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Good morning everyone, and welcome to the National Museum of there American Indian.
You are here on an wonderful day, and I'm not even just talking about the great weather
after yesterday. We are very fortunate to have a group of students here from the St.
Labre Indian School in Montana. They are here today, they are going to share their music,
their dance, their stories, and their culture, and we are very honored to have them here.
And I would like to turn the mic over to Mr. Curtis Yarlet, who will guide us this afternoon.
Is Curtis here?
OK, thank you. This is good. [native language] Welcome, how are you today? We're awful glad
to see you. Nice crowd here today, and we're happy, we're honored to be back here for another
time here at the National Museum of the American Indian. We were here two years ago, and we
got ten of our students here with us today, and we also got some staff members who are
present. We've got Mr. Benzi Headswift who is the instructor for the drum group here.
We have our dance instructors here, who will show you the various styles of dance that
are practiced out there in Montana amonst the Northern Cheyenne and the Crow Indian
tribe. We also have our Grandma Nellie, as we call her, and she's the grandmother for
the school and Christine Medicine Bull is also here. We also got Tony Waseta and Marge
Rath who are staff members at St. Labre. I'll have Mr. Headswift introduce the dancers when
he comes up here. But St. Labre is a private school located in Ashland, Montana, which
is the far southeastern part of Montana on the eastern edge of the Northern Cheyenne
reservation. We operate three schools on the Northern Cheyenne and Crow Indian reservations.
We have a total of about 750 students. And we prepare our students for a college education,
however, we believe in a well-rounded education, and we believe that the well-rounded also
includes instruction in the culture and languages of our students tribes. And so we have a drum
group. We also teach the Northern Cheyenne and Crow languages at our schools, and we
do a lot of other things such as incorporating the work of Native American authors into our
curriculum. So, without further ado, I'm going to hand the mic over to Mr. Benzi Headswift,
who will take it from here.
Thank you, Curtis. Thank you for allowing us to come back. It's a privilege. It's an
honor to be here to represent a few of the tribes from Montana, specifically the Crow
and Northern Cheyenne. We're going to go ahead and do, present the dancers to you through
a grand entry style of dance, where we allow the dancers to come in a circle and sort of
parade, you know. Parade like they do with any other kind of grand entry that you think
of, specifically with horse races. The same way they do that. We'll get into a little
more detail about that later on, on some of the research I came across. So we'll see a
grand entry style song. I want all the dancers to come in just kind of give you an eye-full
real quick.
All righty. So what we're going to do now is going ahead and bringing them out individually,
just to kind of give you guys a chance to observe them as individual dancers. With these
styles of dances that we have throughout the Great Plains, specifically the Crow and Northern
Cheyenne Indians, our stories and representations of these styles of dance originate from our
tribe, not all of them, the stories, I'm saying, of how these came about our tribes, I'm going
to share today. So today, I'm going to go ahead and bring out the woman's Crow style.
Today we're very privileged and honored to have Miss Crow Nation. If any of you made
it to Montana, the Crows, they have a powwow in August, it's called the Crow Fair, and
that's the tipi capitol of the world. If you want to see a whole lot of tipis and meet
one of the most friendliest and generous tribes. In August, the second week in August, third
weekend? Third weekend in August is when they have the Crow Fair, and that spectacle of
all those tipis within that Crow valley is awesome. So at this time I'll go ahead and
call upon ?? Little Owl. She's the current Miss Crow Nation. It's a title, I believe
they take three days out of the week to decide who gets this title. The style of dress that
she's wearing is an elk's tooth dress. At this time, it's a common courtesy to let Curtis
announce for this. So, Curtis, if you could, come on up.
The elk tooth dress is in a particular style to the Crow Nation. You'll notice the bead work,
the geometric designs. Those are also distinctive of the Crow Nation. With many of the Plains
Indian tribes, particularly those who hunt the elk, having the elk tooth dress, and the
number of teeth on the dress itself was an indicator of the wealth and also the hunting
ability of men in the household. Because each elk has only two of those teeth you see on
the dress, so each dress can have about 500 teeth on there, and you can just imagine how
many elk it takes to completely outfit a dress. And so, part of that is in showing the ability
of the the men in the family to hunt, but also it a indication of the love the men have
for women in their family, the wives and the daughters. With that, I'll hand it over to
Benzi.
Thank you, Curtis. So you can kind of see where we're going with this explanation of
the styles of dance. At this time, we're going to go on ahead and sing her a double-beat
style. It's specifically sung for this style of dance, men or women Crow style. So we're
going to go ahead sing her a double-beat song at this time.
Thank you, Sesalee. Once again, Sesalee Little Owl. At this time I'm bringing forward Kegan
Bear Comes Out. She is wearing a jingle dress, style of dress, category, jingle dress dance.
This style of dance comes from the Anishinaabe, Ojibway tribes. There's currently three stories
out there that explain this style of dance. It's a healing dance that was given to them
through a vision, dream, as the stories were told to me or by chance caught them by sound
I hear. Throughout powwow country they do a lot of explaining of how this dance was
meant to heal. I'd go on to detail, but I'd probably end up using my whole half hour I
have, so, I'll just share that much with you guys. This style of dance is pretty unique.
They have a certain song. It's called the, out on the Plains, we call it a side-step.
The specific tribes call it a round dance. The kind of get technical after that. We have
round dances at home that are called side-steps. Over here so it's kind of vice versa. So,
we're going to sing her a Ojibway style round dance. That's her second choice of song.
Next dancer I'm going to bring forward is Cayla Onsavaris. She is wearing a fancy dance,
fancy shawl. The story that I heard recently was this style of dance came about when two
traditional dancers were at a powwow, woman's traditional dancers were at a powwow, and
the powwow committee and the people who were hosting the powwow couldn't figure out a winner.
So they took some time, and took a break, drank some coffee, trying to figure out
how to break this tie. And one of the ladies, she decided to pick up a shawl that she was
dancing with and threw it over her shoulders like Cayla has her on now, and started dancing,
started moving her feet in a fancy way. So the other one saw her do that, grabbed her
shawl right away, and sure enough they were both out there cuttin' up the rug pretty good,
you know. So that's how this style of dance came about. So eventually a winner was picked,
because the winner got picked by how fast she moved, how fast her feet were moving,
and how fancy she got. So we're going to go on ahead and sing a song for Cayla and let
her go ahead and dance that style.
All right, what do you guys think so far? I'd like to take this time to introduce my
singers. I have Cale Fitcher. Stand up please, wave to the crowd. Tyler Small, Bowen Simpson,
and Michel Frazier. I've been working with these students since, some of them have been
third graders, and two of them are fifth graders, now. One's an eighth grader, and one's a seventh
grader, sixth grader. Part of what's St. Labre's doing now is trying to preserve our cultures,
by allowing me to teach there, teach Native American singing. Teach these kids the songs
that they're singing today, along with other songs that we have as a tribe for the Northern
Cheyenne. Court dance songs, memorial songs, honor songs, veteran songs, flag songs, and
you know, stuff like that keeping it the way I was taught by my grandfathers that passed
their information to me through oral tradition. And that's what makes it so sacred is because
I teach the same way my grandfather taught me at the drum, with on sheet music, nothing
like that. I can say, all right, I can come back later and learn it. No, when they sang
a song for me, and they told me to learn it, I had to learn it right there. I had to pay
attention. So that's the way that these guys are learning, and I'm glad to say and happy
to say that St. Labre is helping our tribes, both the Crow and Northern Cheyenne by allowing
us to have this class, Native American Singing. So a big round of applause for St. Labre.
So at this time I'm going to bring forward one of our dancers. His name is Rubin Little
Head, Jr. He's currently the champion of the Junior Boy's Traditional at the Gathering
of Nations Powwow. Some of you guys might know that powwow. He's currently the reigning
champion for his category, Junior Boy's Traditional. We're going to him a sneak up song. the sneak
up song is a representation of him telling a story of how he snuck up on his enemies
or how he snuck up on an animal he was hunting. So we'll go ahead and sing him that song right
now.
This next style of dance that I'm bringing out, his name is Georgie Little Eagle, he
is wearing a Cheyenne grass dance outfit. The story that I was told, don't get me wrong,
there's plenty of tribes out there that have different variations on this style of dance.
Just like with the rest of them, originating from their tribe specifically. This story
that was told to me that I'm about to share with you is, was told to me by my grandfather,
James Red Cloud. Out of curiosity I asked him what the grass dance was, where it came
from. And he told me that they, before the Cheyennes would have ceremony called Sun Dance,
they would have this style of dancer to come out and dance down the grass where we'd have
our annual Sun Dance ceremony. So that's the way that this style of dance came about. Through
my grandfather telling me that story. So you know it's kind of he way each tribe represents
themselves through this style of dance, any of these dances. You know the origins are
just like everybody else's origins. Each family history has their own way of telling it. So
with that, we're going to sing him a slow song that would represent him dancing down
the grass.
The next dancer I'm bringing out is Sonny Little Head. He is our fancy dancer. Men's
fancy dancer, fancy feather dancer. He, too, is also a champion dancer. He's making his
way up into the adult category and is one of the, if not the top one for the king category
throughout Indian country powwows. This style of dance is kind of, let's see, how would
I put it? Wild Bill had this time when he was taking Indians around doing these shows,
and during these shows was, the Indians would compete for money, prize money, and he wanted
the dances to be fast, more fancier, so as the tribes men, as anybody would want to do
to make money for their families, this style of dance originated from that. They put on
two bustles to make themselves look fancier. They put on bigger bells, they put on a little
more outfit, a little bit more than what Rubin's wearing, you know, the traditional outfit.
It's just a shift from the traditional outfit to the fancy, two bustle. I actually believe
that there is some YouTube footage out right now from the 1950s that kind of give you an
idea of how that style of dance looked back then, in the 50s, this style, the fancy dance.
Now this is the show-stopper. This is the one that everyone waits for at every powwow,
and it's a privilege and a treat to present men's fancy dance to you.
So there's usually a friendly competition that happens between the drum and the dancer,
and unfortunately, the drum lost. We lost every thought that we had. That's a friendly
competition that the drummers and the dancers have as well. At this time, I'd like to have
our grand Nellie come out. This was the original dance that women had before we started out
with fancy, shawl, jingle dress, or the grass they have in the Great Plains. This attire
that she's wearing, along with the Crow style attire are some to the dresses that they would
wear throughout the day, or in some cases, when the men would come back from war party
or village raid, or whatever the case may be. This is the kind of stuff that they would
wear to honor their husbands, their sons, their uncles, nephews, whatever the case may
be, depending on how the parade came through for the Cheyenne along with the Sioux. Woman's
traditional. We'll be singer her a song so she can dance. Notice the pride that she has.
Because she's dancing, not just for her self, she's dancing for her grandmothers that have
gone on before her, and she's dancing for her grandkids, so that they have strength
to carry on this way as well.
One of the things that I always kind of tend to forget to explain about, is our drum. You
know, our drum is sacred to us throughout Indian Country. It's the giver of life. It's
the giver of hope. I have a grandfather that's sick at home right now. One of his greatest
teachings that he gave me is to always sing. Sing Benzi, sing for those who are sick. Even
if it's for one second that they hear you. It may last a life time, of healing, spiritually.
That's one of the greatest teachings that I've ever had. You know, I'd like to dedicate
today to him. If it wasn't for him and my other grandfathers that have fallen, I wouldn't
know this way about this drum. You know, this drum was given to us through Sun Dance way
to represent thunder throughout the Cheyenne. You know, every time that drum, boom, brings
life to you, brings energy. You know, that's one of the teachings that he's given me. So
at this time I'd like to invite my dancers back out. We're going to share what we call
our friendship dance. Going to go out and get a couple of you throughout the crowd and
we're going to round dance. We're going to round dance. Rubin, Sonny, Georgie, Cayla,
Cecile, Kagen, go on ahead and pick out two dancers if you will. Some of you, if you want,
go ahead and come on out. This round dance is where we join hands and round dance clock-wise
as friendship dance. The Cree tribes, they do this throughout the wintertime with hand
drums, but we'll do it with our big drum. Kids, you can come on out if you want to.
Actually, everybody, if you would, if we could put everybody on the dance floor we'd be more
than happy to do that. You're more than welcome to join. Don't be shy. You guys from the top
come on down. Feel free to come on and do that too.
Alright, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming out. And as I said in our show today.
I hope it was educational and informational. The students will be here, available for pictures
if you want to take pictures of them, with them, we will be available. Thank you for
coming out today. God bless.