The Sadie Alexander School, a charter school of Penn, co-sponsored an unusual cultural event this past Friday and Saturday -- a Native- American powwow at The Rotunda on Walnut Street.
The powwow marks a small but emerging trend of native gatherings along the East Coast aimed at education and community bonding.
A crowd of approximately 100 circulated among vendors selling dream catchers, turquoise earrings, face paintings and buffalo burgers. The main attractions, however, were the spoken word artists, drummers and native dancers.
Master of ceremonies and Chairman of Native Nations Dance Theater Delwin Fiddler Jr. mixed jokes with explanations of the events. After an opening prayer, he introduced the grass dancers, explaining that they would traditionally be stomping down the prairie growth, preparing the ground for tepees.
The dance was accompanied by drummers who played and sang a mixture of vocalizations in the Lakota language. "A rain dance," Fiddler joked on this cold, gray weekend, "would usually come next, but it won't be necessary."
The majority of the audience consisted of Native-American community members from various nations. Many parents with small children also filtered in, expressing a desire to expose their children to cultures of the United States.
Native dancers from the surrounding area and states participated in the dances, along with the traveling Philadelphia-based Native Nations Dance Theater, the area's only Native-American dance company. Finally, a small faction of notebook-bearing college students made their presence known.
For all the powwow's ritualization, the underlying tensions and anxieties expressed by the participants proved that it is a living, evolving ceremony.
Maureen Zieber, a Native-American student at the University of Delaware, faults those living in the Northeast for failing to adhere to strict ceremonial tradition.
"The nations along the Northeast do things wrong. Now is a chance to gain information, and [the Northeast nations] practice bad medicine," Zieber said.
Zieber explained that many of the Northeast nations lack a native identity, due to persecution and acculturation during the dislocation of several area tribes.
The Lakota Sioux of South Dakota, a Western tribe, have been sharing their culture and dances with Native Americans along the Northeast coast, in order to further a sense of the region's native identity.
Still, Fiddler agreed with Zieber that Northeastern nations taking on Western traditions is not a closely regulated process.
Losing contracts to less strictly ceremonial Northeastern groups is a source of annoyance to him.
"Its like instead of hiring Elvis Presley, you go with some no-name," Fiddler said.
Zeiber cited the Crow dance as another example of this trend. Many East Coast nations interpret the dance as an imitation of the steps of a crow and provide their own variations. The dance, however, is specific to the Crow nation, and this Eastern misinterpretation, according to Zeiber, is altering its form.
Pauline Songbird, a featured vocalist, sang "God Bless America" before the dancing started. Veterans of American wars held the United States flag during the Flag dance.
"We have our own version of patriotism. We fight for land, not for the government," said Zeiber, adding that only veterans can carry the flag and the traditional eagle staff.
Another ceremony adopted a traditional American practice, as Native Nations crowned Brittaney Burnett "Miss Native Nations."
Burnett -- a champion dancer who had traveled with the company for the past four years -- was able to receive the honor as she prepares to leave for college in the fall.
Native Nations Dance Theater has just come from St. Louis, Missouri, where they helped to celebrate the bicentennial anniversary of the Lewis and Clarke expedition, which explored the Louisiana Purchase.
Aside from educational programs and the powwow circuit, their next large event is helping inaugurate the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., on September 21. Six Directions, a Penn student group focusing on Native-American culture, is currently organizing a bus trip to the event.
