Dancing Queen in Packrat

The pow wow grounds are quiet now. The tents are down. The food and arts and crafts booths are gone. The speakers’ stand, elders’ arbor, and bleachers are empty; no chairs ring the arena; no drums are set up. No vehicles clog the roads. What had been like a small, bustling city is now like a place abandoned, visited only by the wind. So it will remain until next year, when we do it all over again.

Some of the vendors are already set up at another tribe’s pow wow; there’s one every weekend here.

The abandoned city truly isn’t - our maintenance department will maintain the grounds, keeping the grass cut, checking on the water, electricity, and the road conditions. Families will make improvements at their camps or have cookouts some afternoons, and tents will dot the grounds here and there for random camping weekends. Sometimes I like to have lunch at our camping area.

The RV park isn’t limited to tribal use or just during the pow wow; anymore, someone is there all the time. Our community building, communal ceremonial house, and two departments are housed along the south side of the grounds, so every day there’s traffic and human activity, plus the various activities other departments or committees hold there: meetings, funerals, honor dances, 5K runs and walks, princess contests, Easter egg hunts, Halloween festivals and hayrides. Trees grow all throughout the camp areas around the arena and the road is paved; people jog or walk there. That’s where I walked. One of the security guards measured the distance; it was almost one mile all around.

I went to the pow wow every night; they last for three nights, some four (ours starts on Thursday night), usually until at least midnight. On Friday and Saturday nights, after the dance session is completed, is a “49 contest”, a different sort of dancing and singing, and I always stay for that. They last until the wee hours.

This year wore me out. Watching the dancing was fine, but getting to the arena, carrying my chair and purse (my purse is heavy enough to be a lethal weapon), hobbling along with a cane, from my parking spot (I was lucky; I found parking near the arena every night) were the tiresome elements. Cousin M’s son was our “runner”; her knees bother her. We moaned and groaned about our creaks and aches, and I said we’re too young to be acting so old. Again we said next year we’re going to camp.

While watching the teen girls compete we laughed how at that age we wandered the perimeter of the pow wow, sitting on cars to look older; now we’re not teens or even very young women nor are we yet seniors. I joked that we’re ‘tweens.

She commented that our concern used to be “the babes” dancing but now it’s the food. A few years ago we joked that the announcement of the Golden Age men’s contest would set our hearts to racing and we’d have to hobble over quickly to watch. Maybe we shouldn’t have made that joke.

This year I had to sit out the dancing, but I was out there in my thoughts and spirit. Next year barring deaths or mishap I’ll be out there with my beaded dancing shoes!