Having just returned home, from the above Pow wow, we attended yesterday, I thought I would bring this to everyones attention, and to those from the UK who visit this site, read the forums and also participate in organising Pow wows. Please if you are organising a pow wow do it correctly, otherwise call it something like " Lets Dress Up and Play Indians"
The Pow wow was held at Eagle Heights Birds of Pray Centre in Kent, entrance fee advertised on the flyer £3.00, on arrival it was £6.50. Grand entry was at 1pm and they did the retreat at 3.30pm because there was a Bird Demonstration on. This Pow wow was to be a two day event, however after the first visit no way we were going to be involved further.
This is a copy of the letter I have sent to Eagle heights:-
May I first thank you on behalf of my wife and myself, for the excellent demonstration Saturday with your birds, and the fantastic work you do at the centre. We hope we can visit again sometime in a better atmosphere.
Unfortunately we write to you, about the Pow wow which was the puropse of us travelling to your centre.
As genuine native americans, we found ourselves totally disgusted, with the way the pow wow was presented to the members of the paying public which included ourselves. It was a complete mockery of our people and Pow wows in general. People visiting Saturday who may know nothing about our culture apart from what they see in the movies, will go away thinking we are all an unorganised, undisciplined, uneducated people, which is so far from the truth.
I heard some of the dancers telling people about Indians and our ways. Firstly there are several hundred different tribes and we all have our different ways, but we do share a common set of rules and proceedures when hosting or attending a Pow wow. So again our culture was being misrepresented to the general public.
Another point is the title of the pow wow, 4th OYATE WACIPI POW WOW, this is the Lakota language I believe, and also I heard the MC and some others making public address statements in what I would say was Lakota language. Again why was this, I never saw any Lakota people there, so that was these people playing indians.
Another time, one of them called Reg, I think he had something to do with organising this with you, was talking to my wife, when she pointed out that the dance that was announced, the Crow Dance, was being done incorrectly, and was trying to explain why, however she was told SHE was wrong.
Dang, these people know more about ourselves than we do.
The TV News team, that was their, came and asked us to do a short interview about what we thought of the Pow wow, this of course we did, so hopefully the public watching TV will see that we did not approve and it misrepresented ourselves.
Aswell as ourselves, there are a number of other Native Americans in the UK, who are only too willing to offer advice and assistance, to organisers, to stop this kind of thing happening.
