Arlee Celebration
114th gathering offers renewal
Hey savvy news reader! Thanks for choosing local.
You are now reading
1 of 3 free articles.
ARLEE — "This is a life-giving. Do you see the people out there in the wheelchairs?” At this, tribal elder Pat Pierre gestures towards nearly 20 people in wheelchairs in attendance at the 114th annual Arlee Celebration. “They get strength from this. I don’t come here for myself; I come for others.”
As he speaks, four drum circles lining the dance floor’s center begin singing and drumming in perfect unison. Dancers in tribal regalia move with the rhythm in a counter-clockwise circle around the drums.
Pierre smiles as he looks out towards the third drum circle, where his son and several grandchildren sit.
“I can dance all day and all night. I’m 83 years old and I won’t get tired,” Pierre explained. “I let the drums do the work. Drums are the heartbeat of Mother Earth. We can witness that, because we are of the earth. We just tune into it, and it carries us through. As long as the drum is beating, I can dance.”
Pierre’s son, Dancing Bear, said the powwow is a gathering where tribal members get to reconnect with other Native American tribes and friends.
“Good spirits, happiness, and celebration,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. This is who I am, what I do as a Native American Indian.”
One of the dancers, Glenn Parker, wears a stunning red and green tunic containing tens of thousands of beads. Each bead is no more than 1 millimeter wide, and together they form a collage of intricate patterns in the shape of red flowers. It took Parker’s mother one year to sew the beads together, and seven more years to tell her son what each bead represents.
“She put on each bead with a prayer,” he said. “I was dumbfounded when she told me. Thousands of prayers.”
According to the Arlee Celebration’s website, the earliest evidence of a Fourth of July powwow dates back to 1891. However, in the 1890s, traditional Native American dances and celebrations were illegal under a Bureau of Indian Affairs rule. Even so, the bureau found it difficult to halt a Fourth of July celebration. In 1977, a Salish elder named Blind Mose Chouteh recalled the first Fourth of July Powwow as being three years before the 1901 smallpox outbreak, placing the first-ever Arlee Fourth of July Celebration in 1898.
Each year, the celebration honors several members of the community for various achievements. This year, the celebration individually honored Stephen Small Salmon, Eva Boyd, Johnny Arlee, and Madeline Isaac Finley. Pierre said honorees are chosen each year for hard work and dedication to their tribe’s culture and heritage.
In addition, royalty committee director Salisha Old Bull said each year, a new Miss Salish Pend d’Oreille is chosen to represent herself, her family and her tribe at other powwows throughout Montana. This young woman must have knowledge of her culture or an eagerness to learn it. She must be respectful of other cultures and be able to speak for the entire celebration.
“It’s a big responsibility,” Old Bull said. “A lot of these younger girls like to run for princess when it comes up.”
This year’s Miss Salish Pend d’Oreille is 13-year-old Cayenne Sanders. This was her first year dancing, and she wanted to thank Lamar Iron Horse, Randy Mitchell and Marcy Mead for their help in making the dress and encouraging her along the way.
Sanders was inspired to try out after hearing stories about her great aunt, Francis Bourdon, and what a good person she was. Hoping to emulate her late ancestor, Sanders took up dancing and came away from this year’s celebration with the title and responsibility of Miss Salish Pend d’Oreille.
Sander’s mother, Lisa Adams, hopes they’ll represent the tribe in many of Montana’s powwows this year.
“It’s going to bring us on the right journey to get to know our culture better. I’m hoping it will inspire my younger nieces and nephews,” she said.
The powwow is open to all visitors, and some came from more than 7,000 miles away.
Osvaldo Filho, an foreign exchange student from the Federal University of Goias in Brazil, said he enjoyed the ceremonies immensely. Studying English at the University of Montana, Filho made the trip to Arlee with several friends to see the powwow. “I like it. It’s very different from what I know about our natives,” Filho said.
Parker explained that the powwow is about much more than simply dancing. For him, it’s a celebration of the past year. It’s a chance to reunite with old friends, celebrate and share stories, good and bad, while dancing for those people too sick to dance for themselves.
He says he prays for everyone while he dances.
“I pray for good things for everyone, all races under God’s creation.”
