Susan Olp of the Billings (Mont.) Gazette has the story here:

A multitude of teepees, and powwow singers and dancers from around the U.S. and Canada, will draw thousands of people to Crow Agency this week.

The 92nd annual Crow Fair kicks off Thursday and runs through Monday. As in the past, the five-day fair will feature a powwow, morning parades, a rodeo and horse races.

Equally as fascinating to many are the many teepees that dot the landscape, as Crow families gather together for the annual event.

“It’s one of the largest encampments in the world,” said Mark Denny, Crow Fair general manager. “And we’re the only tribe that puts on something like this.”

Denny said he knows of tourists coming to the fair from as far away as Italy and Germany, as well as from throughout Canada. He expects more than 3,000 people, not including tribal members.

It’s a special time for the Crow Nation, he said.

“It basically brings families together to enjoy themselves, celebrate together, have a good time, put away their troubles and just cut loose,” Denny said. “This is the one week out of the year the Crow people get to come together all in one area to form one large family.”

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Here’s how Keila Szpaller of the Missoulian tells the tale, via Johnny Arlee:

When the Salish people first saw horses, they weren’t sure what they were seeing, said Johnny Arlee, a spiritual and cultural leader of the Flathead Reservation: “They thought they were monsters, half human and half animal.”

The Shoshone Tribe had raided a Salish hunting party, and the survivors returned to camp and formed a group to retaliate. Instead of descending on the Shoshone right away, though, the Salish observed them.

They noticed their enemies tending horses and leading them to water. Arlee, vice chairman of the 2010 Arlee Celebration Committee, said a plan for revenge emerged: “Instead of wiping them out, let’s go steal what they like.”

The Salish did, and on their way walking back to camp, someone suggested the group could get away from the Shoshone faster if people rode the horses, as they had witnessed.

Scouts at home saw the men astride the horses and at first mistook them for monsters. Salish people at camp nearly fled until the riders signaled their identity, said Arlee, who told the story. Then, the Shoshone arrived in pursuit of their animals.

“The Shoshone came and begged for their horses back,” Arlee said.

The Salish said no and explained they had taken the horses to retaliate for the deaths of their own people. Eventually, though, the parties came to an agreement, and the tribes became allies. The bond had formed over the horses.

Want to read more? Click here, where you can see a video, too. And enjoy!

Gwen Florio

Indian Country Today, here, takes a look at something that happened during a Memorial Day weekend powwow in Ohio. Let’s let Stephanie Woodard tell it:

A Custer re-enactor participated in the color guard for a Memorial Day powwow on the campus of the Dayton Veterans Administration Medical Center. Accompanying the Custer figure were General Robert E. Lee and General Ulysses S. Grant lookalikes. (Indian Country Today courtesy photo/Miami Valley Council for Native Americans)

DAYTON, Ohio – On May 30, Guy Jones, Hunkpapa Lakota, was emceeing the Selma Walker Memorial Day Powwow in Columbus, Ohio, when he received a text message. “You’ll never guess who just entered the arena here in Dayton,” was its gist, recalled Jones.

He quickly learned that an actor costumed as George Armstrong Custer was participating in the color guard for a powwow occurring simultaneously on the Dayton Veterans Administration Medical Center campus. “Send photos,” replied Jones, who is a lecturer, author, and co-founder of The Miami Valley Council for Native Americans.

A photo was sent, and it’s a doozy. It shows the Patriot Freedom Festival, hosted each Memorial Day weekend by the Dayton Veterans Administration along with the American Veterans Heritage Center. This year, the festivities – for the first time – included a powwow and a service at the Dayton National Cemetery to highlight military contributions of Native Americans.

Problem is, the color guard featured re-enactors playing General Robert E. Lee and General Ulysses S. Grant lookalikes – and also a Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer re-enactor, something Jones called a hate crime.

“Custer and his men killed the wife and children of my grandfather, Gall. This so-called man – this baby killer, this woman killer – should never have been allowed within our circle or honored by inclusion in the color guard. Would you take a Hitler impersonator to a synagogue? Would you take a KKK member to an African-American church?”

Things got worse:

Dayton vendor Leon “Sam” Briggs, Tonawanda Band of Senecas, a blacksmith and artist, protested to a group of event organizers, calling Custer’s appearance “a desecration of our sacred circle.” A heated discussion followed, during which an organizer hit Briggs twice in the abdomen and twisted his arm, causing it to bleed, according to accounts from Haithcock, Saponi vendor Keith Freeman, and a non-Native veteran who observed the encounter.

A complaint has been filed with the Dayton VA, whose medical center director, Guy B. Richardson, apologized.

Gwen Florio

Here’s a heartwarming story about Four Rivers Drum, and their experiences when they were asked to be the drop-in drum at the Virginia Beach Parks and Recreation Powwow, which attracts about 10,000 people.

Vince Schilling, Indian Country Today correspondent, explains the group thusly:

Four Rivers Native American Drum started in the mid 1990s with just four drummers and singers and has grown to 19 members. The group played without a name at their first five powwows and locals referred to them as the “no-name drum.” They eventually named themselves Four Rivers because of their location on the Virginia Peninsula. In order for members to perform at an event, they must cross one of the four rivers that surround them.

Michael Cloud-Butler, Ojibwe, second singer and drummer, says the powwow has been held since the 1990s and has helped Virginia Beach understand Native culture.

“When the city started, they knew very little about Native American culture – it takes several years to learn everything,” he says.

But with the most recent powwow, he says, “It was a comfortable feeling today – and to have visited several times as a drum group – it is like a hometown powwow because we live here.”

People on Hawaii’s big island can mark Memorial Day weekend by going to the Hilo Inter-Tribal PowWow, now in its fifth year.

Terrie Henderson of the Big Island Weekly writes here that the event is organized by Liz and Troy De Roche, and emphasizes connections between Native American and Hawaiian peoples and cultures.

Troy De Roche will be cooking up the wildly popular fry bread and pleasing the crowd with his traditional flute playing. Troy, whose been known to play the flute with flour on his shirt from baking the bread, told Big Island Weekly last year that the recipe he uses for the fry bread is handed down from his grandmother. The Indian tacos are also always a big hit, according to the De Roche family.

This year’s event also will feature the return of Seneca Nation member and former Big Island resident Mike Gates. Gates will be the head dance and Fredricka “Freddie” Hunter, who is Blackfeet from Montana, is head woman dancer.

The host drum for the powwow will be The Wildhorse Singers from Torrance, Calif., cormprising drummers and singers from the Navajo, Apache, Tohono O’Odham and Cherokee nations.

Gwen Florio

Free blood glucose tests offered at last month’s Gathering of Nations powwow in Albuquerque may have exposed people to blood-borne diseases and anyone who was tested should get a follow-up risk assessment, Indian Country Today’s Gale Courey Toensing reports here:

Officials from the cultural center and the UNM Health Science Center issued the alert in a press conference and on the university’s Web site about the diabetes testing incident that took place during the weekend of the Gathering of Nations powwow and the cultural center’s American Indian Week “Pueblo Days.”

A group of student volunteers from the university’s Physician Assistant program held a free diabetes screening clinic at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center that week, but they did the tests incorrectly, using the same needle on multiple people and potentially exposing them to diseases spread by blood contact, according to Dr. Bob Bailey, associate dean of the university’s Health Science Center and incident commander.

“We estimate that 51 to 55 individuals were tested, potentially exposing these people to others’ blood. The diseases of greatest concern are Hepatitis B and C although theoretically HIV is also possible. Our best current assessment of the risk of infection is less than a 0.5 percent risk. Even though the risk is small it is something we are very concerned about and are taking it seriously,” Bailey said.

People who were tested, or who know someone who was tested, should contact the University of New Mexico, which will cover costs of follow-up services. Not everyone who was tested may have been exposed.

Bailey tells Toensing he’s “concerned that some people are seeing this as poor care provided to Native Americans. It wasn’t the quality of care we want to provide, but unfortunately we did it and we provided to everybody there.” Not everyone tested was Native.

Public health authorities are requesting that those who participated in the diabetes screening event contact 1-888-899-6092 for more information and referral for screening. Or, click here for the notice, which includes a web form for contact.

Gwen Florio

A North Pole, Alaska, woman, Alanna Gibson, will be among the 27 young women vying for the title of Miss Indian World this weekend in Albuquerque, N.M.

Gibson, 21, who is Athabascan was named Miss World Eskimo-Indian Olympics in July, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports here.

Saturday’s pageant is part of the Gathering of Nations, which bills itself as the world’s largest powwow.

Gibson will sing a traditional Athabascan song that she practiced with her grandmother, Geraldine Charlie. She also studied the dances of Eskimo cultures so she could fully represent Alaska Natives.

Contestants are judged on tribal knowledge and on personality, as well as on talent.

Follow her progress and that of the other contestants on the MissIndianWorld Twitter feed, here.

Gwen Florio

Here’s today’s Missoulian story in full:

Organizers of this year’s Kyi-Yo Pow Wow did not receive funds from the University of Montana in advance – as was the practice in previous powwows – and so ended up without enough money to pay out prizes to hundreds of contestants, Kyi-Yo secretary Suzette LaPlant-Means said Wednesday.

It fell to LaPlant-Means to take the stage at about 3 a.m. Sunday before an angry powwow crowd and announce – to jeers and boos – that some prizes were being eliminated altogether and that the rest of the prize winners would only get about 10 percent to 15 percent of what they expected.

The situation resulted in a highly unusual apology Tuesday from UM administrators to the Native American community for “inadequate planning and communication.”

But Bob Duringer, UM vice president for administration and finance, said the reason this year’s Kyi-Yo did not receive such “working capital,” which in previous years has amounted to $20,000 to $30,000 placed in a vault a couple of days before the powwow, is because the committee hadn’t raised enough money in advance.

“We only extend working capital to what we think the budget will tolerate,” Duringer said. “This year, since expenses were about the same and their revenues were way down, if we extended more working capital than they were good for, then the university would have taken a loss.”

But the university will take a hit, anyway. As part of Tuesday’s apology, the university vowed to pay all prizewinners at the same level awarded 2009 winners.

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