"I've raised all of my children on the Powwow Trail"

From: Reservation Conditions In Spotlight Of Powwow

 

Native Americans in town for Pasco County's biggest and longest annual festival say things are slowly improving back home on reservations throughout the country.

As last Thursday's Native American Night kicked off 11 days of dance and traditional crafts during Chasco Fiesta, Seneca Nation of Indians member Sheila K. Cooper was selected in Washington to head the country's Native American Children and Youth Task Force.

Cooper, a former teacher, said her goal is to address "alarming trends" among Native American children that include the highest death and dropout rates of any racial or ethnic group in the country, according to a statement issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Ron Colombe, a Lakota tribe member from South Dakota who is acting as master of ceremonies at this year's Chasco powwow, is well aware of the statistics.

He reeled off these trends about life on the reservations:

•Alcoholism rates are 20 times that of the general population.

•About 85 percent of all would-be workers are unemployed.

•Infant mortality is 30 times the national rate.

•The average Native American man dies at 46.

"Isolation and poverty," along with "nothing to do," caused Colombe and many others of his generation to seek solace in the bottle, he said.

Now sober at 55, Colombe said he has beaten the odds, and he is not alone.

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Many Kiowa are moving off their reservation in Carnagie, Okla., and are assimilating into the general culture, he said.

That is good news for Kiowa children now attending public schools and universities, said Whitehorse, who was bedecked in an Oklahoma Sooners football jersey.

But it is bad news for Kiowa culture, he said.

"It's really sad because our language, we are losing it," Whitehorse said. "There is no written alphabet for our language."

His children did not learn to speak Kiowa because, although he understands it, he is not fluent, Whitehorse said.

Fortunately, tribal elders are bringing in anthropologists to record and attempt to preserve the language as it is still spoken on the reservation, he said.

Katrina Big Mountain, a Cree originally from Saskatchewan in Canada who is running the powwow, said she has home-schooled her eight children in part to preserve their cultural identity.

"I've raised all of my children on the Powwow Trail," she said. "My objective is for them to be the best they can be and to respect their elders."

Some of her older children have gone on to college, Big Mountain said. Others, who range in age from 3 to 25, will follow different paths as they choose.