People’s Center hosts Native American Awareness Week
Daniel Martynowicz
Stevensville fourth-grade students play stickball on the Peoples’ Center grounds
Daniel Martynowicz
Colleen Brazil hugs Marty Eagle Feathers as he helps her draw a buffalo.
Daniel Martynowicz
Mike Irvine prepares venison for the drying rack by salting and sorting different cuts of meat.
Daniel Martynowicz
Daniel Martynowicz
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PABLO — Laughing and smiling school children ran to and fro throughout the People’s Center grounds from Sept. 18 to 20 during the annual Native American Awareness Week.
The event seeks to involve off-reservation schools and community members in a weeklong educational opportunity centered around Native American culture and heritage.
Youngsters participated in and learned about how to process a deer hide, dry deer meat, singing, drumming and a museum tour.
Every event showcased laughing and screaming children. Teaching the kids how to play stick ball and acting as an interim referee, volunteer Darius McDougall was all smiles while yelling instructions to the mob of children. McDougall played stick games a child at powwows throughout the area and said he enjoyed the opportunity to show the younger kids how to play.
“It’s all about helping the kids learn about our culture,” he said.
On the other side of the park, volunteer Mike Irvine meticulously sorted and salted several pounds of deer, preparing the mounds of venison for the drying pit. He explained that the deer was shot by his son earlier in the week, boned, filleted and then put on a drying rack over a bed of hot coals. The wood used to create the coals is an important part of the process. Only cotton, hickory or apple wood can be used because it contains little, if any, pitch or resin.
Wood resin produces a bitter taste when used to smoke meats. Kerosene and creosote residue in chimneys is often attributed to burning woods with high pitch or resin contents.
Irvine said that in years past, drying meat was a necessity to insure a proper food allotment for winter. In recent years, it has become a social event where family and friends will come out and help prepare the meat around a fire, catching up, laughing and conversing.
“This is a nice little thing. It’s not just the reservation kids. It’s nice to explain all of this to the kids and people we don’t know, and share our culture,” he said.
Education director and museum exhibit coordinator Marie Torosian said the event has been a mainstay of the People’s Center since it opened in 1991.
“My favorite part is watch all the kids have fun,” Torosian said. “The first time they experience dry meat play a game, it’s great.”
Torosian said the staff will often get letters from the children once they’ve gone home. Letters in past years have said the following:
“I love Fry bread and dry meat!”
“I want to bring my mom back!”
“I love Indians!”
Torosian smiled and laughed after reciting a few of the comments she’s committed to memory.
“It’s my passion to share our culture with others,” she said. “I get worn out faster when the kids are here, but when I get the kids’ letters and see how much fun they had, it’s all worth it.”
