Every Memorial Day weekend, the Delaware Indians have their annual pow-wow at a tribal site up near the Kansas-Oklahoma border. My family has gone there for years to visit and socialize with friends and extended family, and, more importantly, to dance. When I was a child, we had a family campsite there and camped out every year. In recent years, we've driven the 15 or so miles back and forth every day from my parents' house instead of camping, losing the fun campfire smoke smell, but giving us the advantage of daily showers.
Pow-wows are social gatherings and dances that began to evolve in the early 20th century as an outgrowth of the old wild west shows. They are "pan-Indian," meaning they are a collection of people from a number of tribes, rather than being a special ceremonial or traditional dance of a single, particular tribe. In Oklahoma, there are usually two or three (or more) pow-wows every weekend, somewhere in the state.
There really aren't any pow-wows around the Washington area, so this is the first time I've gotten to dress and dance in about four years. I miss it. The drum is very centering. It was also nice to go around to the various camps and see distant family members and longtime family friends, again, most of whom I've not seen since moving to D.C. Some of my childhood friends and contemporaries were there with their now-large families, many of whom are now well into being grandmothers. Seeing camps with four generations of a family is a common thing.
Everyone likes to pass down the Indian traditions to the younger generation. Even small children are dressed in traditional tribal regalia and brought by their parents into the dance arena.
For more pictures of the dance, click here to get to my Flickr album.
