nice to be around people who do this," she says excitedly. "I love coming here—so many beautiful costumes and I love the drumming."
A delicate flute melody beckons from the Mountain Spirit Flutes booth of Kay Littlejohn, 42, and her husband Danny Bigay, 43, both Cherokee from Greeneville, Tenn. (pop. 15,198). The full-time flute makers use antique hand tools, such as a wagon maker’s spokeshave, to shape red cedar, sycamore and sassafras into flutes. Littlejohn’s father taught her the craft.
"Flutes are common to all tribes," Bigay says. "It’s a way of expressing good feelings, of expressing your heart without words."
Jeannette Moore, a member of an Albuquerque flute and drum group, can’t resist sampling one of the double-barreled flutes and soon is adrift in the music. "These are beautiful flutes—very nice," she says.
But the beauty of the powwow goes beyond the music and dancing. The gathering is a place to make and enrich friendships with others of common ancestry and to express pride in that shared heritage.
"The powwow brings all the tribes together," White says. "It’s like a homecoming. It’s good medicine."
What’s a Powwow?
American Indians have held ceremonial gatherings since ancient times, but intertribal powwows—in which members of several tribes convene to socialize and exchange cultural traditions—are a more recent practice.
"Everyone claims that their powwow was the first," says Tara Browner, 43, associate professor of ethnomusicology and American Indian Studies at the University of California in Los Angeles and author of Heartbeat of the People: Music and Dance of the Northern Pow-wow.
Contemporary intertribal powwows began in the 1880s with the establishment of Indian reservations, but whether it was the Poncas in Oklahoma or the Winnebagos in Nebraska who first welcomed all tribes is debatable.
"The concept of powwows goes back before European contact, but they were strictly clannish," Browner says. The word "powwow" is derived from the Algonquian word "pau wau," meaning "he dreams" and is associated with medicine men and healing.
What isn’t disputed is that William "Buffalo Bill" Cody with his Wild West Show promoted the entertainment value of powwows for non-natives and encouraged American Indian dancers to "fancy it up."
"What’s important about powwows is the sense of community," says Browner, who is Choctaw and a dancer. "You feel strong and proud of who you are, and there’s a comfort level there for just a weekend. All families have stories of sadness and displacement, and you’re with people who understand your background and how it shaped who you are."
Finding a powwow isn’t a problem, Browner says.
"I tell my students that there’s a powwow within three hours’ driving distance of anyone in the United States."
This year’s Gathering of Nations Powwow is scheduled April 28-30. For more information, log on to www.gatheringofnations.com, or to find a powwow near you, visit www.powwow-power.com.
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