Powwow: A Celebration through Song and Dance

Powwow: A Celebration through Song and Dance — page 5
to get running water we also had a television Saturday morning cartoons made us laugh but when the cowboy and Indian movies came on I felt sad The TV Indians did not look or talk anything like my relatives on the reserve My grandma did not know how to speak English My cousins spoke in Anishinaabemowin most of the time not English The Hollywood version of Indians also caused a lot of teasing and bullying by other kids in our city neighborhood Life as the lone Indian family in the neighborhood was painful The good thing about television was that it gave me a window into dance When I watched Hollywood dance musicals I could leave my troubled reality and escape to another place The most famous dancing couple at the time was Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers They would float across the floor their graceful fluid movement holding me in awe and taking me to a magical place In the privacy of my bedroom I would imitate their dance and try to find that enchanted space for myself Then I would swoop swirl and twirl up and down our narrow hallway No matter how engaging their dips and swirls were though their dance was worlds apart from what I knew As soon as school was finished in June we would start to get ready for the day-long drive north The excitement of being home with my grandparents and other relatives would keep me awake the night before we left There was also my grandma’s soup and homemade pies to look forward to and there was the powwow Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers RKO Radio Pictures My granddaughter Kallan Pheasant Neganigwane Anishinaabe is a Traditional dancer Robert Snache 2 karen pheasant-neganigwane