Kahnawake Pow Wow: Five Days Not About Moi

Kahnawake Pow Wow - Echoes of a Proud Nation 2011 - FINAL POST

Previous Posts:
1. Intro to the Kahnawake Mohawk/Kanienkahaka reserve
2. Men I met on the bus rides to Kahnawake

3. Be Excellent in Her Presence

4. Aligned like living magnetic needle

A few final pics, videos, and thoughts.

I came back with food in time to see the tiny tots!

That boy on the bottom left was really working it. He meant bidness.

But I missed their Saturday competition.

 Not my pic, but shows you how seriously all the age groups take these competitions. And they all win money too.

This young woman (not my pic) was a jungle dancer and holy cats* she just never stopped dancing. Towards the end there was a general dance where anyone could join in, but it had been a long hot day, and it was 4 PM, sun still in the sky, so many dancers were just walking or swaying at this point. But she kept right on, hand on hip, JINGLE JINGLE JINGLE DAMMIT!

I never showed you the earrings I bought! They're made of antler with hand-painted turtles on them. (We can talk another time about why I bought animal-product earrings. Suffice it to say, it wasn't a mistake, but no, my principles haven't changed.)

My favorite of the 5 or 6 drum bands, and one of the two albums I bought, was Black Bear from northern Quebec. Here are two videos, not from the pow wow I attended. They're a little subdued on this number but it's pretty.


Usually they were letting it rip and drawing a big crowd.


And so ends my pow wow description week. Thanks to those who stuck with me through it, lol. :-) Mouah mouah! xxoo

I just couldn't do it justice in one post, or didn't feel like it anyway. I mean, I've got Irish, English, Scottish, French and Belgian roots, which spread at least as far as the Prairies, and surely did some damage right here in Montreal. And while I know many of the settler stories of my Irish ancestors in Alberta--my great-grandmother came over as a little girl--and I know these were good people, kind people, that doesn't mean that settlement didn't have a negative impact, nonetheless, on the many good kind people who lived in Alberta before them. And all the other places my peeps settled.

And though a lot of *my peeps,* the pink peoples, refuse to see it, to this day that gives us advantages that no one else has. So that even when we fall on our asses, it's that much easier to get back up. For those born into disadvantage, it's that much easier to get ahead and become one of the elite. And for those born into the elite, you get to inherit the power to keep making the world in your image.

So. It seemed worth my time to take five days out of my blog to talk about someone other than myself.

:-)

________
* Thank you Judy, Judy, Judy for my new favorite expression. I'm reading Judy's serialized Gothic novel, which she's posting on her web site. It's really good! I don't usually read ghost stories so I love the creepy parts the best, but it's also a good romance. It's about a marriage of convenience between an ex-model fighting for custody of two eating-disordered girls, and an injured soccer player in need of a green card, holed up in a haunted house.

The story's heroine, Clementine, occasionally says: Holy cats!  And it is hands down my aces new fave expression. To start The Hungry Ghosts is go here.