Tag Archives: Native American Dance

The Gathering of Nations: North America’s Biggest Powwow

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The Gathering of Nations is North America’s biggest powwow in history. They have been celebrating their history and culture all as one for the past 41 years (1). Along with the Powwow, this now three-day celebration also includes events like Miss Indian World, a Horse Parade, and the Indian Trading Market. 

One of the first logos for The Gathering of Nations (Akwasasne Notes, Vol. 21, No. 6, Dec. 1989.) (5)

The Gathering of Nations was started back in 1983 by a man named Derek Mathews, who still manages the event today along with his wife and daughter. After hosting for so long, and at the level this event rose in popularity, many Native Americans were curious and outraged why Derek, an African American, was managing such a big cultural event. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, he states that “They [Lakota holy men he met with in South Dakota] said I was the one to carry it forward. It needed to be somebody outside of the tribal boundaries,” he recalled. “That way it could be entrusted to someone who would carry it for all tribes” (2). In this article, he later states that he did indeed have Native ancestors, relatives of the Cherokee Nation, that he did not know about until he went searching. 

Written in the Akwesasne Notes Vol. 17, No. 6 in 1985, attendance after the first two years of hosting was over 1,000 dancers from more than 200 Native American Reservations and Reserves (3). Derek states in an interview with the Gathering of Nations Powwow team, the following year from the Akwesasne Notes article in 1985 was the year they needed to move to a new venue since their current place was too small (4, 1:09). Still taking place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Gathering of Nations is the largest Powwow in North America today with over 70,000 attendees from over 565 tribes.

An advertisement, and change of dates and venue, for the 1986 Gathering of Nations. (Akwasasne Notes, Vol. 17, No. 6, Dec. 1985.)

Sources:

  1. “Gon History.” Gathering of Nations, 9 Sept. 2023, www.gatheringofnations.com/history/#:~:text=The%20Gathering%20of%20Nations%20is%20produced%20and%20managed%20by%20Derek,%26%20Melonie%20Mathews.
  2. “Impresario Creates Controversy with Powwow Success.” Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune, 21 Aug. 2021, www.chicagotribune.com/2003/06/25/impresario-creates-controversy-with-powwow-success/.
  3. The Akwasasne Notes, Vol. 17, No. 6, Page 15. Published December, 1985. The Newberry Library, Rooseveltown, NY. https://www.indigenoushistoriesandcultures.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Detail/akwesasne-notes-vol.-17-no.-6/7027181?item=7027189
  4. “Inside GON with Derek Mathews.” Youtube, Gathering of Nations Powwow, 5 Nov. 2012, youtu.be/XDT45cjhZxQ?si=cICvAqLpyI4O0GKc.
  5. The Akwasasne Notes, Vol. 21, No. 6. Published December, 1989. The Newberry Library, Rooseveltown, NY. https://www.indigenoushistoriesandcultures.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Detail/akwesasne-notes-vol.-21-no.-6/7027271?item=7027287

 

Ute Bear Dances and Notched Sticks

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Initially, I hoped to research the topic of symbolism in relation to Native American instruments, but that line of researching did not take me far, so I instead settled on looking at the scholarship on their instruments in general. In Clark Wissler’s informational text, The American Indian, there is a section on Native American music which turns to musical instruments, claiming that the two most common instruments are drums and rattles. His survey meanders across the Americas, discussing the cultural varieties of such instruments, emphasizing the dominance of calabash (gourd) rattles, the importance of which, he claims, is only approached by the notched stick1. The footnote attached to this observation, citing anthropologist Robert Lowie, led to where my research ultimately landed.

Lowie has a fair number of entries in another collection of anthropological papers on Native American societies edited by Wissler, one of which examines the “Dances and

Ute Musicians. From left to right: Brookus Sibello 1890, Dick Sibello 1882, Henry Myore, and two young boys. Using notched rasps and rubbing sticks, for music.

 

Societies of the Plains Shoshone,” within which he describes the Bear Dance, a prominent Ute ceremony. Although he has never seen a Bear Dance himself, Lowie draws upon several first hand accounts of the ceremony to explain the basic function and structure of Bear Dances: a social event lasting four days at the end of winter/beginning of spring in a circular enclosure of branches, where men and women form two lines designated by sex and the women approach whichever men they want to dance with, and the dancing commences2. Watch this video of a Southern Ute Indian tribe Bear Dance, recorded in 1988, to get a better idea. The music produced in the Bear Dance is what brought me to the ceremony, as the principle instrument used in the ceremony, besides singing, is the notched stick (or rattle) mentioned in The American Indian. 

Ute Indians perform the Bear Dance on at the Bear Dance Festival. The Bear Dance welcomes the Spring of the year. (1920)

The notched stick, pictured at right, has two parts. The first is a stick about a foot or

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924012929372;view=1up;seq=868

Notched sticks and rasps used in Ute Bear Dances (Lowie)

more in length and “throughout its entire length it is whittled flat, and transverse notches or grooves are cut across this flattened portion.”3 The second part is a “rasp”, usually either a bone or rod. The notched stick is held against the ground or similar surface in one hand, while the other holds the rod and “is moved rapidly up and down the grooved portion so as to make a rattling sound.”4 Multiple sets of these are played alongside vocals, setting the dance into motion.

But why is it called the Bear Dance? According to Verner Reed, who in 1893 was invited to a Bear Dance by a Southern Ute tribe in Colorado (one of the first hand accounts Lowie cites), the Ute people “believe their primal ancestors were bears; after these came the race of Indians, who, on dying, were changed to bears” and the Bear Dances are meant to reinforce their friendship. The ceremony is held around the time bears awaken from hibernation and the dance is supposed to “cast the film of blindness from their eyes” when the bears wake.5

Native American Dance and Music: A Dueling Struggling for Appropriate Representation

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Music is a multifaceted art form that intersects with many other forms of expression and has both a creative and cultural importance to many Native American communities. One prolific intersection, especially in Native American cultures, that exists is that of music and dance. In some of the earliest entries from European explorers, their experience with native tribes comes hand in hand with music and dance.1 One of the issues we have talked about in class is the appropriation and misuse of Native American cultural practices. This is not an issue that exists solely in the realms of music and other object-like representations. Within many European cohorts “American” dance was seen as something exotic, a form of entertainment that was both culturally intangible to them yet consistently available for general consumption.2 Unlike with Native American songs the technology to record the movement of dance was not widely used until the 1950’s. This meant that the visual representations of dance, outside of live performances, was concentrated in the lens of photographers.

Emma B. Freeman was a popular American photographer during the late 1910’s.

Emma B. Freeman was one such photographer. Freeman’s work concentrated on stylized portraits of indigenous people, culture, and fashion. She was a relatively controversial artist in that she was not always consistent in her portrayal of specific tribes and groups of people.3 She would accidentally mix, match, and generalize certain aspects of the tribes she was studying. Music and dance were both subjects she played with at times, documenting ceremonial dancers lined up before a dance. She also introduced musical instruments into the portraits of unmoving patrons.

Dancers from the Hoopa tribe.

Members of the Klamath tribe preparing for the white deer skin dance.

Emma B. Freemen’s style idealized the Native experience and tokenized their appearance through objectification. This stands as an example of the balance between appropriation and preservation and shows just how complicated the intersection between art and representation can be.

1Music in the USA : A Documentary Companion, edited by Judith Tick, and Paul Beaudoin, Oxford University Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/stolaf-ebooks/detail.action?docID=415567.

2Haines, John. 2012. “The Earliest European Responses to Dancing in the Americas.” U.S. Catholic Historian 30, no. 4: 1-20. America: History and Life with Full Text, EBSCOhost.

3 Clark, Gus. 1991. “Emma B. Freeman: photographer romanticized, stylized Native Americans.” Humboldt Historian 39, no. 5: 5-10. America: History and Life with Full Text, EBSCOhost.