The $27,600 just doled out in the Capital region by the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs will surely pull more people into Lansing, East Lansing, and Williamston. The three-day Riverbank Traditional Pow Wow, June 19 to 21, alone brings 10,000 people into Downtown Lansing every year, says Marcia Ditchie of the Arts Council of Greater Lansing.
“They stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, fill up their gas tanks,” Ditchie says.
This
year will be the Pow Wow’s tenth in Louis Adado Riverfront Park in
Downtown Lansing, produced by the Native American Arts and Crafts
Council.
Robin Menefee, 49, directs the council. While the
council’s 50 active members do workshops and demonstrations of Native
American culture, the Pow Wow is their primary activity.
The
celebration has two purposes, Menefee says: “To let people know we’re
still around, and to teach the young people the traditional ways of
their grandmothers and grandfathers.”
In urban centers, it is especially hard to keep traditions because there is no central gathering place.
It
is significant that the Pow Wow is on the bank of the Grand River. It
signifies the native community’s way of travel at one time, he adds.
Tribes represented will be the Ottawa, Pottawattamie and Chippewa, known together as The Three Fires.
The
$3,500 grant will help reach the council’s $20,000 budget, a stretch
this year since the General Motors Foundation has pulled support. But
Menefee says he and his team will continue to host the celebration of
Native American culture through songs, dance, food and crafts. It’s
free and everyone is welcome.
To learn the other groups that received grants, click here.
Source: Robin Menefee, Native American Arts and Crafts Council
Gretchen Cochran, Innovation & Arts editor, may be reached here.
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