River of Song : A Musical Journey down the Mississippi

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Chapter One

The Powwow Lives On:

Chippewa Nation

    The drum is the heartbeat of our nation. When the Indians first got the drum it was the means of talking with the Creator, that's the way we were taught about it. 'Cause when he hears the drum, he's looking down on us and he's watching us dance. This is the center of our people, and when our people dance around this drum, when they get this heartbeat within themselves, or when they're at this powwow and they hear the drum, it gives them strength. It brings wellness to their heart and their mind, and they're having fun, and that's what we're here for. We're here to have a good time and respect what is given to us. 'Cause everything on this land is given to the Indian people--to the Anishinaabe, to the Ojibwe .

    Pete White is one of the eight singers who make up Chippewa Nation, a drum from the Leech Lake and Red Lake reservations. Among the Ojibwe, a "drum" is both the instrument and the group of men that plays it. The members sit in a circle and beat out a steady, unison rhythm, while singing in strong, keening voices. Chippewa Nation travels to powwows all over northern Minnesota, but today they are playing on their home turf, the powwow grounds of the tiny town of Inger, on the Bowstring River between Sand and Bowstring lakes.

    The members of Chippewa Nation are in their twenties and thirties. For them, the powwow is a way of preserving their heritage, and of rediscovering ways that were once in danger of disappearing.

    This powwow here only started up again about seventeen years ago. When I was young, we didn't really go to a lot of powwows; just once in a while we'd go up to Red Lake. But the way we learned how to sing was pretty much the way Ojibwe people have been doing it for years and years. They would have three or four people out around here that are always singing, just about every week, and that's how we learned: just being around a drum, and getting out there and trying to dance. We never really went to powwows until maybe we were about fifteen, sixteen years old, but yet when we were about seven years, eight years old we were already learning, sitting here watching these guys sing songs around a drum all the time. Then we'd go ahead and take anything that sounded like a drum and just start trying to bellow out some song, and pretty soon we started learning these songs.

    This is part of our tradition, Randy Kingbird chimes in. When I first started out, I got taught by an old man named Chester Murrell from around Lake Wisconsin. He was in his seventies and he'd get a bunch of us kids and say, "Come on boys. I'm gonna teach you some songs." He'd do it on his own time. He said that's the way he wanted to pass it down, so people can have that kind of music And I'm pretty glad he did. You know, I been singing now for--it'll be twenty-five years this year.

    Chippewa Nation, which also includes Randy's brother Doug and Pete and Bruce White, has been singing together for some four years. Randy is the leader and principal songwriter. Pete is a few years younger, and grew up listening to Randy's previous group, the Little Earth Singers.

    I had a lot of respect for Randy when I was a young guy; he was singing way before we even got started, and they were at the tops, the tip-tops of of singing, and they were right on. We used to admire them and tape their music, and me and my brother we used to sit back and say, "You know, some day we're gonna sing with these guys."

    Originally, we were in different groups,Randy says. We had the Little Earth Singers, and usually we wouldn't have too many guys, 'cause most of our singers settled down; and they had Leech Lake Intertribal, and they had a hard time getting their singers together all the time So, we were talking there one time, and we said "Let's go check out the powwow in the [Twin] Cities." You know, we'd sung together before and we liked the way we sounded. So, we were driving down there and Pete said, "What should we call ourselves?" He said, "It wouldn't be right to call ourselves Little Earth Singers; wouldn't be right to say Leech Lake Intertribal; 'cause we're gonna make one drum." So, you know, we had people from Red Lake Reservation, Leech Lake Reservation and a couple of singers from White Earth, so I said, "Why not just call ourselves Chippewa Nation? Three of the biggest reservations in Minnesota are getting together. It would be a good name."

    The powwows are designed to bring people together and preserve old traditions, but they are also a new and growing symbol of Indian (or Native American, a term rarely used here) pride. Some powwows try to stay as close as possible to the old ways, discouraging tourists, concession stands, and electric sound systems. Others have become almost an Indian equivalent of the rodeo, "competition powwows" with a grand entry parade and prizes given out for the best singers, drummers, and dancers. In either case, they are proof that, although they may wear cowboy boots and jeans and work in factories or casinos, the first Americans remain a people apart, with their own history and heritage.

    Back in the thirties and forties, where they had that segregation or whatever you call it, they tried to depress our identity, Randy says. A lot of people went into hiding to practice their religion; it wasn't out in the open like it is now. But the sixties and seventies, that's when the power start coming back, and coming back strong.

    The Leech Lake Ojibwe have been able to retain more of their customs than many Indian groups. They are still in the area they settled some three to five hundred years ago, after years of war with the previous inhabitants, a branch of the Dakota people (who are often called "Sioux" in a mispronounciation of their Ojibwe name). They were traveling, as legend has it, from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, following the chain of Great Lakes to the wild rice country, called "the land where food grows on the water" in some old Ojibwe stories. Now, at the end of August, they still go out in their canoes to harvest the rice crop. The landing is only a mile or so from the powwow grounds, and the young men are there at dawn, backing their pickups down to the edge of the lake, then paddling out into the waving reeds. One man stands in the stern and poles the canoe through the water, while the other kneels just in front of him and bends the tops of the plants, heavy with the ripe crop, over the thwarts, then beats them with a wooden stick, sending a shower of green grains to pile up and fill the boat bottom. Later, these will be parched, and their husks sifted off, leaving the brown wild rice that is a staple of the local diet.

    This is naturally rich country, with rice in the fall, maple sugar in the spring, lakes full of fish, and forests full of game. Now, there are also the new casinos, which are paying for schools and civic centers and providing service jobs in an area where there is all too little work. To a newcomer, the contrast is unnerving: It is hard to imagine two worlds more different--the glitter and clang of the slot machines, the bright lights and rhinestone cowboy band singing the latest country hits, and the tribal gathering a few miles away by the rice-rich lake.

    Standing outside a log house on Lake Winnibigoshish, Dave Morgan is reminiscing about the old days. Morgan, a medium-size, solidly built man in his early sixties, grew up speaking Ojibwe, and his English still has the careful hesitancy of a non-native speaker. When he shifts into his native tongue, his voice takes on a poetic lilt, as if he was speaking not only for himself, but for his parents and grandparents. Now, he is talking about the powwow: As far back as I can remember, I heard it called powwow, but the Ojibwe people call it niimi' idiwago. Powwow, that comes from somewhere else. Like in the movies, when they wanted to talk to the Indians, they said, "We want to powwow with them."

    They used to have different kind of powwows. They had a traditional powwow, and then they used to have a "friendly gathering." It was the Sioux who had the powwow, after they quit battling with each other; then they got together and that's when they'd dance the friendship dance and celebrate that everything is over with.

    I heard this story, I think it was from one of those people from Sugar Point. They said that the powwow drum--you know that sometimes you see it painted half red and half blue? Like I say, the Sioux is the one who had the powwow, and this man said the Sioux gave half of that drum to the Ojibwe people, because of this get-together of friends. That's what this old man was saying.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from River of Song by Elijah Wald and John Junkerman. Copyright © 1999 by The Smithsonian Institution and the Filmmakers Collaborative, Inc.. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.