Letter: Celebrate culture on Indigenous People’s Day
To the Editor-
Sunday, I spent the day in Wausau at the 4th Annual Indigenous People’s Day Pow Wow. This free event was to celebrate native culture in Central Wisconsin, with dancing, drumming, food, and an artist’s market.
I had never been to a pow-wow before. And even though a commercial DNA test and Ancestry.com tells me I have an ancestor through my maternal grandmother who was in the Catawba tribe, my family never celebrated that cultural tie.
Undoubtedly the best part of the event was the native dancers, drummers, and singers. Spectator participation was encouraged but a recent knee injury kept me stuck to a chair. That said, the vibration from the drums came up the soles of my feet and lodged in my chest. The native dancers were from all over and decked out in their colorfully beaded tribal dress. Dancers festooned with feathers were breathtaking.
This was not a quiet event. An announcer called dancers into the large circle but they soon overlapped with the sounds of the singer’s voices. Wordless. It didn’t matter. The rising and falling of the voices brought a tear to my eye.
I can’t help but wonder at the spectacle–the children in ribbon skirts and women in belled dresses. The elders softly toe-heel stepping with straight backs and proud faces. The proud, feathered, native men calling and moving with grace and power.
Then I wondered how could anyone want to see this wiped out. Thousands of years before European feet touched the soil in North America, people danced these dances. In spite of hundreds of years of sustained genocide and effort to stamp them out, they remain. They are still here to dance.
Let’s be sure to celebrate these cultures. Preserve them. Treasure them. Honor them.
Happy Indigenous People’s Day.
Lisa Pett
Hull