July 13, 2014 - North American Indian Days Pow Wow

Day 13 – July 13, 2014

It’s a POW WOW Day! Our morning was slow and uneventful as we blogged and selected our photos from the previous day. Not having wifi easily accessible is a drag. And the Xanterra park wifi isn’t very strong which makes adding photos to our blog a long process with many pitfalls and restarts.

It’s North American Indian Pow Wow days (July 10-13) on the rez and no alcohol can be served by any establishment on the rez until tomorrow after the pow wow ends today.

Leaving around 11:00, we went on the grocery hunt for coffee creamer. Our camp store was completely out and planned to stock more in the future.  But, for now, the kind young man said we could take all the little vending creamers we wanted back to our room. We decided that wouldn’t get us through another week of coffee so we stopped by the St. Mary Supermart and found what we needed. We’ll stop on our return from Browning. Since we eat our instant oatmeal using the hot water from the coffee pot and then making coffee, we want the luxury of creamer not the powdered stuff. And we usually have lunches of PBJ, cheese & crackers, or hummus and veggies to save money and possibly share a dinner if the portion size allows. The last couple nights we’ve enjoyed a great salad topped with tofu, salmon, or chicken. You’d think I’d lose weight with all the walking, no snacks, and limited meals but my clothes still feel the same.

Browning, Montana is only a 35 miles drive but it takes much longer with the climbs and twists and turns on the road. We thought this huge Pow Wow would be obvious from the road but we were mistaken. There was the rodeo portion of the Pow Wow and we saw that entrance but didn’t see many teepees (lodges) so we kept driving. We turned around when we reached the other end of the town and saw the vast prairie land ahead.

But wait! Gas for $3.59 when we last paid $4.20! Gotta stop and fill up our half tank low and take the opportunity to ask for directions. A man ahead of me had on a red t-shirt with the back embroidered “gate crew” so naturally I accosted HIM with a tap on his shoulder. He was very pleasant and gave excellent directions to turn at the bronco rider which happened to be in front of the Blackfeet Heritage Center & Art Gallery. There were no other signs and this turn would never have occurred to us to be the road to the entrance.

 

Fun events for the kids.

They charged nothing to enter and park and directed us to the metal roof building in the back of the fairgrounds which was right at the entrance to the rodeo and the midway-style vendors. The rodeo is held with the regular events and other horsemanship abilities such as relay.  The Blackfeet are known as the first nation to be armed with guns and become mounted warriors. These two things gave them great advantage which allowed them to keep their lands intact from other tribes trying to move in.

 

Young man dressed in the costume for the Prairie Chicken Dance.

The North American Indian Days attract all of the Blackfeet from the U.S. and Canada as well as other tribes in the west. It was 12:40 and the Grand Entrance is scheduled to begin at 1:00p so we headed to the dance arena with a few jewelry vendor stops along the way. ;-)  The arena resembled an old west fort from the outside with horizontal half logs mounted on 2x6 spines on the inside. We quibbled over where to sit as we guessed which entry would be the “main” one for the spectacle to come and which area would remain in the shade! The announcer gave the audience temperature updates as we waited for the start…98…99.  That’s degrees Fahrenheit folks! We had left the mountains at 81 degrees just an hour before.

A strict 1:00 time was being announced to hurry the drum circle participants to their stations and get ready to begin warm ups. Each circle’s name, like Iron Horse, was announced and a drum beaten to acknowledge their readiness. A “best boy” walked around with wireless microphone on a boom to hold over the center of the circle for all to hear as each circle was introduced and played their warm-up song.  Ten circles in all were in attendance in the hot afternoon sun and some took their “down time” to add a portable canopy to offer themselves shade.

As the drum circle rotation progressed, drummers from other circles traveled to listen to their competition.

A memorial was held for a prominent man in the community who had died. His immediate family led a procession around the arena carrying his photo and followed by close relatives and friends. As they passed other people in the stands and sitting on the arena floor, those who knew the man or his mother would come up and hug her and give their condolences. The procession was led by the two North American Indian Days (NAID) Princesses who danced while the procession walked behind and  were accompanied by one of the 10 drums circles. When the procession reached full circle, boxes and bags of blankets and bound washcloths were brought out. A long list of names of people important to the deceased was read and each was given a blanket as a thank you for being such a good friend to him. The washcloths, bound with twine and a tag “In Memory of…” were tossed out to the spectators in the stands who honored the deceased by their presence at this memorial.

The 1:00 Grand Entrance was now ready to commence at 2-ish. Time is a relative thing in the culture. As we stood to get better photos of the entrance of the hundreds of dancers and dignitaries, a man asked to see our camera passes. What? “We don’t got no stinkin’ camera passes!” Well, he directed us to the office and I volunteered to go fetch two passes at $20 each while Melodie stayed in the stands to capture the entrance.  (Remember the no charge for entry at the gate? Guess they make up for it now.)

The woman in charge of handing out the camera passes and collecting our money was now judging the grand entrance so I had to wait until it was completely over for her return.

 

Viet Nam Veteran leading the Grand Entrance.

Flags leading the procession: front row, American, Blackfeet Nation, POW MIA, Canadian, and Montana state flag with the battle flags of the services in the 2nd row.

Drum Circle playing and singing the Grand Entrance procession into the arena.

The entry was magnificent! I’ve never seen such pageantry and color with a people so full of life! The flag bearers wore headdresses of eagle feathers straight up and not the chief-style headdresses we white men are used to seeing. These straight headdresses have great significance to the Blackfeet as these men earned them by fighting in a real battle in Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and other places.

Our Blackfeet Soldiers

After the prayer and national anthems, the dancers entered grouped by their dance style followed by the women and lastly the children dancers. Passes in hand, I returned to our seats to climb the wooden bleachers and get back in the shade.

60+ dancing the Women's Traditional

60+ men dancing the Buckskin Dance which is performed when visitors come  to the encampment.

Viet Nam vet in the 60+ Buckskin Dance.

How low can you go?

The first dance competition was the over 60 men and women and the announcer asked the audience to stand to honor these elders as they danced. One woman danced gingerly with her cane covered to match her costume. The 55+ dancers were next and two dance styles were combined since fewer dancers were in these two age groups. A break in the dancing brought on the singing competition as each drum circle competed and Iron Horse won this event.

The time was pushing 4:00 and our breakfast had long since been digested and the Indian Fry Bread and lemonade were calling us. We left and tried to find Joe Kelly’s (aka Power Buffalo) lodge to stop in but were unsuccessful. There were more vendor stations to checkout and some good buys at the last jewelry stop. Authentic Native made jewelry provides a one-of-a-kind artistic piece. We stopped in to the fur vendor and I was surprised Melodie would even go in there! We didn’t look at the furs but the other smaller bone and wood carvings.

Cute Indian girl won't have any trouble as she waits "for her cowboy".

Standing in respect of the 60+ dancers.

125 Lodges were erected and over 450 campers used the facilities.

The Blackfeet are the largest proportional volunteer ethnicity in the U.S. This is their Veterans' Lodge. 

Getting our fry bread and lemonade, we headed for the car and sat in the AC while we ate. My display gave the temperature which was a far cry from the temps of 81 when we reached Glacier Park again.

With our creamer bought, we returned to our cabin and I promptly took a nap while Melodie played with her pictures…or so I thought. Seems her ga-zinta for her camera card had stopped working and she got errors telling her that her start up disk was full. So during my hour-long nap, Melodie trashed 500 photos but didn’t solve the problem. Good thing I didn’t know I had a built-in ga-zinta for my camera card and had brought a USB adapter to download my photos. That solved the problem for her. She had given me the adapter long ago and now we can share it.

On our drive down to dinner, filling the ice bucket, and abusing the wifi, we saw a coyote trotting through the cabins and disappearing into the brush. Our dinner was serenaded by James, who is studying voice, guitar, and Music Business and Production.  We had a nice chat about wading through all the “nos” to get to the “yeses” in auditioning and making a living in the music industry. He was on his way to Canada tomorrow and planned to enjoy a nice glass of Merlot after this alcohol drought during Indian Days.

We fought with the blogger and were unable to post but will try again tonight. If not, there will be many posts in the future when we get to West Glacier and have wifi in our room!!!

I left Melodie on her computer and went off to dreamland at 10:30p since we’re getting up early for our final Fishercap Lake hike to see moose.