Culturally cool people

We’re lucky that for the last five years our community has hosted an Native American Powwow every Spring. I’m part Native American Indian so the powwow is a cool experience (more about that part of my heritage later.)

I wasn’t really sure what to expect the first year we went to the powwow. I was thinking it would be a big commercial thing, sort of a show. Not at all. Instead, it felt like a really big family reunion where people from different tribes were happy to see each other and spend time together. Some of the Native American we talked to said that they get a chance to see friends from other tribes at these powwows a couple times a year so it really is like a reunion. The powwow centers around song and dance and the head drummer was a very talented musician. The dancers were great – ranging from graceful and mellow to thundering and energetic. Non-Native Americans were made welcome too. It didn’t feel like just a big party though, there was a deep spiritual undertone with dances and songs to the Creator. A lot of respect during the ceremonies mixed with a lot o fun.

After the Grand Entry and dancing were over, we wandered around to check out the art and craft vendors. My wife headed straight for the jewelry and our sons went off to try the flatbread and other traditional foods. I found the bumper sticker below. I had to have it – to me it summed up about a million words in one photograph and a caption.

We don’t usually have a lot of bumper stickers on our cars but I have to say this one sticker gets a lot of attention! It’s common to have a group of people standing around our car in parking lots, people walking on our street come halfway up our driveway to get a better look and I can’t count how many comments we’ve had. Later, I searched the web and found the same image on t-shirts and ordered a few. My advise though is to be careful where you wear the shirt! Everyone wants to come up and talk about it! That’s great but not good if you’re running late or want to blend into the crowd that day.

I think the bumper sticker, finding the t-shirts and people’s reaction to them is what first gave me the idea to start my website.

View some here