Native American Ways

Shown At Town Hall Pow Wow

Wearing an ankle-length cape of white feathers and green-beaded moccasins, Little Fox, the ceremonial chief, faced the sun. Holding up a staff topped by a turtle shell, he slowly turned to face the four directions, thanking the Great Spirit. Mothers shushed their children. A boy paused with a hot dog halfway to his mouth. Little Fox finished the required prayers. The Flushing Town Hall pow-wow had begun.

Photos Carolyn Feibel Little Fox, ceremonial chief for the pow wow, leads the first intertribal dance. Winter Flower, the Earth Mother of the North Eastern Native American Association, performs a traditional woman’s dance. Native American dancers imitate movements of the hunt during a traditional "sneak up" dance at the Flushing Town Hall pow wow.

Over two hundred people attended the Feb. 20th pow-wow at Flushing Town Hall, which was co-sponsored by the Flushing Council on Culture and the Arts and the North Eastern Native American Association. The 346-member association brings together Native Americans who presently live in and around the New York City area.

Winter Flower, the Association’s "Earth Mother," explained that Little Fox’s turtle shell staff was symbolically important, because native lore holds that Long Island sprang from the back of a turtle. Winter Flower traces her ancestry to the Ramapough, a tribe native to New Jersey. Her duties as Earth Mother include mediation, counseling and teaching culture and dance.

The association’s leader, Chief Mecco Stands High, an Apache, introduced the dancers and acted as emcee throughout the afternoon. "I’m more ‘mouth’ than anything," he said and smiled. "My dancing days are over. I leave that to the younger guys."

The first dance honored military veterans. It was followed by an intertribal dance for men and women, and then a "round dance" in which the audience was invited to participate.

The Drum Circle Singers sang and played the thunder drum, which is suspended a few inches above the floor in a wooden cradle. One of the songs came from the Lakota Sioux language, but "many songs just have vocables," explained one of the drummers, Lonnie Moonfire. Vocables are rhythmic syllables that were used at intertribal gatherings, when singers didn’t always share the same language.

"I love the drum," Barbara Scheiner, a resident of Douglaston, said. Scheiner, who studies African drumming and shamanism, came to the pow-wow wearing a Navajo-inspired sweatshirt. "I think the drum is like a heartbeat."

The pow-wow offered Queens residents an alternative way of celebrating the extended President’s Day weekend. Silver and stone Native American jewelry was on sale throughout the afternoon to mark the occasion.

Eagle Two Feathers spoke about the national issues most important to Native Americans. "After all we have done for this country, not one government official has stepped up and offered us reparation. There’s a whole lot of deceit interwoven into American history," he said. Eagle Two Feathers works at Manhattan’s Cherokee Language and Cultural Circle. "Aniyawiya" is the true name of the Cherokee, he said. It means ‘the principle people.’

"Cherokee people are eastern people," he continued. "Many people don’t know that we’re what we call woodlands. We’re not plains people. we didn’t have to chase buffalo. We use leaf and plant signs instead of geometric signs."

Jerry Grey Wolf, also of Cherokee ancestry, calls himself a full-time activist and artist. His wood carvings draw on Native American themes. He is the coordinator for the New Jersey support group for Leonard Peltier. Many Native Americans, and organizations like Amnesty International, believe Peltier was wrongly imprisoned for the murder of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge reservation in 1975. Grey Wolf calls Peltier a "Native American Prisoner Of War."

"If it’s anything Native American, I’m there," he said before going back on stage to play drum. "I’m a front-line warrior."