Kahnawake Pow Wow: Aligned like living magnetic needle

Kahnawake Pow Wow - Echoes of a Proud Nation 2011 - POST 4

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

__________________________________

Here's my only good pics, of the Golden Age 60+ men competing, which started the competition after the honor dances.

Watching the "old boys" (the mc called all the men, of all ages "boys," which of course you wouldn't want a white person to do, but from him it was charming) I immediately thought about the "hipster headdresses" which I've posted about before.

These men were awesome dancers. I think most of them were dancing "traditional" which doesn't require a lot of running around, but (it seems to me) requires precise movements, control, being at one with the musc, and maybe acting? Once the music began they were transformed from guys-hanging-out-giving-fives-and-smoking, to warriors and hunters reliving their battles, and storytelling. I wonder how many years they've been dancing.

 

I was reading yesterday the blog of a Tsilhqot'tin woman, who was mostly raised in urban areas, and works a lot in fashion, blogs about fashion and such--all cool. She likes the use of headdresses in fashion, and wishes more native clothing were integrated into the fashion world, both cause she appreciates their beauty, and when they're beautifully photographed; and because she likes to see the integration of native culture into mainstream culture. 

Of course, she has more right to her views than I to mine, and I like her blog for exposing me to a diversity of views--aboriginal people aren't a "monolith" (good ole university word!) But in one entry she said her people don't have a tradition of war bonnets, and she doesn't do the pow wow circuit, so I wondered if the issue would hit her harder in the gut if that were the case? But I could be totally and INSULTINGLY OFF BASE. [face blush]

You can read Lisa Charleyboy views here, and here. (Though she did protest when a blog went as far as "playing cowboys and Indians" with the fashion images. But I feel like, that's what you're going to get once the fashion world starts down the path of using cultural items they don't understand. Meh.)

It's just that, when I watched these old men, and then the younger men, and then the little boys who had worked so hard on their dancing, I felt like they'd earned the right to their headdresses and to the feathers on their backs. It didn't feel like I was watching a fashion parade.

 

I felt like any of those Coachella-headdress-wearers, if they ever went to a pow wow and sat and really WATCHED these men, they might have got the point. Cause when you're there, and feeling the drums in your belly, and someone is voicing a beautiful song, it's an Experience.

Here's a younger group of men (at some other pow wow) performing men's traditional. It really was my favorite category, I could have watched much more of it. There were some dancers that just completely transfixed me--it was disappointing when the music stopped.

As for the experience, as a white person, I think Bruce Cockburn captures it pretty well, despite the 80s-electronica, with his song "Hoop Dancer." (At least it's Hugh Marsh's electric fiddle, which is still cool sounding.)

There's a time line
Something like vertical, like perpendicular
Cutting through figures shuffling on horizontal plane
Cutting through the survival pride of the dancers
Through the guilty, sentimental warmth of the crowd
Through to some essence common to us, to original man
To perhaps descendants numberless ... or few

Where it intersects the space at hand
This shaman with the hoops stands
Aligned like living magnetic needle between deep past and looming future
Butterfly pierced on each drum beat, wing beat, thunder clap, static spark, storm front, energy circle delineated by leaping limbs

        

Take the headdress OFF!

Is this what happens when you aren't part of a campus anymore and aren't watching MTV? You don't realize that the latest hipster trend is to wear aboriginal headdresses?

Ohhhhh maaaaan. When I returned to university in 2003 only the Engineering students were pulling dumb shit like this. (Or was it my first degree in the 90's??) Were they ahead of their time? Will those dreadlock wigs be the fashion in 2012?

Of course, you know who I blame:

That was 2004. Andre 3000's never apologized, doubtless because he's "part Native American"...  just like 90% of North Americans seems to claim.

So here we are, 2011, and it's in the music videos...

...in the ads...

... on the celebrities...

Jared Leto

Kesha

...in the magazines...

...in the stores...

...and on every white person at the Coachella music festival. (Sorry I didn't credit these pics above and below, but they're all from the Hipster Appropriations tumblr. They've got zillions of them.)

 

If you don't think wearing a hipster headdress is Inappropriate then go here. And if you still don't, then you can join some of the naysayers in the comments. What really struck me was how many of them put forward a new sort of argument that I assume is coming from a younger age group, that goes like this: There's no culture anymore, everyone's exploited, don't waste your time trying to stop it.

It kind of disturbs me. 

If this view were truly representative of Today's Youth I would go to bed and stay there like Brian Wilson. However I know it's not, thank the Lord of Appropriate Head Gear. Here's a taste:

 
* it's 2010. there is no culture anymore. you should just be happy people still think of natives when they see a head-dress. 

* nobody "owns" their culture - there's too much variations and too many similarities of the human kind in various cultures around the world for anyone to claim anything. I hope that Ms. Baldwin actually got the point here as well. And again, Indian tribes/nations have no cultures, just like Irish immigrants in America have no culture. The one culture that unites us is the USA culture, and that culture is the only relevant one in this conversation.

* It is idealist to think that YOUR culture and YOUR cultural item won't be exploited for fashion or social comment, when all other culture is exploited to. This generation (in the west anyway) and all others to come to have freedoms, socially, economically and morally that no angry blog is going to curb or undo. Save your breath.

* I think this point of view is painfully old-fashioned. The Internet has created a melting pot of Ancient, Present, Past, and Future cultures from all around the world. And at this point, everyone is fully aware of what stereotypes are and what "PC" is, and going on about them is only going to perpetuate them.... Everyone is connected and everyone is mixed, this is a new tribe of people. A handmade headdress (and not the dime store "cowboys and indians" plastic version) is sacred to anyone who wears it and certainly to anyone who makes it.

Save us all. :-o  

Cheer us up Graham Greene!

         

Studying race; and Powwows: Ur doing it wrong

So I'm back in research mode for the revision of my last novel. My protagonist is half Mohawk and half... Nuu-cha-nulth or Snuneymuxw. Thing is I know Nanaimo better, which is where the Snuneymuxw people are... so why did I choose Nuu-cha-nulth last time, who are further North around Port Alberni where I've never been? I don't know, I'm sure I had a reason, like maybe there was an online verbal dictionary. But there's one now, for the Halkomelem language. (I started this book in 2003, a lot's changed on the netserland.)

Anyway. So it's back to researching again, because there are new resources available. Such as Tumblr.

I remember reading once that in the race of facebook vs myspace, something interesting came out--that more African-Americans were using myspace. Well, I recently came across a whole bunch of Native American and some Canadian aboriginal Tumblr blogs. So I created a Tumblr blog for my book, in order to easily bookmark things.

And it means I'm back into reading race politics again. I'm reading a book about a guy who went back to live on his Six Nations reserve... well that's not a very political book, except about internal politics. But soon I'll be reading Writing the Other, which is considered The Book on writing... well, the other. And I'm reading and following all these aboriginal Tumblrs, so I find myself dancing off into various corners of the internet, following the trail of interesting stories.

Like this one, about five girls who showed up at a Powwow dressed like this:

A friend took the picture and sent it to a person who runs a blog on cultural appropriation. What shocked her in particular is that these girls were from a high school across from Stanford U where according to one commentor everyone is Crème de la crème politically correct (Eg. you don't pull this shit at Stanford U, whereas at McGill I'm sure the engineering students still party in fake dreadlocks and chief headdresses); and according to the blogger:

[Stanford] hosts the largest student run powwow in the nation for 39 years running, that is home to nearly 300 Native students, that has one of the strongest college Native communities in California

I've been suckered in, as usual, by the comments. A lot of the debate has devolved into whether it was okay to post the pic of the girls, mostly because the guy who took the photo tricked the girls into posing for it. (Instead of just taking a candid photo, which I assume would have by-passed all this "Hey that's not nice!" business, and re-focused everyone back on the real issue: WTF!!!)

Have you guys ever been to a powwow? There's one in Kahnawake each year, but I'm such a lazy-pants I never go! I'd like to make myself go this year. I promise to leave the hand-prints at home.