Proud of the powwow

Every year, Owen Mayo and his family follow the powwow trail across Turtle Island. But there’s one stop that means the most to him: his home powwow, right here in Kahnawake.

“I’m really proud to come from here, to be from Kahnawake, to be a part of our history. I love our songs, our dances, our language, our regalia,” Mayo said. “I take so much time in telling people where I come from.”

Mayo’s earliest memory of Kahnawake’s Echoes of a Proud Nation Pow-wow is from nearly three decades ago, when he was around three years old.

“I was constantly inside the dance arena, just dancing from start to finish. They kept having to get me out of the arena when there were contests or different protocols they had to follow,” Mayo said. “One of the elders came up to my mom and said, ‘You need to get that boy regalia.’”

Mayo danced for the entire powwow weekend, staying close to the arena director who taught him when he could step in. From then on, he was hooked.

“I danced continuously every summer,” he said.

But in his early teens, Mayo started dancing less, instead taking up lacrosse, which he said was more popular with youth than dancing at the time. For many years, lacrosse was his first love, but at 20 he retired from playing competitively, following surgery for spina bifida, a spinal condition he was born with.

Without the Creator’s game and without dance, Mayo felt lost.

“I was a young father, and I got into some trouble with addiction,” he said. “I decided that I needed help, I wasn’t in control of myself anymore.”

He checked into Onen’to:kon Healing Lodge in Kanesatake, and followed a program rooted in culture and tradition to address his addictions.

“It’s all geared around our culture, our social songs, our dances, our ceremonies,” he said. “While I was there, I realized, wow, I miss this so much. The first week I called my mother while I was in treatment and I said, ‘Mom, I want to dance again.’”

This weekend, you’ll find Mayo and his family - including his wife, Kwena Bellemare-Boivin, whom he met, proposed to, and married on the powwow trail - on Tekakwitha Island, at the 33rd edition of the Echoes of a Proud Nation powwow.

Mayo is part of the powwow committee for the event, and he said that playing a part in planning the powwow makes it all the more special.

“Now I get to invite all my powwow family and powwow friends from all over the place and bring them to my community,” he said. “It’s a way of giving back to the powwow circle and giving back to the community, to serve the people, and for our people to experience what I get to experience almost every weekend.”

Last year, more than 12,000 attendees poured into Kahnawake for the powwow, and organizer Lynne Norton said they’re expecting similarly high attendance this year.

She said that this year, they’ll be trialling a new admissions system where attendees will park on the island and then walk into the powwow and buy their tickets there, as opposed to how it’s typically done, with cars buying tickets as they enter the island.

This will hopefully mean that traffic will flow better onto the island, and there’ll be less waiting in cars for attendees. There will be six workers at one gate and four at another, who will process entry fees for attendees.

“On Monday, I hope we get to sit back and say ‘Okay, it worked,’ and if it doesn’t it doesn’t, we just want to give it a try, and see if we can improve it,” she said. “People have been asking us to try something different to help with the traffic on the road, so we’re trying something new.”

She said that it’s difficult to find any solutions to limit traffic, because there’s only one narrow entry to the island.

“This is what we could come up with, because we’re not about to change locations,” she said. “Having it there always meant something to us.”

There will be around 80 craft booths and 30 food vendors at the powwow, and competition dances will see more than $45,000 in prize money handed out.

Some of Kahnawake’s youngest dancers are also excited to be heating up their home powwow, including Isabella Karonhia:a Cross, 10, and Laila Ken’niwa’kera:sa McComber, 14.

The two sisters have been counting down the days to this weekend’s powwow.

Cross has been dancing for half her life, having first started with dancing fancy shawl at Echoes of a Proud Nation when she was five. She also said that dancing in Kahnawake feels special.

“It’s close to my home and I get to see a lot of my friends, more of my friends than I see at the other powwows, and I get to see my family,” she said. “I feel excited, because I get to dance with my sister and some of my friends.”

McComber said she’s excited for her powwow family that she’s met on the trail to be at her home powwow.

“The powwow in Kahnawake is the most special to me because it’s the place where you grew up, you get the chance to show everyone who you’ve grown up with your dancing, your friends and family get the chance to go there and watch you dance, instead of watching you on a screen, and that feels really nice,” she said.

Every time she dances at a powwow, McComber said, she’s reminded of who she dances for.

“I started powwow dancing because I wanted to reconnect with my culture and honour our ancestors, and just to be able to dance for the people who can’t dance anymore,” McComber said. “Powwow dancing makes me feel good about myself. It makes me feel free.”

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