By Chantelle Bacigalupo
The heavy mixture of snow and sleet poured down on Saturday, April 1 in the morning hours leading up to the 2017 North American Center of Boston (NAICOB) and University of Massachusetts (UMASS) Boston Pow Wow. With participants and vendors travelling from Maine, Connecticut and Cape Cod, organizers feared a low turnout given the weather conditions.
“I wasn’t expecting it to be as good as it is with the weather issue. But I’m very pleased with the whole thing...the attendance, great spirit, wishing I’ll be here again,” said Chief Ken Alves, (Wampanoag) a community member invited by NAICOB’s Board President Jamie Morrison.
The Pow Wow was held in the UMASS Boston Ballroom where vendors selling books, jewelry, animals skins, occupied both ends of the room and the original first row of chairs surrounding the room quickly expanded into a couple more. “We had at least 300 members of the general public here not counting dancers and drums. We’ve had as many as 30 dancers, and 20 drummers here as well,” said Cedric Woods, (Lumbee), director of the Institute for New England Native American Studies at UMASS Boston.
The Pow Wow is an annual event at NAICOB since the 1960’s, but this year it held even more meaning than usual. NAICOB has provided cultural, social, educational, and professional related services to the New England Native American community for over 45 years. As the only urban Indian center in Massachusetts, their mission is to empower the Native American community with the goal of improving the quality of life of Indigenous peoples. After NAICOB’s original prayer grounds were lost, community members have been left without a space to gather.“ Losing that parcel of land right next to the center was a big hit for the community because that was our space. So, just the fact that we are able to do this now, I think is a big deal...I mean space provides for everything else. It provides for the time that you can spend together. It provides for the memories,” said Raquel Halsey (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation), NAICOB interim executive director.
Collaboration between UMASS Boston and NAICOB has been consistent over the years. And with NAICOB nearby, UMASS felt like the right partner for the event. Woods mentioned, “We can’t operate in isolation. It is particularly important to us in our program here to really put up front the local Indigenous Peoples. Today, we have had elders from Wampanoag, Nipmuck and Massachusett people all talk about their traditional territory.”
Opportunities for community members to come together and be heard is cherished. Chief Ken Alves said, “Any time we can come together like this, and interact with the general public is a good thing. It can heal a lot of wounds.”
A young head dancer, Cassandra Averett (San Carlos Apache) travelled from Cape Cod through the sleet to participate. “It is really important to have Pow Wows now a days, because some people think we are extinct. But it is important to show that we are still here and that we value traditions, the way we dance, our regalia, the way we speak, our language, and all the native drums and everything,” she said.
The afternoon consisted of several dance competitions, including the traditional dance, fancy dance, stalk dance. Community members were seen dancing alongside allies as drumming by the group Urban Thunder rang through the ballroom.
“It’s a good opportunity to pull the Greater Boston Native community together to show that this is a supportive place for native faculty and staff and students. And a space for non-natives to learn more and engage with native people, native culture, native research, all of the above,” said Woods.
Planning for the 2017 Pow Wow took around a year, so planning for next year’s Pow Wow will begin just around the corner. And this this year’s was a small step towards bigger things for the interim executive director Raquel Halsey. “We can partner with other schools and organizations so that we can continue to have this and maybe one day we will be able to have this in the Boston Commons, I think that’s what everyone would love to see, but it's the small steps,” she said.
Photography by Chantelle Bacigalupo
